University Students' satisfaction with teaching activities carried out through the online learning process: a study based on department of Islamic studies of the south eastern university of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Technological advancement has resulted various improvements in many fields Among them, the improvements in teaching methods are very important. Because of this, various alternative methods are used instead of traditional teaching methods. However, it is necessary to have evaluations of their performance. Due to the fear of Coronavirus pandemic in the world, the learning activities of higher education in Sri Lanka are being carried out temporarily through online. Although university students may have some experience with part-time online classes, it can be challenging to fully integrate their learning activities via online. Therefore, with the aim of assessing the satisfaction of university students with online teaching activities and identifying the problems they face, the study was conducted with third year students of Department of Islamic Studies at South Eastern University of Sri Lanka. For this study, which was carried out using quantitative research method, questionnaire was obtained as primary data from 152 of the 240 students studying in the year through Google Forms, analyzed through MS Excel and the results were described. Secondary data such as books, research and journal articles and web articles were used to obtain its theoretical structure. At the end of the Study, it was found that most of the Students use their smartphone for online learning because they do not have computer facilities and they were not satisfied with the online learning system. It is observed that various factors such as increased internet usage cost, internet speed slowdown of the students and the lecturers, conducting lectures on weekends and non-university lecture hours, difficulty in obtaining handouts for the subjects and lack of student-student interaction had caused negative impact on students' satisfaction with online learning. Hence, the conclusion of the study was that the students of higher education who were studied were not in a satisfactory mood regarding online learning. The various problems they face in pursuing education through this system are the main reasons why they do not express their satisfaction. By resolving such problems, the effectiveness of online learning can be further enhanced, and some positive changes may be brought in the satisfaction of the students in this system.