| Due to the rapid widespread the COVID-19 virus,China was the first nation that adopted online learning as a necessary solution for learning delivery.No one can deny the important role that online learning played during the pandemic period but still,it carried a bunch of obstacles that went against the international students’ online resiliency,especially for those located outside China.This paper highlighted the main obstacles faced by overseas international students in their online learning,the factors that contributed to those obstacles,and proposed some countermeasures which need to be taken into consideration to help future international students in their online learning and resiliency building if the world encountered similar outbreak in the future.To conduct this research,an online survey was designed to figure out the students’ level of satisfaction toward the internal and the external factors of the resilience concept by using the ARS-30 scale for the intrinsic factors and other self-developed questions for the extrinsic ones.The collected data was 430 responses and 250 random responses were used to test normality,homogeneity,validity,and reliability in SPSS v.26.The normality test showed a value less than 0.05 in all the sub-scales which means that data is not normally distributed.So,a non-parametric test was used and the result showed that all the subscales retained the null hypothesis except the perseverance and the reflecting and adaptive helpseeking sub-scales due to random fluctuations in the data.The homogeneity test showed that all the sub-scales showed a value more than 0.05 except the school support sub-scale that’s why a non-parametric test was used and the results showed that this scale failed to reject the null hypothesis ad the differences are not statistically significant.For the validity test in both scales(internal and external factors),the p-value was more than 0.8 which means that the data is good and valid.Concerning the reliability,the results showed that the p-value in both scales equals0.000 which means that the data is reliable as well.The results part of this dissertation started with analyzing each sub-scale depending on the mean to know the degree of satisfaction,using a Sample t-test to compare the mean of the gender satisfaction,and then providing percentages of the differences.The first scale was“Perseverance”,in this scale most of the international students agreed toward being persevered(mean= 3.77 > 3.40)with a high degree of satisfaction in females(3.80 > 3.74 for males),and a percentage of 52.7% for females and 47.3% for males.The next scale named “Reflecting and Adaptive Help-Seeking”,the mean of this scale was 3.84 which is less than 4.20 and more than3.40,which means that students agreed toward the related statements with a higher rate from females(m= 3.92,53.4%)than males(m=3.75,46.6%).The last sub-scale in the ARS-30 scale is called “Negative Affect and Emotions”,this scale showed a mean of 2.45(1.80 < 2.45< 2.60)which statistically means that female students disagreed about the related statements with a higher rate(m=0.97,54.1%)than to males(m=2.54,45.9%).The self-developed questionnaire consists of 3 sub-scales.The first one is titled “Tutors Academic Guidance”,in this scale the mean was 3.77(3.40 ≥ 3.77 ≤ 4.20),which statistically means that students agreed toward receiving academic guidance during the outbreak with a higher rate of agreement from females(m=3.79,52.6%)compared to males(m=3.75,47.4%).The next scale is named “School Support”,this sub-scale showed a mean of 2.43,which is less than the upper limit of the disagreement’s level(2.60).So,this factor is related to the students’ disagreement on receiving support from their universities with a higher rate of dissatisfaction from females(m= 2.50,53.8%)compared to males(m=2.35,46.2%).The last sub-scale in this questionnaire is named“Family Support”,the mean of this scale equals 3.56(3.40 <3.56< 4.20)which means that students were satisfied with the family support and agreed on its related statements.In this scale,the rate of agreement of females was higher than males(3.61,53%≥ 3.50,47%).The results showed that international students faced several obstacles while adopting online learning during the COVID-19 outbreak.Those challenges also referred in other literature such as: anxiety and depression,stress,isolation,lack of Interaction,lack of motivation,and lack of social support.All these obstacles went against international students’ resiliency building while learning online.The findings of the dissertation showed that international students agreed toward being persevere,seeking help from others when needed,receiving help from tutors,and family while they disagreed on having negative emotions in the online learning and receiving support from their universities.The degree of satisfaction varied among female and male students in which females showed a higher rate of agreement than males in all the sub-scales.The reaching results were supported by previous researchers on the related topic and many studies revealed that female students tend to show more agreement than males in the related sub-scales. |
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