Investigating students’ preferences between online learning and face-to-face learning: a study from UiTM Seremban Campus / Ida Haryanti Mohd Noor

COVID-19, short for "Coronavirus Disease 2019," has rapidly spread across the globe, resulting in a global pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has a profound impact on social, economic and health worldwide including in the field of education. Educational institutions including colleges and universities have faced significant disruptions and challenges due to the pandemic. Many higher education institutions temporarily closed their campuses, disrupting traditional classroom-based learning, which relied heavily on face-to-face interactions to provide educational information. With this closure, there has been a rapid shift towards remote learning or online education to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff. Lecturers have adopted various online platforms and virtual learning tools to deliver lectures, facilitate discussions and conduct assessments. This transition presented various challenges including digital inequality, lack of interaction, heavy workloads and distractions at home. The objectives of this study are to investigate students’ preferences between two methods of learning which are online learning and face-to-face learning. It will also examine the students’ perspective relating to the advantages and disadvantages of online learning as compared to face-to-face learning. Additionally, the study also seeks to identify the students’ learning effort during online learning session. The study found that the majority of the students preferred online learning as their learning method due to its advantages in terms of flexibility and accessibility. Nonetheless, there are some drawbacks to online learning for students such as technical difficulties with internet connection and a lack of engagement. Furthermore, the efforts made by students in the learning process during an online session are equal to those made during face-to-face learning. Thus, the findings of this study could help educational institutions, lecturers and related party to improve their teaching and learning method in delivering educational contents by taking into consideration various factors including students’ preferences.