Students' entrepreneurial intention: Comparison between synchronous and asynchronous online learning modes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many higher education institutions (HEIs) to implement online learning. Various courses including entrepreneurship were conducted by using online methods, such as synchronous and asynchronous. However, the achievement of course outcomes through these two methods has yet to be examined. As such, this paper presented the level of entrepreneurial intention exhibited by university students after they have completed an entrepreneurship course through online learning method. It further compared the entrepreneurial intention level between students who attended the course through synchronous and asynchronous online learning modes. The data were collected through questionnaire survey method, in which only quantitative data pertaining to students' background and entrepreneurial intention were gathered. A total of 315 students were randomly selected from a population of full-time students who have completed an entrepreneurship course in a local university. They were required to respond to an online self-administered questionnaire. Informed consent was obtained prior to the process of data collection and responses were treated anonymously. As for data analysis, descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed. Specifically, mean and standard deviation were used to determine the level of entrepreneurial intention. Internal consistency was used to confirm the reliability of data. While independent sample t-test was carried out to compare the entrepreneurial intention level between students from synchronous and asynchronous learning modes. The data demonstrated that differences were found in entrepreneurial intention between the two groups of students. Therefore, it could be concluded that synchronous and asynchronous modes yielded different level of entrepreneurial intention among students. This paper provided new insight on online learning for entrepreneurship course, especially in the COVID-19 pandemic period in which most courses were conducted online. It was also useful for HEIs to assess the effectiveness of online learning in delivering entrepreneurship course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]