Thai University Students’ Perceptions towards the Abrupt Transition to ‘Forced’ Online Learning in the COVID-19 Situation

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Pariwat Imsa-ard

บทคัดย่อ

After the novel COVID-19 begun its global assaults, universities in Thailand have suddenly shifted their face-to-face classrooms into forced 100% online learning. Moving the normal classes with physical attendance to the cloud classes can be challenging for students. However, students’ perceptions towards online learning as a sudden shift have been overlooked. To fill this void in the literature, this study explores the Thai university students’ perceptions towards the sudden change to online learning. This study espoused a mixed-methods approach to achieve research questions. After 7 weeks of online learning, a questionnaire was distributed to 310 Thai university students by snowball sampling, and the follow-up interview was randomly conducted with 15 students who granted consent to take part in the interview session to gain insights on the particular issues. Findings revealed that the majority of students preferred face-to-face classrooms to online learning and most of them are not willing to learn online in the future. However, most of the students believed that their instructors were willing to provide them with some assistance and useful feedback during the period of ‘forced’ online learning. The findings provide important implications for instructors and teachers when it comes to online learning and teaching in a similar context.

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บทความวิจัย (Research Article)

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