Readiness to Implement Digital Learning

Abstract

WHO announced the Covid-19 as Global Pandemic in early 2020? This condition immediately urged universities to migrate their instructional process to fully online learning as a result of the suggestion of physical distancing. This situation indeed results in the shock of the culture of learning and teaching. Following its shock, of course, questions arise related to the readiness of higher education in implementing fully online learning. This study aims to measure the readiness of lecturers and students of the Faculty of Economics, Universitas Negeri Medan (Unimed), in implementing digital learning. This study investigates the readiness from the normative belief perspectives. Normative belief is one of the critical antecedents of behavioral intention, as explained in The Theory of Planned Behavior [1]. The respondents of this study were lecturers and students at the Faculty of Economics, Unimed. This study uses simple random sampling to select the sample. With the snowball technique, this study collected 226 responses. 85 respondents were a lecturer, and 141 was a student. Data collection was carried out with an electronic questionnaire designed with 5-Likert scales. This study examines the differences of responses between lecturers and students as well as between men and women to avoid response bias. The results of this study indicate that lecturers and students have firm beliefs regarding their readiness to migrate learning activities to the online platform. Likewise, the findings of this study also indicate nervousness in the migration. The results of this study provide challenges for learning researchers and Education technology to produce recommendations for learning models that are suitable for implementing quality learning on digital platforms. The same challenge is faced with universities and regulators to develop best practices in teaching practices and regulations that urge innovation in teaching practices.

Readiness, acceptance, and social presence in full online learning

“…In regard to this, Traxler (2007) suggests that higher education tends to have better readiness for IT integration in academic programs due to better availability of infrastructures and accessibility to knowledge. Further, Sagala, Hasibuan, et al (2021) similarly fi nd that the readiness of higher education teaching staff for online learning is quite adequate, despite a few technical problems during the early process of shifting to a new learning mode.…”

“…Various studies have reported the eff ectiveness of using IT in improving the quality of learning. Interestingly, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, IT mediation has become immensely dominant, as it completely replaces the full time face-to-face classroom meetings (Hardini, Setyarini, & Harto, 2021;Sagala, Hasibuan, & Suharianto, 2021;Siswanto, Kartanegara, & Chuan, 2021). Nevertheless, online learning remains a diff erent concept from the IT-integrated approach aimed to optimize learning.…”

“…Previous research fi ndings indicate that the attitude of educators in Indonesia is in fact quite open to accepting the demands of learning innovation through using IT (Budiyani & Sujarwo, 2020;Damayanti, Santyasa, & Sudiatmika, 2020;Fauziyah & Triyono, 2020;Sagala, Zainal et al, 2017;Sagala, Hasibuan, 2021). At the higher education level, the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia published the Guidelines for the Implementation of Learning in the Even Semester of 2020 in Higher Education (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2020).…”

“…Further, the lecturers' readiness to integrate IT in their academic activities becomes key to the readiness and success of higher education institutions in online learning (Lu & Price, 2018;Petko, Prasse, & Cantieni, 2018). Meanwhile, the lecturers' belief in their personal capabilities (personal belief) is also instrumental in their readiness for online learning (Lu & Price, 2018;Petko et al, 2018;Sagala, Hasibuan et al, 2021). In this case, personal belief serves as the indicator of cognitive belief of IT users personally and the proxy of lecturer readiness in online learning (Cheon, Lee, Crooks, & Song, 2012).…”

“…There is a pedagogical aspect that is dynamic and constantly developing in the online learning implementation, especially the issue of social presence as mentioned in the early paragraphs. This condition requires the instructor's personal belief that they are ready to implement online learning (Sagala, Hasibuan et al, 2021). Therefore, personal belief is believed to be an important antecedent in forming the acceptance of online learning implementation which further impacts the sustainability of social presence in online learning.…”