COVID-19 and First Year Saint Mary’s University Students’ Perception and Satisfaction of Online Learning: A Phenomenological FGD Study

Abstract

COVID-19 collapsed the entire education system of the world. Ethiopia was no exception. Ethiopian universities, which are hubs of social gatherings and interactions, are fertile grounds for the spread of the virus; so they were closed like other institutions. The virus affected and continues to affect every part of human life in an unprecedented manner. Thus, university students, instructors and administrators became frustrated during the state of emergency at national level. In the midst of such frustration and fear, Saint Mary’s university changed its teaching learning process to online system by introducing Learning Management System (LMS). It gave face to face and video assisted training to instructors and students, respectively on how to use the platform. It was not an easy task. Ethiopia does not have well developed IT, and the quality of internet connection is poor. It is costly for students to pursue their study online. Besides, both instructors and students were not familiar to online platform. Despite the above problems, Saint Mary’s succeeded in handling the online teaching learning process for a semester. However, online learning has its own negative impact on the quality of education, mode of assessment, students’ achievement, level of understanding and feelings. Hence, this study was conducted to know the perception and satisfaction of Saint Mary’s students’ online learning. The focus of the study was to know the shared understanding of the group of students who learnt for a semester online, so the researcher used phenomenology design. The study used Focus Group Discussion (FGD) to gather data, organizing four groups of Accounting and Management students. In a group there were ten individuals. The discussion for each group took one and half hours. The discussion guide had thirteen open ended questions, focusing on students’ technology access and competency, satisfaction and quality of online courses and the impact of online learning on students’ emotional reactions and CGPA. Data were gathered through audio-tape and note taking methods. The findings were presented using narrative forms after identifying themes and categories. Respondents reported that they had access to smart phones and in few cases to laptops. And it was not difficult to learn through LMS. Students felt that the materials maintained by and large reasonable quality. Of course, some of the modules were bulky and the PPP slides were simply read from the modules. Despite these gaps, they were satisfied by the support of instructors and IT technicians. As expected, the unstable internet connection was an obstacle in uploading and down loading digital sources. Besides, video recording and audio recording teaching materials were costly to download for students. Participants also pointed out that learning through LMS was frustrating, and it affected their grade negatively. Pertinent suggestions were given in the form of implications.