ONLINE LEARNING DURING COVID-19: THE IMPACT ON SATISFACTION AND COMMITMENT OF LEARNERS

Abstract

The deadly Covid virus has impacted education across the world to temporarily close the educational institutes and shift towards online learning methods (Dhawan, 2020). The educational system in Sri Lanka usually follows the traditional method of in-class learning. Due to the fast-spreading Covid-19 and the government rule imposed on social distancing, the universities across the country facilitated the online delivery of lectures through their learning management systems (Hayashi et al., 2020). Due to this shift, the learners faced several consequences regarding academics, accessibility, and lecturers' commitment. Referring to empirical studies, the study points out how those consequences impacted students' satisfaction and commitment worldwide. Limited empirical studies have been conducted to test the online learning efficiency with regards to learner satisfaction and commitment. Hence, the study aims to investigate whether there is a significant impact between those consequences and students' satisfaction and commitment in the Sri Lankan context. The target population included undergraduates in state and non-state universities in Sri Lanka. The sample size was 384, and the method applied was purposive sampling. The Googleform questionnaire was distributed among the sample, and the results were analysed quantitatively using SPSS and AMOS software, following the multiple linear regression method. The results demonstrate that the academic issues, accessibility issues have a significant negative impact, and lecturer commitment has a significant positive impact on learner satisfaction, and learner satisfaction has a significant negative impact on the learner commitment, proving that learners are less satisfied and less committed to online learning. Considering the originality, this is one of the pioneer studies conducted to identify the impact of online learning on the satisfaction and commitment of Sri Lankan undergraduates during the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings would be favourable for the learners, lecturers, future researchers, universities, and other educational institutes in making solutions to enhance learner satisfaction and commitment.