Remote Learning Satisfaction during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of a Private Higher Education Institution in Malaysia

Abstract

Since 2020, the abrupt change of pedagogy in education amid the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in various challenges to both instructors and students. Higher education institutions (HEIs) shut down to contain the spread of the virus and shifted to online learning environments. Due to uncertainties, instructors and students were unprepared to cope with the future. Accordingly, instructors and students had to embrace new technologies quickly. This study examines how students perceived remote learning and their level of satisfaction. The data collected were from a Malaysian private HEI that involved 2,097 undergraduate students quantitatively, modeled on Ramsden’s (1991) Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ). The findings revealed the effects of six factors, i.e., instructors’ performance, students’ educational goals, the remote learning platform, study workload, online assessment, and learning support with a positive relationship on the overall satisfaction of remote learning. Policymakers, university administrators, and instructors could benefit from this study because it has demonstrated that several factors shape students’ satisfaction and affect their learning effectiveness in a remote learning environment.