The technological disruption in educational learning among university undergraduate students : a case study of Covid-19

Abstract

This thematic paper research investigates the recent situation at the university online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes the impact of online learning as universities moved away from the traditional face-to-face classroom. At the onset of COVID-19, many people believed that during COVID-19, online learning will be effective and feasible, however, it turned out to be significantly more complicated than expected. The learning ability and productivity of the learners sank (D. Hobbs & Hawkins, 2020). Therefore, the objective of this research is to identify the dimensions that block and lead to better learning results of online learning and to suggest implications of online learning for the educational industry in Thailand to apply in the future based on learners' perspectives. This research utilizes exploratory grounded theory methodology and abductive theory building. The research discovered 4 key areas of importance: the importance of sociality, the dramatic change in the teachers' interactional positions, the importance of understanding learning sociomateriality, and finally the importance of materialization of the learning practices. The thematic paper importantly calls for a rethinking of the very organization of the classroom and new ways of organizing teamwork as the key to success in future online learning. IMPLICATION OF THESIS. Even though this research showed several important data and issues of online learning from university students' perspectives, the data cannot prove all since this research is not a generalization for all the educational level and only collected the data from the Mahidol University International College. Furthermore, the practical solution to tackle the problems should be explored, so more researches are needed to discover how the teacher should organize the class and what does it mean to create a classroom.