Digital Transformation in Omani Higher Education: Assessing Student Adoption of Video Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced many fields, such as communication, commerce, and education, and pushed business entities to adopt innovative technologies to continue their business operations. Students need to do the same, so it is essential to understand their acceptance of these technologies to make them more usable for students. This paper employs the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) to identify the factors that influenced students’ acceptance and use of different online communication services as the primary tool for learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Six factors of UTAUT2 were used to measure the acceptance and use of video communication services at the Business College of the University of Technology and Applied Sciences. Two hundred students completed our online survey. The results demonstrated that social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, and habit affect behavioral intention positively, while performance expectancy and effort expectancy have no effect on behavioral intention.

Keywords

• university student
• online learning
• video communications services
• video conferencing tool
• UTAUT2
• structural equation modeling