Applying the theory of diffusion of innovation to evaluate students’ acceptance of swimming courses online / Ahmad Fahim Zulkifli

This study is designed to determine students’ acceptance of swimming courses online using the Theory of Diffusion of Innovation (DOI). Specifically, this study is focusing on the perceptions and motivational factors among participants towards swimming courses online. Additionally, this study would also attempt to identify participants’ interest in adopting an alternative method to learning swimming based on the five categories of adopters (i.e., innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards). This intervention study involves both quantitative and qualitative approaches with one experimental group (i.e., 25 participants, mix-genders with an age range between 19-25 years old) comprise of undergraduate-level physical and health education (PHE) students at a local university in central peninsular Malaysia. The researcher has used questionnaires and open-ended questions as the instruments to evaluate the study intervention. Furthermore, the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) (version 28.0) was utilised to analyse the variables in this study. The open-ended questions were also included in the post-intervention questionnaire and analysed using the Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis approach and NVivo software (version 14.0) to gather qualitative data from this study. The majority of participants were initially receptive to the ideas but the interest seems to be declining due to various limitations such as poor feedback, lack of authentic learning, and limited resources to support learning. Results from this study will give us a better understanding of individuals’ perceptions and needs in developing online swimming courses to enhance meaningful learning, higher engagement and learning ownership of the contents among students.