Attitudes of EFL College Students of the University of Bisha towards eLearning

Abstract

This study aimed to find out the attitudes of the EFL College students of the University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia, towards eLearning after they have studied via this mode for almost two semesters. The study tried to answer four questions related to the participants' preferences of learning mode, the reasons for their preference, the problems with eLearning, and gender differences. Three null hypotheses related to the first three questions referred to above were postulated regarding gender differences if any. The study was mainly quantitative, in which data were collected by means of an online questionnaire administered to 148 EFL students (males and females) who were selected from the target population purposively. The SPSS program (version 20.0) was used to analyze the obtained data. We have found that the majority of participants had positive attitudes to eLearning, and they preferred it to the face-to-face classroom-based mode. Among the reasons they offered for their preference eLearning were their claims that they learned better than with face-to-face mode. In addition to flexibility, this mode saved time, cost and effort, since the students took activities and assessments at home, not at college. All three given hypotheses were accepted in that no gender difference was found.