Abstract:
In times of COVID-19 pandemic, access to e-tools and online education platforms in higher
education institutions has proven very useful to facilitate the emergency switch to distance
learning. Several new ways of storing information emerged and libraries transformed accordingly
for the purpose of assisting their online users. The study was conducted at the Faculty of Nursing
to assess new undergraduates’ attitude towards online education (ATOE) and the attitude towards
the role of the library in online education (ATRLibOE). First-year nursing undergraduates were
purposively selected for the study, thus the sample size was 89. A self-administered Google
questionnaire was used to collect data. The collected data were analysed with Statistical Package
for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21. Majority of the students were female (n=62, 69.7%) and
most of the students were Sinhalese (n=77, 86.5%). More than half of the students (n=58, 65.2%)
reside in a rural area, and 87.6% (n=78) use Sinhala as their primary language. Majority of
subjects (n=48, 53.9%) use both laptops and mobile phones for their online education. 4G router
is the most common type of internet access used by majority of the respondents (n=44, 49.4%).
Thirty students (33.7%) have no internet access at their residences, and 21 students of them
reside in rural areas. The findings revealed that the undergraduates hold a negative attitude
towards the online education (M=2.26) as well as the role of the library in online education
(M=3.11). The attitude towards the online education was significantly different between male
and female groups (p<0.05). Positive correlations were significant among the variables of
ATOE and ATRLibOE (p<0.05). The findings imply that new undergraduates are less likely to
accept online education and the online services provided by the library. Hence, it is
recommended to conduct more awareness programmes and a qualitative study with the selected
group to identify and improve specific online learning needs in future.
