Predicting behavioural intention among graduate students in emergency remote teaching: evidence from a transition country

Emergency remote teaching (ERT) is a new concept that describes the context in which instructional delivery is switched entirely online due to crisis circumstances. Recent research in such a context has been focused either on exploring the unique learning environment and enabling factors or on instructors’ intended behavior, with few studies exploring the students’ perspective. This study aims to contribute to the literature on technology-mediated teaching and learning by deepening the knowledge of the factors determining students’ behavioral intentions (BI) in ERT settings, using a survey of 487 graduate students attending public and non-public universities in Albania conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was employed to explore the chain relationship between ease of use (EASYUSE), expected efficiency (EE), attitudes (ATT), and BI. We expand the TAM model and increase its explanatory power by introducing new variables, such as co-presence (CP), and emergent variables, such as lack of learning materials and time constraints. Variance-based partial least squares techniques were used to validate our conceptual model. As hypothesized, EE and EASYUSE have a direct, positive effect on BI and an indirect effect via ATT. CP does not influence the BI directly but only indirectly via ATT and EE. Finally, the lack of learning materials is shown to negatively affect EE. While some of the findings have limited generalizability the specific research setting provides a unique opportunity to investigate the critical role of interactive teaching methods and learning barriers on students’ intentions and ATT. The fresh insights gained from the extended TAM model have important implications concerning the effective and systematic use of online modalities in similar settings.