Preliminary Study on Students’ Readiness to Learn Online due to Covid-19 Pandemic at a Pre-University in Malaysia

Abstract

The outbreak of Covid-19 in the early year 2020 has changed the landscape of our educational system. The government of Malaysia announced the Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO), where no education institutions can practice face-to-face learning. Therefore, the management of the University of Malaya has decided that all students will learn online until 31 December 2020. Hence, this study is conducted to investigate the new students’ readiness on online learning before their classes start. The survey was conducted using Google Form focusing on four main aspects of readiness, that is the students’ background, hardware readiness, software readiness and behaviour. The behaviour aspect includes experiences, opinions, and expectation on online learning. 1126 students consisting of 546 (48.5%) males and 580 (51.5%) females participated in this survey. From the survey, we found that 1013 (90%) students are ready with online learning. However, action must be taken to assist the remaining 113 (10%) students. Alarmingly, 563 (50%) students have not experienced online learning before. 900 (80%) students claimed that they are ready to learn online. Hopefully, this research will provide some insights on the current situation and problems regarding online learning and its remedy can be prepared to overcome it. Keywords: Online Learning, E-Learning, Readiness Assessment, Covid-19, Coronavirus, Pandemic, Movement Control Order, Pre-University Students