COVID-19 has caused the closure of university campuses around the world and migration of all learning, teaching, and assessment into online domains. The impacts of this on the academic community as ...frontline providers of higher education are profound. In this article, we report the findings from a survey of
n
= 1148 academics working in universities in the United Kingdom (UK) and representing all the major disciplines and career hierarchy. Respondents report an abundance of what we call ‘afflictions’ exacted upon their role as educators and in far fewer yet no less visible ways ‘affordances’ derived from their rapid transition to online provision and early ‘entry-level’ use of digital pedagogies. Overall, they suggest that online migration is engendering significant dysfunctionality and disturbance to their pedagogical roles and their personal lives. They also signpost online migration as a major challenge for student recruitment, market sustainability, an academic labour-market, and local economies.
The restrictions put in place to contain the COVID-19 virus have led to widespread social isolation, impacting mental health worldwide. These restrictions may be particularly difficult for ...adolescents, who rely heavily on their peer connections for emotional support. However, there has been no longitudinal research examining the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic among adolescents. This study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents’ mental health, and moderators of change, as well as assessing the factors perceived as causing the most distress. Two hundred and forty eight adolescents (
M
age
= 14.4; 51% girls; 81.8% Caucasian) were surveyed over two time points; in the 12 months leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak (T1), and again two months following the implementation of government restrictions and online learning (T2). Online surveys assessed depressive symptoms, anxiety, and life satisfaction at T1 and T2, and participants’ schooling, peer and family relationships, social connection, media exposure, COVID-19 related stress, and adherence to government stay-at-home directives at T2 only. In line with predictions, adolescents experienced significant increases in depressive symptoms and anxiety, and a significant decrease in life satisfaction from T1 to T2, which was particularly pronounced among girls. Moderation analyses revealed that COVID-19 related worries, online learning difficulties, and increased conflict with parents predicted increases in mental health problems from T1 to T2, whereas adherence to stay-at-home orders and feeling socially connected during the COVID-19 lockdown protected against poor mental health. This study provides initial longitudinal evidence for the decline of adolescent’s mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that adolescents are more concerned about the government restrictions designed to contain the spread of the virus, than the virus itself, and that those concerns are associated with increased anxiety and depressive symptoms, and decreased life satisfaction.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has required faculty and students to adapt to an unprecedented challenge and rapidly transition from traditional face-to-face instruction to distance learning ...formats through virtual classrooms. While most campuses trained faculty to ensure quality and maintenance of the curriculum through virtual classrooms, less consideration has been given to training students, who face equal challenges in adapting to this abrupt change in the delivery of the curriculum. Few approaches have been developed for students to facilitate their involuntary transition to virtual classrooms and maintenance of appropriate online learning behaviours and etiquette. Presented here are a series of propositions to help to maintain and enhance the quality of college student engagement and activity in the virtual classroom. These guidelines are from one example of the State University of New York public educational system perspective, at the pandemic’s epicentre, while serving a diverse student population. Initiating a meaningful dialogue between faculty, who are engaged in efforts to cope and adapt to the pandemic, may prove useful in re-envisioning and re-designing future curriculum. This may facilitate future discussions on creating best practices guidelines for asynchronous/synchronous virtual classrooms post the pandemic. The present rapid communication suggests a framework for faculty to develop such guidelines to address the current gap in the literature.
The spread of COVID-19 poses a threat to humanity, as this pandemic has forced many global activities to close, including educational activities. To reduce the spread of the virus, education ...institutions have been forced to switch to e-learning using available educational platforms, despite the challenges facing this sudden transformation. In order to further explore the potentials challenges facing learning activities, the focus of this study is on e-learning from students’ and instructor’s perspectives on using and implementing e-learning systems in a public university during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study targets the society that includes students and teaching staff in the Information Technology (IT) faculty at the University of Benghazi. The descriptive-analytical approach was applied and the results were analyzed by statistical methods. Two types of questionnaires were designed and distributed, i.e., the student questionnaire and the instructor questionnaire. Four dimensions have been highlighted to reach the expected results, i.e., the extent of using e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, advantages, disadvantages and obstacles of implementing E-learning in the IT faculty. By analyzing the results, we achieved encouraging results that throw light on some of the issues, challenges and advantages of using e-learning systems instead of traditional education in higher education in general and during emergency periods.
This systematic literature review was undertaken primarily to examine the role that print and digitally mediums play in text comprehension. Overall, results suggest that medium plays an influential ...role under certain text or task conditions or for certain readers. Additional goals were to identify how researchers defined and measured comprehension, and the various trends that have emerged over the past 25 years, since Dillon s review. Analysis showed that relatively few researchers defined either reading or digital reading, and that the majority of studies relied on researcher-developed measures. Three types of trends were identified in this body of work: incremental (significant increase; e.g., number of studies conducted, variety of digital devices used), stationary (relative stability; e.g., research setting, chose of participants), and iterative (wide fluctuation; e.g., text length, text manipulations). The review concludes by considering the significance of these findings for future empirical research on reading in print or digital mediums.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has led to social isolation; however, with the help of technology, education can continue through this tough time. Therefore, this research attempts to explore the Unified ...Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) through the expansion of the model. Also, make it relevant to investigate the influence of social isolation, and the moderating role of Corona fear on Behavioral Intention of the Learning Management System and its Use Behavior of Learning Management System among students. The data was analyzed using Partial Least Square (PLS) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The findings show a positive link of Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social Influence (SI), and Social Isolation on Behavioral Intention of LMS and, also between Behavioral Intention of LMS and its Use behavior. Moreover, the results of the moderation analysis show that Corona fears only moderates the link of Performance Expectancy and Social influence with Behavioral Intention of LMS. The findings imply the need for improving the LMS experience to increase its Behavioral Intention among students. Finally, the author's recommendation for future researchers is to examine the extended model in other countries and territories to analyze Coronavirus's influence on e-learning acceptance.
La pandemia COVID-19 ha venido generando cambios y disrupciones en amplios sectores de la actividad humana. La educación ha sido uno de los más afectados debido a la imposición administrativa del ...cierre total de los centros educativos en gran parte de los países del mundo. La modalidad de educación a distancia, fundamentalmente en soporte digital, vino a ofrecer soluciones de emergencia a dicha crisis. En este trabajo se lleva a cabo una reflexión sobre las percepciones previas al COVID-19 relativas a esta modalidad educativa. Posteriormente se aportan ideas sobre la forma en que se acometió mayoritariamente la respuesta educativa al confinamiento a través de una educación de emergencia en remoto que se alejaba considerablemente de lo apropiado en diseños y desarrollos de una educación a distancia de calidad. Fueron muchos los errores cometidos y, por tanto, demasiadas las percepciones negativas por parte de muchos estudiantes, familias y docentes, bastantes de estos últimos ya reacios previamente a estos formatos más novedosos. Finalmente se aborda en el artículo la problemática más reciente, relativa a los tiempos de posconfinamiento, en los que no se prevé que en los centros presenciales todos los estudiantes puedan acudir a las aulas físicas en el mismo espacio y tiempo. Se ofrecen sugerencias sobre cómo abordar esta problemática a través de soluciones de hibridación, de una enseñanza y aprendizaje mixtos, combinados o, mejor, integrados y flexibles.
The COVID19 pandemic has disrupted the normal functioning of various activities across the world, including learning and education. The shift towards online education during the pandemic of COVID19 ...has led many studies to focus on perceived learning outcomes and student satisfaction in this new learning environment. This study aims to examine the determinants resulting in students' perceived learning outcomes and their influence on student satisfaction. The data was collected from undergraduate students in both South Korea and India to gain a cross-country study. The study found that the factors--interaction in the classroom, student motivation, course structure, instructor knowledge, and facilitation--are positively influencing students' perceived learning outcome and student satisfaction. There is no significant difference in the students' perceived learning outcome and student satisfaction in the two countries. The study will be helpful for the educationists and academics to identify the factors which will enhance student learning outcome and satisfaction level in online classes during the coronavirus pandemic.
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to propose a research model based on expectation-confirmation model (ECM) to examine whether interactivity and course quality factors (i.e. course content quality, ...course design quality) as antecedents to student beliefs can influence students' satisfaction and continuance intention of the cloud-based electronic learning (e-learning) system within the educational institution.Design/methodology/approachSample data were collected from students enrolled in a comprehensive university in Taiwan. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed in the campus, and 515 (85.8%) useable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling.FindingsFindings showed that students' perceptions of interactivity, course content quality and course design quality positively significantly contributed to their perceived usefulness, confirmation and satisfaction with the cloud-based e-learning system, which in turn directly or indirectly led to their continuance intention of the system. Thus, the results strongly supported the research model based on ECM via positioning key constructs as the drivers with all hypothesized links being significant.Originality/valueThis study identifies three factors (i.e. interactivity, course content quality, course design quality) as drivers from the learner perspective within the cloud-based e-learning environment, and links these factors to students' satisfaction and continuance intention of the cloud-based e-learning system based on ECM. It is particularly worth mentioning that the three drivers can serve as precursors for recognizing the determinants that are crucial to understand students' satisfaction and continuance intention of the cloud-based e-learning system. Hence, this study may provide new insights in nourishing the cloud-based e-learning continuance literature in the future.
Universities around the world are incorporating online learning, often relying on videos (asynchronous multimedia). We systematically reviewed the effects of video on learning in higher education. We ...searched five databases using 27 keywords to find randomized trials that measured the learning effects of video among college students. We conducted full-text screening, data extraction, and risk of bias in duplicate. We calculated pooled effect sizes using multilevel random-effects meta-analysis. Searches retrieved 9,677 unique records. After screening 329 full texts, 105 met inclusion criteria, with a pooled sample of 7,776 students. Swapping video for existing teaching methods led to small improvements in student learning (g = 0.28). Adding video to existing teaching led to strong learning benefits (g = 0.80). Although results may be subject to some experimental and publication biases, they suggest that videos are unlikely to be detrimental and usually improve student learning.
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