Students’ Perception on Perceived benefits of Online Social Interaction for Learning during COVID -19 Pandemic

Abstract

Due to the pandemic crisis, most of the classroom settings for various fields of education moves to an online learning environment with which most of the students and course instructors were not very familiar. This would affect on how their interact among each other. This study aims to determine the perceived benefits of online social interaction in online learning. This study uses descriptive statistics on the data collected from the accounting final year students who were learning online due to the pandemic COVID-19. The main results show that perceived benefits of online social interaction between students and the course instructor are more important than from fellow online students even though they have been experienced with online learning. This suggests that students are aware continuing learning online is more essential during a pandemic crisis. The study will be helpful for instructors to be more innovative in formulating online learning activities that can foster social interaction with fellow students in the online class and analyze their pedagogical approach to improve effectiveness.