How Corona impacts students

Throughout COVID-19, pandemic-related stressors have influenced university students' well-being. Resilience could help students deal with such crises. Furthermore, students’ learning environment can determine their well-being and resilience, by satisfying their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Altogether, we interviewed six participants (university students, university teachers, study advisor, student psychologist) in a longitudinal interview study, spanning the pre- to mid-COVID-19 pandemic period, and gathered commentary about the evolution of student well-being, resilience factors, and the effects of the learning environment. For analysis, we used thematic inductive and deductive coding. The participants confirmed the postulated stressors, but also positive consequences for student well-being, including resilience growth. Interviewees also reported a variety of resilience factors, both within the individual and within academia. Furthermore, the interview data indicate changes in teaching related to students’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which in turn have consequences for learning and engagement. Such findings may help reshape academic systems for the post-pandemic future.

The study has been presented:

- at the ICO Spring School 2021 (slides available at our website or at researchgate)

- at the Healthy Ageing Symposium at the RUG and the JURE conference 2021 (mainly the same presentation, slides from the JURE conference available at our website or at researchgate)

Above that, the manuscript is already under review and published as a preprint, which you can find at: https://psyarxiv.com/fs6wk