This study proposes a new model for integrating the protection motivation theory (PMT) with the technology acceptance model (TAM) to explore factors affecting students’ intention to attend e-learning courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 432 valid responses to an online questionnaire were received from freshmen students studying in universities in Vietnam and Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the proposed research model and test the hypotheses, and model evaluation reflected a good fit between the data and the proposed research model. Differences between perceived vulnerability, perceived severity, and intention to take e-learning courses across two countries were also established, suggesting that both the TAM and the PMT should be considered for use in studies related to technology adoption in the pandemic context. The factors influencing students’ intentions to take online courses can be quite varied when different educational settings are considered; therefore, a more contextual understanding of students’ e-learning intentions during pandemic times should be carefully examined. Suggestions for governments and policy makers are also proposed.
In Asia, in order to keep up with internationalisation, the English-Medium Instruction (EMI) course has become a phenomenon in higher education. In turn, EMI literature has increasingly focused on the role of instructor's pedagogy in reducing students' negative response to EMI courses. Additionally, we further explore, from the students' perspective, whether students can reduce their anxiety about learning in English by adopting varied learning strategies while reducing their avoidance of EMI courses. A questionnaire survey was conducted in spring 2018; 208 postgraduate students from 15 different EMI courses in the School of Business Administration of Sun Yat-sen University participated in this study. We used partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to explore the relationship between learning strategies, English anxiety, and EMI avoidance, while regarding English proficiency as a controlled variable. The results indicate that English anxiety has a positive relationship to EMI avoidance; critical thinking has a negative relation to English anxiety; effort regulation has a negative relation to EMI avoidance, and English anxiety mediates the relationship between critical thinking and EMI avoidance. General principles are drawn from these findings and are discussed as they apply to the teaching of EMI classes.
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