Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the world as we know it. The changes have stricken all areas of social life – from micro to macro perspective; from conversation to education. Consequences within our societal sphere inflict and influence each-other crosswise both from top-down to bottom –up aspect, leaving no space intact. Due to the changing circumstances higher education institutions (HEIs) have adopted crisis management policies organizing their teaching and learning activities in e-education online mode.

In order to understand students’ attitudes towards this newly introduced e-educational model aiming to make adaptive improvements and changes in the system, the questionnaire was distributed among Croatian HEI students. The research itself has been conducted in the period from September – November 2020 aiming to grasp different cultural background influencing student attitudes towards e-learning perception.

The study encompassed 706 Croatian students. Factor analysis has been used to group statements of two different group types of questions (Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions & e-learning choices and preferences) followed by the correspondence analysis aiming to find relationships between two groups of variables in a low-dimensional space. Results point out that e-learning attributes role of device and content, compatibility and e-leaning experience are associated with nurturing, power distance and collectivism cultural dimensions. On the upper left part of the spatial map association between long term orientation and user friendliness can be found as well as the association between e-learning utility and uncertainty avoidance on the lower right spatial map part.

The results obtained have confirmed Croatian students score high on uncertainty avoidance implying intolerance for uncertainties and high need for rules and structure explaining e-learning choices association attributes like compatibility, user-friendliness and utility.

Keywords:

Culturalization, e-learning, COVID-19 pandemic.