An application of fuzzy ANP in evaluating stress factors among university's students during online distance learning

Abstract

The outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has bring so many impacts on various aspects including education. Nearly two years into the pandemic, close to half of the world's students, including Malaysia, are still affected by partial or full closures of educational institution. In spite of this, to ensure the continuity of learning, one of the initiatives taken by our government is introducing online distance learning (ODL) as the new platforms of learning. However, undeniably, ODL is so stressful and this situation is obviously non-pleasant, especially for the long-term development of the students. Therefore, a research to find out the most influential factors, which contribute to these stresses has been conducted. In this research, a decision-making tool known as the Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) has been applied. Five main factors which are time management, environment of studies, resources, family and lecturer's concerns, with additional of twenty-one sub-factors were studied. The percentage value of each factor was calculated using the FANP, which produced the rank for each factor. Results shows that, environment of study dominates the ranks, followed by time management, lecturer's concern, resources and the last one is family's concern.