The Effectiveness of Adopting e-Learning during COVID-19 at Hashemite University

e-Learning is the utilization of the electronic technologies and the media to deliver the educational content to the learners, enabling them to interact actively with the content, the teachers, and their peers. Students' interaction can be either synchronous or asynchronous or a combination of both. One advantage of the e-learning is that learners can access the educational content at any place and time saving them effort, time, and cost. To deal with the unprecedented crisis of COVID-19 and the risk of virus transmission in the public, the vast majority of higher learning institutions globally were locked out and the delivery of the educational content moved from the traditional classroom teaching to the internet. The purpose of this study was to assess students' perceptions of the effectiveness of the e-learning during COVID-19 pandemic at the Hashemite University, Jordan. A total of 399 students completed the online survey of the study. Study results showed that students' overall evaluation of their elearning experiences were generally positive. However, students reported that they faced problems in the e-learning experiences of which most were related to technical issues (e.g., lack of a viable internet network, lack of laptops, etc.). Microsoft Teams was the platform most preferred by students for e-learning and the majority of students accessed the educational content using smart phones. Only gender and student's academic specialty had significant associations with their perceptions of the effectiveness of the e-learning.