Student Use of E-Learning During the Coronavirus Pandemic: An Extension of UTAUT to Trust and Perceived Risk

Introduction

The coronavirus disease (COVID‑19) is an ongoing and unprecedented pandemic that emerged at the end of 2019, bringing with it a seismic shift in people’s daily lives worldwide. The pandemic has spread to 220 countries and territories, infecting more than182 million people with 3.9 million deaths reported globally (World Health Organization, 2021). This pandemic is far more than a health crisis as it has been affecting the core of society, economies, and educational systems. Educational institutions have been temporarily closed in many countries in response to the spread of the disease and in an attempt to contain it. These closures have affected over 60% of the world's student population (UNESCO, 2020). Thus, the pandemic has become a major threat to global education, inducing a colossal educational crisis, which has caused more than 1.6 billion students to drop out of educational institutions in 161 countries, representing nearly 80% of enrolment in schools worldwide (World Bank, 2020).

As has been the case worldwide, Saudi Arabia has declared and enforced a nationwide economic and educational lockdown as a preventive measure to impede the spread of the virus. Schools and universities have been classified as candidates for the proliferation of the virus, thereby necessitating all educational institutions to suspend in-person education activities and implement distance learning through online platforms. As normal life grinds to a halt across the country, educators have kept working from home using a variety of communication tools and platforms, such as email, Blackboard, Zoom, and Google educational solutions. They have been trying to hold on to their jobs while often overwhelmed by teaching children in this environment. Evidently, the situation has engendered several challenges for colleges and universities, forcing them to integrate some form of online education into their coursework, move major parts of their programs online, and accelerate the use of existing and new technologies and tools. This sudden shift to some type of online learning mode has been particularly complicated for vocationally focused colleges and universities, as the majority of the materials they deliver are hands-on and require physical attention and instruction. However, not only has the pandemic had an untoward effect on the educational system and learning quality, but it has impacted the lifestyle of instructors, students, and their families as well. The perpetual question of whether electronic learning (e-learning)—compared with in-class instruction—delivers the same quality, if not better, has been difficult to answer because most online effectiveness studies have been marred by selection issues and other factors. Hence, scrutinizing the factors that result in e-learning acceptance by students is crucial, as it takes substantial investment to build e-learning infrastructure and resources (Ma & Yuen, 2011). Consequently, students’ refusal or unacceptance of new e-learning systems would reduce the universities’ return on investment (Zwain, 2019). The literature has also reported a variation among students in different countries regarding their adoption and acceptance of e-learning (Almaiah et al., 2016; Zwain, 2019; Eltahir, 2019). While the acceptance level has been low in Middle Eastern Arab universities (Matar et al., 2011), it has been recorded to be high in universities in the Western world (Decman, 2015).

Grounded mainly on Venkatesh et al.’s (2003) model of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), a hybrid theoretical model was developed by modifying the original UTAUT model to incorporate trust (TRT) and perceived risk (RSK)—two security-related constructs—to investigate the intentions of Saudi Arabia university students to actually use e-learning platforms during the pandemic. The contribution of this study to the literature is the empirical testing of the proposed research model as well as the investigation and examination of:

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  Factors affecting the behavioral intention (BIT) of Saudi Arabian students to use e-learning tools and techniques.

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  The various e-learning tools and techniques and their utilization by Saudi Arabian students during the pandemic.

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  Whether effort expectancy (EEX), performance expectancy (PEX), social influence (SIF), facilitating conditions (FCD), TRT, and RSK predict and moderate students’ BIT to use e-learning.

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  The impact of students’ BIT on the use of e-learning tools and techniques.