Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the online learning behaviors of university students in Taiwan

Prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, due to the rarity of pandemics in recent centuries, suitable conditions did not exist in educational institutions for the implementation of asynchronous distance teaching. No empirical studies have been conducted on whether the considerable environmental changes caused by COVID-19 have affected students’ online learning behaviors. Therefore, this study collected information on students’ online learning behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic and other periods to examine whether pandemic-caused environmental changes affected students’ online learning behaviors. This study focuses on the 60-day transmission after the beginning of the second semester of the 2019 academic year. The data source was from a comparative assessment between the pandemic group (331 students) and the control group (101 students). The Spearman Rank Correlation Test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used as our statistical methods. This paper presents preliminary results on how COVID-19 has affected students’ online learning behaviors and proposes asynchronous online learning as a method for maintaining university students’ learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.