Abstract
The COVID 19 pandemic has affected the entire education system and brought a new phase in education through e-learning. This study is aimed to identify the challenges and advantages of online learning on academic performance in higher education institution. The objectives are to analyse the challenges and advantages of online learning that impact on academic performance of students. A sample of 524 responses from University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman is collected for the study. The only challenge variable that is proved to have significant impact on student performance is inadequate lecturer explanations during the online class. The advantage of online learning that affects academic performance is the time benefit and cost effectiveness of online classes. The challenge variables influence only 6% on their academic performance. Similarly, the advantages of online learning contribute only 5% on the academic performance of students. The study concluded with suitable recommendations to improve the academic performance.