The objectives of this mixed method study were to determine challenges that students faced in open distance learning (ODL), and to find out their practices for handling the challenges. While blended learning has been fully integrated at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) since 2011, the spread of COVID-19 worldwide including Malaysia meant that all UiTM students had to complete the rest of the semester fully online, regardless of their readiness level. Data was gathered through an online questionnaire survey from 188 students and an interview was carried out with 19 semester two students at UiTM Terengganu. Multiple response set and thematic analysis were used to analyse the data. The results indicated that students experience issues with lecturers, family, personal problems, classmates, technical problems, class requirements and home environment. Although many previous studies have found that poor internet connection to be the biggest challenge of online learning among students, the results of this study indicated that personal issues are of a greater concern among the students. Further analyses of the interview responses showed that students’ biggest challenges were related to lack of time management skills, have a poor internet connection, and face a noisy home environment.