This study contributes to the existing literature on online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in higher education by investigating the relationships between the cognitive variables and students’ adoption of online learning. Based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), some hypotheses were formulated to test the links between TAM constructs and online learning anxiety as an antecedent. This study adopted structural equation modelling (SEM) to scrutinize technology adoption for a sample of 569 students in Oman. The results indicated that attitude towards online learning is a strong predictor of technology adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, both perceived usefulness of online learning and perceived ease of online use yielded a significant contribution of the attitude construct. Besides, online learning anxiety affected both the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of online use negatively, in which perceived ease of use is largely predicted while perceived usefulness is moderately predicted. In the light of the previous findings, online learning anxiety should have more attention by tertiary lecturers, counsellors, academic advisors and policymakers when implementing online teaching and learning.