Assessment of Motivation to Learn English Via Online Among University Undergraduates: An Online Survey

Abstract

Online education has become the leading form of teaching in the current world with the COVID-19 pandemic, and e-learner motivation has been identified as the essential component in achieving its success. This online survey aimed to assess the motivation to learn English online among law, computing and social sciences undergraduates in Sri Lanka. The study was conducted as a descriptive cross-sectional study. Seven-dimensional, 38-item motivation to learn online questionnaire (MLOQ) was used to gather data. Descriptive statistics, Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H test were used to analyze data in SPSS 23.0. The stream ’Humanities and Social Sciences’ had the highest mean scores in four dimensions out of seven. A significant mean difference was found in dimension’ Control of Learning Beliefs’ between the two genders (p<0.05). Few other dimensions had significant mean differences in academic streams (p<0.05). Further, experimental research is recommended to evaluate the associative factors towards motivation to learn online.