How the Preferences of Students Change on Online Learning From Transition Term to During the Covid Pandemic Period

Abstract

The developments in the communication and Internet technologies have had a major impact on education. The traditional face-to-face education has changed substantially with the advancement of technology. With the start and ongoing Covid pandemic, face-to-face education has been replaced with online education. In this paper, an empirical study was undertaken to examine the change of students’ preferences for online education versus traditional education and the supporting learning technologies such as Learning Management System (LMS) between the two periods: transition term (TT) and ongoing Covid pandemic (DC). Results showed that there is a difference in the students’ preferences when compared with gender and number of online courses taken but there are not statistically significant. Research findings support the fact that students were not ready for a fully online education even though they had experience with online learning. The grade distribution of students decreased from TT to DC due to self study and online assesments with proctoring. Students agreed that traditional courses increased their learning and the learning technologies, such as LCM, online platforms and VTC help them learn the materials online in both TT and DC. For online learning, they prefer synchronous courses to asynchronous courses.