A Three-Year Analysis of Engineering Students’ Readiness for Remote Learning and Its Relevance to COVID-19

Abstract

UNESCO is concerned about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on 1.5 billion learners worldwide. Future movers and shakers of our world are losing their valuable time due to the disruptions caused by this pandemic. Cannot they continue their learning activities from wherever they are? Technology provides teachers and students with several means to access a variety of educational resources. There has also been considerable growth in the adoption of technology within educational institutions in recent years. The world is standing on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution, which is based on information and communication technologies. In keeping with this modern trend, data collection was done through the distribution of an online questionnaire among first-year undergraduates of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Moratuwa (UoM) in Sri Lanka during 2017, 2018 and 2019. When preparing the online questionnaire, questions were taken from the Kirkwood & Price TEL Handbook. Results indicated that all the respondents were computer literate and of them, 80% owned computers at home. Therefore, higher educational institutions can arrange to take advantage of these capabilities to enhance the students’ learning by encouraging them to adopt collaborative learning methods. Further, this study shows that more than 95% of them access the Internet by using a smartphone, and as such, higher education institutions can arrange to exploit mobile technologies for engineering education, thereby delivering the maximum benefits to students. Based on the findings of this study, it does make sense to conclude that adopting meaningful technological interventions could result in significant and positive changes in the teaching and learning practices at UoM.