Student's Online Learning Level during the Pandemic from the Perspective of Lecturers in a Teacher Training Institute

COVID-19 has been declared as a pandemic, an epidemic of a disease that spreads so widely across the world. Thus the Malaysian government has enforced the Movement Control Order (MCO) effective 18th March 2020 to curb the spread of the virus which includes the closure of all educational institutes. In order to ensure that all teaching and learning process (T&L) continue smoothly, the Teacher Education Institute or locally known as Institut Pendidikan Guru (IPG), has adopted the online T&L platforms to deliver lessons. This study was conducted to identify the IPG lecturers’ perspective of student teachers’ online learning level during the pandemic. It also explores the support required by the lecturers in implementing online T&L. This study used a quantitative approach which is supported by qualitative findings. The sample of the study were 806 IPG lecturers who were given questionnaires in the form of 5-point Likert Scale items and open ended questionnaires. The finding of the study indicated a high level of students' learning with mean scores exceeding 4.0 for all items where the highest mean was for the item ‘students attend online classes’ (mean=4.49, SD=0.77). The qualitative analysis of the open ended questions showed that IPG lecturers needed support in the form of internet access, guidance and training to utilise the online platforms for T&L, and technical and moral support to help increase students’ level learning. The results of the study implicate that both the lecturers and students need to strive harder to familiarise themselves with this new situation and to ensure that the online T&L runs smoothly and effectivel