Factors Influencing Computing Students’ Readiness to Online Learning for Understanding Software Engineering Foundations in Saudi Arabia

The spread of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has enforced most universities/institutions over the world to transform their educational models (face-to-face and blended) bearing in mind the online educational environments as a temporary substitute. Consequently, all universities/institutions in Saudi Arabia have requested their students to continue the learning process using online environments. This transition has provided an opportunity to deeply investigate possible challenges as well as factors that influence the adoption of online learning as a future educational model for undergraduate students. This research measures the current undergraduate students’ readiness for online learning and investigates factors that influence their level of readiness. Firstly, the research proposes the adoption of a validated multidimensional instrument to measure under-graduate students’ readiness for online learning in different universities. Secondly, the research elaborates the findings by an in-depth study that highlights the main obstacles that hinder computing students’ readiness to learn Software Engineering (SE) foundations using online learning. The research adopts survey research to measure students’ readiness and analyzes the data to extract the readiness levels of different dimensions of the adopted instrument. Furthermore, interviews were conducted to specify the influential factors on computing students’ readiness levels regarding learning SE foundations. Results show that students’ readiness level for online learning is within the acceptable range while some improvements are needed. Furthermore, the study found that students’ cognition, willingness, ignorance, and the amount of assistant and help they receive play a significant role in the success/failure of the adoption of learning SE foundations through online environment.

@article{Alhubaishy2020,
  title     = {Factors Influencing Computing Students’ Readiness to Online Learning for Understanding Software Engineering Foundations in Saudi Arabia},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {11},
  number    = {12},
  year      = {2020},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Abdulaziz Alhubaishy},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2020.0111286},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2020.0111286}
}