IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE UNIVERSITY EDUCATION SYSTEM IN JORDAN
Authors: Yassine Fatima Lahcen Yachou Ait , Maaitah Tamara Adel , Maaitah Dirar Abdelaziz , Al-Gasawneh Jassim Ahmad 
Published: April 2022

The rampant spread of COVID-19 effects spared none of the sectors, and this holds true for the education sector. In Jordan, the Ministry of Education and Culture has been disseminating information regarding the protocols that have to be followed during the pandemic, primarily motivating students to learn through online means. Recently declared to be a pandemic, COVID-19 is an acute respiratory illness caused by Coronavirus Sars-Cov-2, and its impact on the education systems worldwide is evident. Universities-provided training was also affected by the numerous challenges brought on by the pandemic. In this paper, the authors focused on how COVID-19 has caused the shift to the use of digital platform in the Jordanian universities. The outbreak of COVID-19 has generally affected education systems all over the globe, with efforts directed towards its containment leading to unscheduled schools’ closures in over 100 countries, and to over 1 billion learners out of school. This study is the first to examine the effect of COVID-19 on the education system in the context of Jordanian universities sector and develops a comprehensive online learning model. It also contributes to practice by identifying the factors that influence e-learning adoption and highlighting the significant relationships, all of which will assist students in the Jordan universities to summarize the students’ perceptions and needs. The study findings provide practical contributions in the form of guidelines to Jordanian universities involving stakeholders, policymakers, professionals and experts. These stakeholders can use the findings to improve their understanding of the variables, to assist in making wise decisions and enhancing the rate of online learning in the Jordanian universities. They also help the managers to develop the suitable websites and formulate effective strategies that can boost the use of e-learning among universities. The data was collected using structured questionnaires from 200 respondents comprising teachers, students, parents, and policymakers. The study used STATA/Regression analysis to analyze the collected data. The results demonstrated that COVID-19 negatively affects education in the form of learning disruptions and decreased access to education and research institutions, losses of job positions, all of which increased the students’ debts. The findings also showed that educators and students had to depend mainly on technology to continue learning online during the pandemic. In this regard, online education has been constantly hindered by several factors including poor infrastructures leading to issues in network, power, inaccessibility and unavailability of service and lack of digital skills on the part of the users. The study underlines the adverse COVID-19 effects on the realm of education and the technology adoption requirement in educational institutions, by educators and learners, enhancements of digital skills and more importantly, the highlighted current global trends and realities in the education field.