PRESERVICE TEACHERS' ENGAGEMENT IN ONLINE LEARNING DURING AND AFTER THE COVID-19 CRISIS.

The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 forced South African Universities to switch to online learning, which has ramifications on equity and epistemic justice especially for preservice teachers based in rural areas. This paper used the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to study the factors that preservice teachers consider important for their continued use of online learning during and post Covid-19 crisis. The paper, immersed in the quantitative paradigm utilised a survey design, where a questionnaire was used to collect data from 154 preservice teachers in the commerce stream. The Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data. The results showed that the hypothesized model explained 76.7% of the variance in preservice teachers' continuous intention to use online learning during and post the Covid-19 pandemic. Statistically significant factors with influence on preservice teachers' continuous intention to use online learning were perceived resources, perceived usefulness, behavioural intention, and perceived enjoyment. The study recommends that universities should provide rural based students with resources to enable online learning while also providing as much learning material as possible on their learning management system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]