Abstract

Aim: The study examined the effects of emergency online education on the mental wellbeing of university students during COVID-19 pandemic. Subject and Method: The fast spread of COVID-19 forced universities to shift from conventional pedagogy to online education. Many students, however, encountered mental challenges during this transition. To examine anxiety caused by the pandemic and the lockdown policies, a questionnaire was developed and evaluated by five experts in psychology, management, and education before it was administered through WhatsApp and Facebook to a convenience sample of 1,749 students from eight universities in Jordan during the period of April 7, 2020 and May 28, 2020. Cronbach Alpha level of the questionnaire was acceptable at level α = 0.893. The study was fully approved by the Institutional Review Board and SPSS V26 was used to perform univariate and multivariate statistics. Results: Online education resulted in anxiety and other mental health concerns for over 83% of the students. Nine factors explain students’ anxiety: worries about finances, owning a personal computer, logistical requirements, social impact, family income, anxiety about the future, teachers’ roles, students’ technical knowledge, housing arrangements, technical requirements, awareness, and technical knowledge of teachers. Conclusion: As the pandemic continues to be a serious threat, anxiety and other mental problems if not managed, can produce more health complications for students. Therefore, universities need effective remedial procedures for protecting students’ mental health during and after the pandemic.

1. Introduction

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) as a pandemic. ¹ Soon after, COVID-19, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, forced schools, including universities, to end in-person instruction and look for alternative ways to deliver lessons. ² While many institutions already use online (distance) learning to some degree, COVID-19 made it the only feasible way to maintain continuity of instruction in the pandemic. This transition to fully online education has required the incorporation of software such as Blackboard, Google Classroom, and even Skype and WhatsApp. Online education produced positive as well as negative outcomes. ³ Unfortunately, there is little research on the influence of COVID-19 on higher education, and the past literature on online education cannot be generalized to the experiences of students during the pandemic. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the psychological impact of involuntary online education on students and their mental health.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, universities transitioned to online education because they have legal and moral obligations to ensure that students continue their education regardless of any other condition. University accreditation and regular ongoing assessment processes mandate achieving satisfactory levels of program learning outcomes and course learning outcomes. Emergencies and disasters like COVID-19 were neither part of the equation of students’ performance nor the university’s successful fulfillment of its obligation toward students. ⁴ Before COVID-19, most traditional universities looked at online education as either a supplementary or supportive way to enhance student learning. ^{5, 6} Students may have taken a few classes online voluntarily, or professors incorporated online lessons into in-person classes. Many consider online-only schools to provide an inferior education. For example, Jordan’s Ministry of Higher Education discredited degrees from online-only institutions. ⁷ However, under COVID-19, things changed, and online education became the rescuer of higher education. This last-minute adaptation helped maintain continuity of instruction but also had negative side effects.

Despite the many advantages of online education (e.g., making education accessible to people regardless of geography, culture, or physical ability), it requires infrastructure, training, and knowledge of software such as Blackboard, and Google Classroom. ^{8, 9, 10, 11} Schools cannot assume that all students and teachers have the willingness and capacity to engage in online education. Convenience, accessibility, and ease remain highly subjective and may hide challenges that should not be ignored. Specifically, successful online education is feasible only when students and teachers have the adequate skills, resources, efficacy (awareness), and psychological preparedness. Challenges increase when technical support is not consistently available or there is not a plan to address power outages or other technical difficulties. Beyond these basic and often-common problems inherent in Internet-based activities, some students who are used to classroom-based learning may not adapt well to online education because of preferences or learning style. It may disadvantage students with disabilities or students with low self-esteem, phobias, or cognitive, emotional, visual, physical, or language problems. ¹² Students without fast, affordable (or free) Internet access face additional challenges. ¹³ Most noticeably, online education disadvantages poor students who cannot afford to buy a personal device (desktop, laptop, iPad, or tablet) or pay for high-speed Internet, especially if the student lives in a household with several people vying for computer access. ^{14, 15, 16}

Studies show that an additional disadvantage of online education involves mental health issues. Using software or digital platforms can cause physical and psychological issues that may impede learning, such as headache, lack of focus, frequent distraction, stress, phobia of working independently, worries about privacy, and anxiety. ⁹ Studies posit that while online education during the pandemic has generally prevented interruption of learning, it did not provide students with the same caliber of learning as in-place education. UNESCO reported that online education deprived many university students of cognitive growth and social development as students became passive learners in an up-down learning equation that mostly made them recipients rather than active participants in knowledge building. ^{2, 3, 17} The literature suggests that anxiety and other negative psychological outcomes can emerge as a result of students’ inadequate technological savviness, low buy-in to the importance of online education, poor communication with teachers and staff via online means, and students’ lack of personal responsibility to effectively prepare for and engage in all online session and activities. ^{18, 19, 20, 21} Students also faced poor course content, ambiguities about assignments and due dates ^{22, 23}, and teachers’ negative attitudes toward online education and relationships with students. ^{24, 25} Some studies found that online education anxiety was correlated with student time constraints. ^{26, 27} Student comfort with online classes correlated to students’ ability to use online resources and their awareness about the benefits of online classes. ²⁷ Researchers posit that anxiety is correlated with students’ involvement with and ability to enjoy their engagement in online education. ²⁸ Other studies point to the importance of infrastructure, resources, and training as important factors in reducing students’ stress about online classes. Scholars assert that preparing students, staff, and faculty members and equipping them with technical knowledge are vital to easing the bad consequences of online teaching. ^{23, 29} Students’ and teachers’ inadequate skills in online education software exacerbates fatigue and stress about one’s ability to succeed in his or her part of the education process. ^{12, 30} Interest in using online classes and the student’s ability to choose the platform and method of learning different subjects were found to be important influences on anxiety before, during, and after online classes. ^{15, 32} When universities fail to provide well-trained technical support staff, students and teachers feel stress, especially during exam time and time-sensitive assignments and activities. ^{24, 33} The stress of health concerns and self-isolation directives during COVID-19 further magnified the anxiety inherent in online education established by these previous studies. A researcher found high levels of anxiety even after governments reduced their tough lockdown and curfew measures because people, including university students, continued to suffer psychologically from governments’ early measures. ³⁴ Uncertainty about whether universities will continue online education in the coming academic year (2020–2021) may prolong or exacerbate students’ confusion, distraction, sadness, headaches, post-traumatic stress, and other physical and mental problems. ³⁵ Put differently, mental problems may not magically disappear even after life returns and universities reopen. Based on the above discussion, this study investigated the proposition that students will suffer from anxiety because of involuntary online education under COVID-19 circumstances. Students’ mental health is a major concern for policy makers and educators and examining how online education contributes or leads to anxiety remains an important issue.

2. Methods

To test the research question, a questionnaire, developed in Arabic, was evaluated by five experts in psychology, management, and education who provided constructive comments, especially about question wording. The final version of the questionnaire was piloted to 162 students and resulted in an acceptable Cronbach Alpha level of α = 0.886. The reliability level of the questionnaire after administering it to the entire sample was also acceptable (α = 0.893). ³⁶ During the period of April 7, 2020 to May 28, 2020, 1,749 students from eight universities in Jordan, whose names were previously collected, received a link via WhatsApp and Facebook to complete the survey. All participants were over 18 years of age. Although high Internet and social media usage among university students made the recruitment of respondents relatively easy, responses may have been influenced by the fact that only those with a steady Internet connection and an active account on one of the social media outlets were able to participate in the study. However, a study on online education assumes that participants should have Internet access. The study was fully approved by the Institutional Review Board. All ethical rights were explained to participants in a cover letter, including privacy, voluntary, confidentiality, and right to withdraw. The questionnaire included 65 questions: 42 Likert items using five-point responses (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree), 18 dichotomous and single pre-coded questions, and 5 open-ended questions. Because this study is only one part of a larger project that examines different aspects of COVID-19 pandemic, the analysis was performed on the questionnaire items that are relevant to the topic of the study. The questionnaire collected demographic information about age, income, gender, college level, status of living alone or with others, and ownership of a computer. SPSS V26 was used to perform univariate and multivariate statistics. From all questionnaires distributed (1,749), a total of 1,162 questionnaires were complete and valid for analysis, making an acceptable response rate of 66%. ³⁶

3. Results

The average age of students in the study was 20 years old, and the study group was 52% male and 48% female. The mean monthly family income (USD 930 = JD 669) indicates that students fall within the middle class (standard deviation or Std = USD 241 = JD 169). Students came from all major college specialties (21% humanities and social sciences, 12% business and management, 18% engineering, 16% sciences, 12% education, 8% medical sciences, 8% law and religious studies, 5% other colleges). The level of study was distributed as follows: 23% freshman, 27% junior, 24% sophomore, 14% senior, and 12% graduate. Survey question about living arrangement showed that 56% of students live with family and 37% live in dorms or away from family; 7% did not answer the question. Responses showed that 31% own a laptop or tablet, 22% own a desktop, 35% own neither, and 12% did not answer the question.

To test the proposition of the study, students’ responses were dichotomized: agree (strongly agree and agree) and disagree (disagree and strongly disagree). Table 1 shows that on an average, 83% of university students have anxiety associated with involuntary online education. Specifically, students have worries about many issues linked to COVID-19. The Multiple Regression Model in Table 2 shows factors that influence students’ anxiety about online education. A construct of eight items (the first eight items in Table 1) was used as the dependent variable (anxiety), and nine constructs were composed to serve as independent variables (Table 2).

We identified twelve variables that explain about 46% of students’ anxiety. Statistical values of the regression coefficient (Beta) suggest that students’ anxiety is influenced by having worries about the financial impact of online education (0.637), owning a personal computer (0.617), logistic requirements for using online education (0.601), social impacts of online education (0.552), income (0.482), students’ anxiety about future continuation of online education (0.475), teachers’ roles in online education (0.471), students’ technical knowledge on using online education (0.447), living arrangements (e.g., with family or in dormitory) (0.406), technical requirements such as Internet and software (0.388), students’ awareness about online education (0.485), and the capacity and technical knowledge of teachers (0.294). While the Multiple Regression model result (Table 2) was significant, the following variables did not have a significant correlation with students’ anxiety: age, gender, level of study, and type of college.

4. Discussion

Although the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented and temporary, it—directly or indirectly—has caused severe psychological problems to university students; 83% of the students surveyed experienced anxiety due to online education. While voluntary online education may not cause anxiety in all instances, the combination of students being forced to learn online, without preparation, plus the prolonged period of curfew and isolation all contribute to experiencing anxiety. ³⁵ This study shows that twelve significant variables can be analyzed to better understand students’ mental health concerns. The uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, including when it may dissipate or when a vaccine might be developed, will influence administrators’ decisions regarding online education. ³. Unfortunately, as Table 2 indicates, such vagueness affects students’ psychological health and contributes to prolonging uncertainty about education during the coming semesters. The sudden arrival of COVID-19 likely exacerbated student’s anxiety because online education arrived suddenly and with little preparation. In particular, as Model 2 suggests, students were not aware about the utility of online education and how to deal with it. Teachers lacked technical skills and dedication to use online education professionally. In addition, university administrations were, and still may not be, not well-equipped to provide adequate infrastructure, training, staff, or budgets to make online education successful. The findings show that the suddenness of the pandemic keeps influencing the way universities deal with the emerging circumstances and consequently students find themselves without adequate preparation to complete their academic careers using online education. Many students may have used one form or another of online education long before COVID-19, but during the pandemic, students did not have the luxury of choice. ³³ The exclusiveness of online education seems to put pressure on students and add expectations that cause anxiety, such as mastering online software, working online with other classmates, joining online discussion modules, etc.

The study is limited to university students in Jordan who used involuntary online education during COVID-19. Therefore, findings should cautiously be generalized to elementary and secondary school students (K-12). While specialized audiences (e.g. psychiatrics) may perceive the mental health and psychological state of a person as a sophisticated matter with many implications, the study used “anxiety,” “worrisome,” and “stress” interchangeably throughout the analysis to summarize the complex nature of mental health, especially for a non-specialized audience.

The findings of the study suggest that the students’ anxiety is significant and must be addressed by university administrations and teachers. Policy makers need to draft policies that prepare students for uncertain learning circumstances and gradually transform conventional university education into a hybrid system where students have access to various options of education, including online and conventional methods. The rush by some governments and universities to streamline their operations with online education as the main way to deliver higher education had some catastrophic outcomes. While many universities were able to continue the 2019-2020 academic year by quickly adapting to online education, such success came at the expense of the mental health of students, as the present study reports. Instead of prematurely celebrating success, universities and policy makers are advised to focus on implementing policies that will reduce the impact of the psychological injuries that involuntary online education has caused university students. Although this study is about students, one can speculate that faculty members may also suffer from similar psychological problems due to the same conditions that affect students. Future studies should focus on these areas, and mental health issues should be a major policy issue for university leadership as well as for governments.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, university education faced many challenges, and administrators had to make tough decisions. In Jordan, as in many other countries around the world, university leaders switched to online education to protect and preserve students’ health and learning. While this transition achieved the administrators’ primary goals, it simultaneously affected the mental health of students and led to anxiety and other psychological issues. As universities and other institutions establish reopening procedures and plan for a 2020-2021 school year under social distancing restrictions, policies that acknowledge the impact of COVID-19 and online education on students’ mental health are essential.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the students who responded to the study questionnaire and for the hosting universities, reviewers of the study, editorial team, and the International Review Board experts.

Abbreviation

GETAMEL: General Extended Technology Acceptance Model for E-Learning

WHO :World Health Organization

COVID-19: Coronavirus

References