Investigating the Acceptance of Pre-University Students on the Use of Microsoft Teams Application for Online Learning Platforms During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic forced Malaysian Higher Education Institutes to pursue online and distance learning. This study aimed to gain insight into the pre-university students’ acceptance and intention to use the Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) application for online learning platforms during the pandemic. This group of students was chosen because they had just finished high school. The transition from the school system to the university system with online learning will pose many difficulties. The theoretical framework for this study was developed using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with additional facilitating conditions and computer self-efficacy as the external elements. The participants were 180 pre-university students from Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of Information Technology who had experience using MS Teams during their first semester. With SPSS, the predictive factors on the acceptance of students toward online learning have been explained. The findings also indicate that the proposed TAM-based scale successfully explained the factors predicting intention to use MS Teams during the pandemic. The findings assist researchers and practitioners in developing a more comprehensive view of pre-university students’ acceptance and intention to use MS Teams. Finally, several recommendations have been made, including the implications and limitations of the study at the end of this paper to reference future research.