Measuring the Impact of Students’ Attitude towards Adoption of Online Classes during COVID 19: Integrating UTAUT Model with Perceived Cost

Abstract

The impact of COVID 19 has changed the education system forever. The COVID 19 has resulted in schools and universities shut all across the world. The students from every corner of the globe are now out of their classrooms, as a result the education and classroom teaching has changed dramatically, with the unique rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken distantly and on online platforms. Therefore, the main aim of conducting this study is to examine core factors affecting the University students’ attitude towards adoption of online classes.  The study is based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model (UTAUT) explaining the relationship of students' attitude towards online classes. Along with the constructs of UTAUT model (Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence and Facilitating Conditions) the items of Perceived Cost are also included. Online questionnaires were administered to 430 Under Graduate students at GLA University, Mathura(India). Multiple Regression technique was applied and the results suggested that Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy and Facilitating Conditions have a strong and significant impact where as Social Influence showed weak but significant impact on Behavioural Intention towards adoption of online classes. Perceived Cost was found insignificant. The variance explained by extended UTAUT model on Behavioural Intention towards adoption of online classes is 62.3 %.