The purpose of the study was to determine if students' attitude towards online teaching and learning (T&L) mediate the relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and intention to adopt only T&L in South Africa. The institutions of higher learning were forced to adopt the online teaching model in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic regulations that inhibited people from moving around, including visitation to their workplace. Students were also not allowed to visit their campuses, but had to stay and learn online, at home. To achieve the objectives of the study, a quantitative survey was adopted, and data was collected from 112 students registered with a distance learning institution in South Africa. The results of the study show students' attitude mediates the relationship between perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and their intention to adopt online T&L.
TopIntroduction And Background
The significance of online teaching and learning (T&L) was signalled by the covid-19 pandemic, which forced institutions of higher learning to adopt the online T&L model in 2020 due to regulations that inhibited people from moving around, including going to their workplace (Subban, Padayachee & Soni, 2022a). Students were also not allowed to visit their campuses for T&L purposes but had to stay home and learn online (Jyothi & Vijayabhinandana, 2021). This required them to adopt the fully online T&L model during the period, where students had to be taught and assessed online (Almaiah, Al-Khasawneh & Althunibat, 2020). Although universities are still using this mode, some of them – especially residential universities – have adopted the hybrid model of T&L, which includes face-to-face and online T&L. The adoption of online T&L requires that students find it useful and easy to use in order for them to gain the benefits of online learning (Ally, Pillay & Govender, 2022).
The adoption of online T&L has it benefits as much as it has it challenges. Some of the challenges experienced by students in online T&L are lack of technological devices, such as laptops and data (Ramraj & Marimuthu, 2019); accessibility; connectivity; lack of appropriate devices; lack of communication and interaction with lecturers and peers (Boca, 2021); and lack of data to access online T&L (Kanwal & Rehman, 2017). Despite these challenges, online T&L has many benefits. It allows diverse educational possibilities and multiple ways of placing content in terms of assessment, enabling the teacher to implement continuous and summative assessment tests (Boca, 2021). Students can manage their tasks in their own time, taking personal learning to a whole new level (Ndebele & Mbodila, 2022).
Students’ attitude towards online learning determines their level of engagement in online T&L (Um, 2021). The students’ attitude is influenced by the level of knowledge they possess about how to use the online T&L tools (Elsayed & Shabbat, 2021). Juraković, Tatković and Radulović (2022) support this, stating that students' attitudes are influenced by their digital skills and competencies, which means that the easier it is to use, the more students will be willing to adopt online T&L. Zhu, Au and Yates (2013) found that students’ prior online T&L attitude predicts their attitude towards online T&L. Lazim, Ismail and Tazilah (2021) confirm the need for online T&L infrastructure to be well equipped for ease in the online learning process.
It was proven by Landa et al. (2021) that students in South Africa are not fully ready to adopt online T&L and that they lack the confidence to use electronic communication in learning systems. Subban, Padayachee and Soni (2022b) affirm the need for ensuring adequate student preparedness and sustained student support for the successful adoption of online T&L since they might not be ready for online T&L. Subban et al. (2022b) further argue for the need to ensure that students are ready for online T&L to ensure they are ready to engage in online T&L. As argued by Ally et al. (2022), the use of online T&L presents challenges related to nurturing and motivating students to improve their success rate due to the changing approach used to interact with students as a result of online T&L adoption during the covid-19 pandemic. The success of the online T&L system depends on the students’ willingness and ability to adopt the system (Mensah, Zeng, Luo, Lu & Xiao, 2022; Almaiah & Alismaiel, 2019), which requires that factors influencing students’ attitude and intention to adopt online T&L system be investigated.