Online Learning Satisfaction: A Comparative Study on Malaysian and Indonesian Students

Introduction

To fulfil the need for education, the rapid transfer of knowledge within society has been necessitated by the immense technological development of the present day. This is a result of the rise of online learning as an adjunct teaching and learning tool for educators around the world. As teaching and learning are increasingly distributed over many internet-based platforms, online platforms have become a significant impetus for people to become more adaptable to the rapid shift in global education (Koksal, 2020). With global investments in education technology exceeding $18.66 billion in 2019, the adoption of education technology has increased dramatically. The niche market for language apps, virtual tutoring, video conferencing tools, and online learning software is anticipated to produce US$350 billion by 2025 (Li & Lalani, 2020).

As the Covid-19 pandemic forced schools worldwide to close for physical interactions, the rapid advancement of online learning became even more significant (Zhao et al., 2022). As a result, over 1.2 billion students in 186 countries were forced to leave their regular classrooms (Li & Lalani, 2020). Since then, all education providers have been compelled to integrate online learning as an alternative to blackboard-style learning. Online learning has evolved from a complementary medium to the primary mode of delivery for teaching and learning for education providers at all levels, including universities. Tertiary education educators and students were compelled to participate in synchronous and asynchronous activities on online platforms.

Committed to preserving its high quality for students while simultaneously learning from the challenges of adapting to new methods of teaching and learning, the current study aims to investigate the higher education students' preparedness, motivation, internet availability, technical support, and psychological support that influence their satisfaction with online learning in Malaysia and Indonesia. The subsequent section is a discussion of the literature review, followed by the research methodology, findings and discussion and conclusion of the study.