A Study of Online Learning Motivation in the COVID-19 Pandemic Situation for Undergraduate Students at Shiraz University According to Their Gender and Field of Study

Abstract

The present study aims to determine the extent to which online learning (or e-learning) motivation during COVID-19 Pandemic for undergraduate students at Shiraz University in Shiraz, Iran. It also plans to compare students’ level of motivation for online learning, based on their gender and field of study. For these purposes, the researcher adopted a quantitative comparative research design, using a questionnaire which was developed and checked for internal consistency. The questionnaire was administered on 200 undergraduate students of civil engineering and psychology at Shiraz University. After the collected data were split by gender and field of study two independent samples t-tests were conducted to assess the significance of the results and to determine if there was a significant difference in their online learning motivation among the resulting groups for each independent variable. The research findings showed that undergraduate students are rather highly motivated to online learning regardless of their gender or field of study. No significant difference in online learning motivation between male and female university students was derived from the data analysis. However, in relation to field of study, it was found that the overall online learning motivation for civil engineering students was significantly higher than psychology students.