Awareness of Online Learning of Undergraduates during COVID 19 with special reference to South Eastern University of Sri Lanka

Abstract

During this COVID 19 pandemic situation, all sectors including education is also conducting its services via online. Most of the undergraduate in Sri Lanka are very familiar with class room traditional learning process. This paradigm shift has caused advantages and disadvantages in their education activities. A study on awareness of online learning of undergraduate is very much important to measure their present performances, finding pitfalls and draft online learning policies and guidelines for a successful learning environment. This research paper involved both Quantitative and Qualitative methods; where these two methods were used to determine the factors of awareness of students about online learning among the undergraduates of the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka (SEUSL). There were around 400 questionnaires were sent to the students via WhatsApp and received 310 responses that can be used for this study. Students mentioned that they were facing the internet connectivity issues (40.2%) during this COVID-19 lockdown period. Most of the students pointed out that their monthly expenditure (69.4%) and internet bill (48.5%) have increased due to this online learning system. More than 50% of the students were happy with online education during this lockdown. Only 19.6% of them preferred the offline learning. Most of the students already had the experience in Zoom (51.2%) but, they preferred to use WebEx for their online education due to the user friendliness of WebEx. It is recommended to develop any virtual reality applications to conduct practical sessions. Also, universities can conduct online training programs about online education tools. Furthermore, government should consider to provide internet connection with free of charge to the students also internet providers should analyses the coverage issues in the rural areas. Furthermore, researcher can conduct survey about students' perception and expectation about online learning in future.