A survey assessing the health science students' perception towards online learning at a Saudi Higher Education Institution during COVID-19 pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic pushed universities worldwide to shift from traditional to online learning, there is a need to capture the students' perception of online learning using an appropriate tool. Hence, this study explores the appropriateness of the online learning assessment survey (OLAS) model for assessing the students' perception of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. It included the undergraduate students (N = 2523) of the selected four health science colleges at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU) during 2020–2021. The data was obtained through OLAS using “Google Docs” from 728 students. The structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that each item showed a significant positive relationship with its respective variable of OLAS. The proposed OLAS model with five variables showed a good fit to assess the students' perception of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those variables enable the university policy planners to evaluate the students' perception of online learning during the pandemic, thereby supporting them in framing appropriate strategies to improve the quality and success of online learning. Further research is necessary to include all students of various programs offered at Saudi universities to generalize the outcomes. OLAS can include a global item assessing overall students' satisfaction with online learning, and the influence of OLAS variables on the overall students' satisfaction can be evaluated in future studies.