The pandemic COVID-19 has transformed traditional face-to-face learning into online learning. Implementation of online education is vital to stop the spread of the virus. Nevertheless, despite the advantages offered by online learning, it also presents challenges to students living in rural areas. The present study aims to explore the insight of online learning among rural students. Therefore, this study explores qualitative insight to obtain in-depth knowledge of online learning in rural areas. This study conducted an online survey with 21 students in rural areas. The qualitative content analysis produced four relevant themes of online learning: easy-to-find information, internet disruption, lack of focus, and difficult understanding. This study contributes to online learning literature in a rural area context.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are backbone of most economy worldwide. In Malaysia, more than 97% of the overall business establishments are SMEs and almost 80% of the SMEs comprise of microenterprises that operate with less than five employees. Despite its limited financial and human resources, microenterprises are however considered to be vital for the well- being of the rural communities and capable of reducing income gap between communities. Unfortunately, microenterprises were the most affected by the outbreak pandemic Covid-19 than other business establishments. In rural economy, such as in the state of Kelantan most sole traders operate the microenterprises to support their families’ well-being. Affected income of microenterprises were definitely affected their families’ well-being as well. This study was conducted among businesses in Rantau Panjang, Kelantan with the objective to identify the impact of Covid-19 experienced by them. The study also decided to investigate their readiness to shift to online business. This study applies qualitative approach utilizing structured face-to-face interviews. It was identified that all the participants suffered sales reduction due to Covid- 19 leading to lower income or no income at all. Positively, Covid-19 has forced the microenterprises to quickly shift to alternative online platform to ensure the survival of their businesses. This study is considered to be important because the resilient and sustainability of these microenterprises would alert the well- being and economic status of their families in the post pandemic of Covid-19.
COVID-19 pandemic which have shaken the world in 2019 has changed people’s lives and the conduct of business. It has given a tremendous impact to the health sector as well as the business sector. In Malaysia, SMEs were most badly impacted by the pandemic, where more than 32,000 SMEs had to close their operations. Besides, COVID-19 also had dramatically slowed national growth to -6% by 2020. Thus, the objective of this study is to present a bibliometric analysis of publications from the Scopus database on the survival of SMEs to cope with the impact of economic crisis due to COVID-19. A bibliometric approach has been employed in this study to analyze the published studies on the survival of SMEs from 1998 to 2023. The journal articles are acquired from Scopus’ website. This study has collected and examined 201 relevant articles. This study has discovered the trend of publication from 1998 to 2023. Besides, this study illustrates that Sustainability Switzerland was the top journal with a total of 10 publications and South Africa was the highest producers of publications with 28 publications. Besides, the most cited articles are Naidoo V. (2010) with a total of 285 citations. Co-citation analysis of cited sources, co-occurrence of authors’ keywords and Network analysis of co-authorship countries were analyzed using VOSviewer. The study's findings could assist the policymakers in making suitable initiatives to improve SME’s sustainability in Malaysia. The research also gives insights for current and potential businesses on the available survival strategies to cope with economic crisis.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.