Lessons from Covid-19 Pandemic: Students’ Remote Learning Preferences in Malaysia

Abstract

The unexpectedly disruptive period is currently being reinforced with improved ideas and approaches to meet the needs of the pupils. With pandemic tiredness and digital exhaustion being highlighted, a better understanding of students' learning preferences must be updated regularly during unprecedented times. This mixed-method study seeks to identify and explore students’ preferences based on their remote learning experiences in a public university in Malaysia. An online survey was used to gather the data for the analysis to identify the students’ preferences over the platform used, assessment types, and schedule preferences. In addition, the students’ suggestions were gathered to get more insights from their perspectives. The results revealed students preferred Google Meet, WhatsApp Messenger, and Google Classroom as the medium for delivery. On the other hand, the students favoured shorter time spent and early time slots for online class scheduling. They also preferred quizzes as the most preferred type of assessment. Lastly, students suggested considering various factors to conduct successful remote learning namely empathy from the lecturer, student engagement, students’ readiness, students’ accessibility, content delivery, flexibility, and motivation. Conclusively, the implication of this study will contribute to the body of the literature on remote learning during a pandemic. Moreover, educators in tertiary education could utilise the students’ preferences as feedback to enhance their teaching and learning delivery during remote learning. This study was limited by the absence of lecturers’ preferences and suggestions. Future studies that investigate other perspectives could create a common ground between educators and learners.