Factors Influencing Freshmen’s Acceptance of Online Learning: A Study at Hanoi University of Industry

The sudden outbreak of Covid-19 has challenged Vietnamese educational systems, forcing educational institutions across the nation, especially universities and colleges, to shift to an online mode of teaching and learning. What has concerned Vietnamese educators and policymakers is the quality of these online teaching and learning activities. Blayone (2018), Cigdem and Ozturk (2016) as well as Wei and Chou (2020) shared the belief that the acceptance of students decided the success of online teaching and learning. However, only a little research has been done so far on Vietnamese students' acceptance of online learning. Therefore, this quantitative study focuses on determining factors influencing freshmen's acceptance of online learning at Hanoi University of Industry, thus identifying their acceptance level of online learning. Data was collected by a survey with the use of random sampling and the participation of language-majored students from the Hanoi University of Industry. The collected data was quantitatively processed with the employment of SPSS. The results indicate that freshmen’s acceptance of online learning is affected by four main factors, including performance expectancy, effort expectancy, attitude, and technological competencies. With respect to the research findings, several implications are suggested for effective online learning and teaching in Vietnam.