Online Learning during Corona Virus Epidemic in Saudi Arabia: Students' Attitudes and Complications

Covid19 epidemic impacts all sides of life worldwide, and education is one of these sides that have been dramatically affected. During this epidemic, the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia obliged students to commence online learning from homes without conventional (face-to-face) education. These dramatic and sudden changes in the education system may affect the students and their inclination towards online classrooms. Thus, this study aimed to investigate students' attitudes towards using online learning and the challenges facing them during the coronavirus epidemic in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, it aimed to explore the gender differences regarding students' ICT competence and their attitudes towards using online learning. One thousand three hundred eighty-seven students (616 females and 771 males) from different school level (elementary to postgraduate) participated in the current study. The researchers employed two data collection instruments (questionnaire and semi-structured interviews) during this study. However, this paper only focused on the quantitative results. The outcomes of this study indicated that the participants showed high positive attitudes towards using online learning during the Covid19 period. The top-highest difficulties that faced students during online learning were the weakness of the internet connection, unavailability of good quality devices, unavailability of the internet connection for some students, and technical problems. Moreover, the findings indicated gender-related differences in students' ICT competence and their attitudes about using online learning. Keywords: Distance (online) learning/ (Covid19) coronavirus epidemic/ Students’ attitudes/ Difficulties when using technology/ Gender. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-17-03 Publication date:June 30th 2021