UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA

AP224 - BACHELOR OF QUANTITY SURVEYING (HONS)

EWC661 - ENGLISH FOR REPORT WRITING

TITLE PROPOSAL
THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES FACED BY UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN MALAYSIA
DURING PANDEMIC

DATE SUBMISSION
12th November 2021

GROUP
AP2243C - GROUP 1

NAME STUDENT ID

NUR’IZZATI BINTI IZWAD IZARUDDIN 2020837488

FARIDUDDIN AMIN BIN FAIZAL AMRI 2020628502

SITI KHADIJAH BINTI JEFRY 2020898014

WAN IRFAN ADLY BIN WAN ZAIN 2020879212

PREPARED FOR
MADAM NUR LIYANA BINTI JOHARI
 EWC661 - PROPOSAL REPORT
THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES FACED BY UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN MALAYSIA
DURING PANDEMIC

1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

By early 2020, CoronaVirus(SARS-Cov-2) named Covid-19 has begun to spread throughout

Malaysia (Nabil Hassan Al-Kumaim et.al., 2021). Most people who are infected with the
Covid-19 virus will develop respiratory illness from mild to moderate and can recover without
any medical treatment. But, some people will experience very severe pain and need special
medical treatment. The elderly and those who are suffering from health problems such as
cancer, diabetes or chronic disease are more likely to develop serious illnesses. In fact,
anyone infected with this virus and becoming very severely ill can die regardless of age
(World Health Organization, 2020). The pandemic of Covid-19 had forced the majority of
people in Malaysia to change their daily routine by changing the routine of outdoor activities
to indoor activities and face-to-face activities is strictly prohibited.

All the educational institutions were closed on 18th March 2020 by the Ministry of Education
when the government enforced the Movement Control Over (MCO) following the outbreak
(Nabil Hassan Al-Kumaim et.al., 2021). Given that online learning is no longer a new thing
and has been implemented by university students in the 1990s for some students who are
from the online distance learning movement or it is called Long Distance Learning (Prof. Dr.
Abdul Karim Alias, 2020). The government decided to continue the learning and education
by using the Online Learning Distance (ODL) known as E-Learning as an educational
emergency survival tool (Nabil Hassan Al-Kumaim et.al., 2021). Therefore, online learning is
no longer an option (Danial Rahman & Prof. Dr. Abdul Karim Alias, 2020) but it is a
mandatory requirement for university students.

According to the Online Learning Distance (ODL) that is being used by the university
students at present, the research found that there are several arguments and challenges
faced by the student even though the online learning method has reduced cases of Covid-19
infection against the education sector. The effectiveness of online learning has yet to be
determined (C. Y. Jie & N. Mat Ali, 2021) but some researchers found that the online
learning method gives a negative impact to the university students. However, the online
learning method has always been updated to be a simple system and wants to give a
positive impact to the university students especially in the era of The Fourth Industrial
Revolution (IR 4.0) which requires digital application and systems. Then, the pandemic of
Covid-19 has questioned whether the universities will embrace the Online Learning Distance
(ODL) or E-Learning in such a significant way to make the students accept it and give
positive results. In this regard, this report also highlights the educational challenges faced
by university students in Malaysia when hit by the Covid-19 virus disaster. Therefore, this
report ends with the recommendations for the future study.

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1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT

Since Covid-19 appeared, online distance learning has been introduced and
Malaysia is one of the countries that use this innovative learning and teaching techniques.
However, there are some problems faced by university students that implies this method.
The following research questions have encourage the researchers to conduct a study on this
problem:

- Why does the number of students absent increase?

- What is it that makes the result of the final examination decrease?
- Is the communication skills among the students getting bad?
- Why does the stress level among the students increase?

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to determine the challenges faced by university students
in Malaysia during pandemic. This study propose several research objectives to be attained
as follow:

(a) To identify problems faced by students during pandemic

(b) To investigate the students acceptance in online education
(c) To determine the implications of online distance learning towards students

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The findings of this study will benefit students of higher learning institutions in general in
several ways. Firstly, it can help them to overcome the challenges in online distance learning
during a pandemic by suggesting a few solutions to the problems encountered by the
students. These findings will also provide valuable information to not only the students but
also the institutions on how to improve the way of online education. Therefore, the students
could act accordingly and cope well with the new norm of learning once they have identified
the new methods of online education.

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1.5 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

In general, the snowball effect method is very easy to implement because it only requires a
few questions related to the topic of study and sent to a small group of students involved.
From that small group, the questions will continue to be disseminated to their friends or
anyone related to the topic.Through this snowball effect technique, a satisfactory number of
responses were obtained but it is quite difficult to analyze the feedback received. This is
because a large number of respondents can make it difficult to extract too much data while a
small number of respondents interfere in obtaining data saturation.

1.6 PREVIOUS STUDIES

Since regular face – to - face classes were not allowed during the COVID - 19 pandemic ,
learning through online was the only way to resume delayed learning. In practice .
Researchers in the field of education divide online learning into two main methods namely in
real time and also outside real time . The process of presenting information in real time
requires a collaborative response between instructors and students . Therefore , real - time
education requires a high reliance on a strong internet connection , involving some of the
hardware and software needed to help students and educators in using audio and video
when communicating . Meanwhile , in real - time outdoor education , this education does not
require participation from students as well as instructors in real – time . This allows the study
time to be more flexible with when the instructor only needs to provide teaching materials
with students can access the teaching materials at any time . For some students , online
learning in real time may be better than outside real time because it gives time for students
to scan and analyze the knowledge they receive while in learning .

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2.0 METHODOLOGY

This study will be conducted in Malaysia and the subjects will be 100 students who currently
engage in an online distance learning in higher learning institutions all over Malaysia. In this
study, students are required to complete a questionnaire based on Markova, Glazkova and
Zaborova’s (2017) Quality Issues of Online Distance Learning questionnaire. Areas covered
in the questionnaire will include the challenges faced by students in online learning during
pandemic, students’ acceptance and satisfaction with online learning, its effectiveness as
well as the implications of online learning towards students. The questionnaire will be
distributed online and has a total of 10 questions which consists of open-ended questions
and questions with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1= strongly disagree to 5= strongly
agree. According to Ng (2006), an ‘open-ended’ question allows the respondent to specify
and express their opinion freely as they are not bound by the options given whereas Likert
scale is a commonly used method in questionnaire thus it provides a measure of strength for
a particular attitude or belief. The collected data from the questionnaire will be thoroughly
analyzed and organized in accordance with their respective areas. This study will be
conducted between November, 2021 and December, 2021.

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