International Students’ Experience and Perception towards UTM Campus Management on COVID-19

Abstract

In response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, many scholars have studied on pedagogies, methods of effective online learning and the well-being of educators and students. However, very few works have specifically focused on non-local students of a particular institution, given that they were already distanced from their home country. This paper takes interest in the mentioned scope, within the period of Movement Control Order (MCO) in Malaysia. The objectives are, to explore international students' perception on COVID-19 management by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), their experience of online learning during the MCO, and the correlation between the two with students' satisfaction in overall learning experience. The study adopts mixed method of qualitative and quantitative analysis. A set of questionnaires were distributed to 150 international students of UTM. The questions encompass students' satisfactory towards online learning experience, university's response when assistance is required, and students' personal well-being during the MCO. The results were analyzed by using SPSS, where the percentage of overall international students' perception is 64.03%, which categorizes as 'very good' in relative to the test value. The percentage for experience of the international students during MCO is 69.59% which also categorizes as 'very good'. The two mentioned variables show a strongly positive correlation with the satisfaction of the students in overall learning experience, which was obtained by the statistic method of bivariate correlation. This study concludes that the experience and perception shown by UTM's international students during MCO are relatively positive and thus, contributes to a conducive and positive online learning atmosphere.