Online Learning Engagement Among Malaysian Primary School Students During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 had completely changed the landscape of Malaysia’s education system. The pandemic had led to severe closure of schools and a shift to an online teaching and learning mode. In response to this, The Teaching and Learning at Home (PdPR) programme was introduced and implemented. In view of the circumstances, it was necessary to find out how Malaysian students were coping with this change and how effective was this new mode of teaching and learning. Exploring issues pertaining to the online learning engagement of primary school students is vital in addressing a gap not investigated before. This concern spurred the current study which was designed to explore Malaysian primary school students’ perceptions of their online learning engagement, focusing on behavioural, cognitive, and emotional engagement. Its relationship with student background characteristics, i.e. school types, gender, and levels of schooling was also examined. To this end, a questionnaire was administered online to 436 primary school students from various parts of Malaysia. The students were required to answer a four-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. A quantitative approach was used to analyse the data descriptively and inferentially. The inferential statistics tool used was a one-way ANOVA. The findings revealed that the students generally had a favourable view of their online learning engagement, however, there was a general preference for classroom learning. The main problems they faced were teachers and schools not providing the necessary materials and support and a lack of social interaction. The study contributed to a better understanding of Malaysian Primary school students’ online learning engagement during the current COVID-19 pandemic. It also suggests the need to come up with measures to address the issues concerned, such as, implementing more project-based learning and introducing Learning Management System (LMS) in schools.