A Survey of The Knowledge, Attitudes and Motivations of Tawau Sabah Polytechnic Students Towards Online Education in 2024, Post-Covid-19 Pandemic and Its Comparison in 2020, During the Pandemic

Abstract

In 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic changed and shaped the entire world; in terms of economy including education. Five years have passed, the world is back to normal. Even so, the rest of the pandemic has a big impact on everyone. Now, the education system is no longer clumsy with the conference technology that was once pioneered by the conglomerates. Software and applications are growing more and more and offer free services and even compete with manufacturing companies to provide the best service quality. This study in 2024 is actually a series of previous studies by researcher in 2020 when the pandemic was ongoing. This study aims to look at three levels of measurement involving the soft skills of Tawau Sabah Polytechnic students, namely their knowledge, attitude and motivation towards online education during the post-pandemic period. A comparison is made between 2020 and the current year to see the average difference of the three measurement levels; whether it makes a significant difference or not. 106 respondents among students from semester two to semester four, were given a questionnaire using an online application, Google Form, which proved to be easy to disseminate and create more efficient data analysis. In summary, it was found that the results of this year's study showed that the mean average for knowledge was high, while attitude and motivation were moderate. This data is also the same as the results of the study in 2020. This proves that the respondents that are the students show their three levels of soft skills towards online education is something that is no longer new, unique or strange. The use of technology for their generation has become a habit. No matter how technology develops, even viruses can mutate, and we don't know what the future holds. This study is important for the management of Sabah Polytechnic Tawau and other educational institutions to see the need and importance of online education along with the provision of appropriate infrastructure for its current and future students in line with the Digital Education Policy introduced by the Government of  Malaysia Madani.