Dataset Information

Influence of COVID-19 confinement on students' performance in higher education.

ABSTRACT: This study analyzes the effects of COVID-19 confinement on the autonomous learning performance of students in higher education. Using a field experiment with 458 students from three different subjects at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), we study the differences in assessments by dividing students into two groups. The first group (control) corresponds to academic years 2017/2018 and 2018/2019. The second group (experimental) corresponds to students from 2019/2020, which is the group of students that had their face-to-face activities interrupted because of the confinement. The results show that there is a significant positive effect of the COVID-19 confinement on students' performance. This effect is also significant in activities that did not change their format when performed after the confinement. We find that this effect is significant both in subjects that increased the number of assessment activities and subjects that did not change the student workload. Additionally, an analysis of students' learning strategies before confinement shows that students did not study on a continuous basis. Based on these results, we conclude that COVID-19 confinement changed students' learning strategies to a more continuous habit, improving their efficiency. For these reasons, better scores in students' assessment are expected due to COVID-19 confinement that can be explained by an improvement in their learning performance.

SUBMITTER: Gonzalez T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7546684 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Influence of COVID-19 confinement on students' performance in higher education.

Gonzalez T T de la Rubia M A MA Hincz K P KP Comas-Lopez M M Subirats Laia L Fort Santi S Sacha G M GM

PloS one 20201009 10

This study analyzes the effects of COVID-19 confinement on the autonomous learning performance of students in higher education. Using a field experiment with 458 students from three different subjects at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), we study the differences in assessments by dividing students into two groups. The first group (control) corresponds to academic years 2017/2018 and 2018/2019. The second group (experimental) corresponds to students from 2019/2020, which is the group of stu ...[more]

PMID: 33035228

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Project description:Poor mental health is a growing concern among young people during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The aim of this study was to assess the associations of Internet addiction with depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and stress in higher education students during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to examine these mental health problems in the context of study-related characteristics. The research sample consisted of 3,099 participants from the Czech Republic (CZ: 1,422) and Slovak Republic (SK: 1,677). The Internet Addiction Test (IAT), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire for depressive symptoms (PHQ-9), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) were used to measure mental health problems. The analyses also included demographic data (gender and age) and study-related characteristics (form of study, degree of study, field of study, distance between college and home, and housing during the semester). Based on the results of frequency and descriptive analyses, the prevalence of mental health problems was high. The most serious levels of Internet addiction (IAT cut-off point ≥ 50), to which attention should be paid, were found in 3.5% of Czech and 6.2% of Slovak students. Using the standard cut-off point of GAD-7 ≥ 10, 14.1% of Czech and 11.6% of Slovak students were identified with anxiety symptoms. Regarding the PHQ-9 with the cut-off point ≥ 10, 23.4% of Czech and 19.1% of Slovak students had depressive symptoms, which should be addressed. Using the PSS cut-off point ≥ 27, 12.9% of Czech students and 9.1% of Slovak students perceived high stress. The quantile regression analysis showed that Internet addiction was positively associated with anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and stress in all of the analyzed cases (p-value < 0.001). In terms of study-related characteristics, the binomial logistic regression analysis revealed that risk factors for mental health problems in Czech and Slovak students were mainly full-time form of study and living away from home during the semester. Internet addiction, anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and stress are issues that require increased attention, and professionals and policy-makers should implement interventions to effectively prevent and help students with psychological problems.

Project description:Lonely students typically underperform academically. According to several studies, the COVID-19 pandemic is an important risk factor for increases in loneliness, as the contact restrictions and the switch to mainly online classes potentially burden the students. The previously familiar academic environment (campus), as well as the exchange with peers and lecturers on site, were no longer made available. In our cross-sectional study, we examine factors that could potentially counteract the development of higher education student loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic from a social network perspective. During the semester, N = 283 students from across all institutional faculties of a German comprehensive university took part in an online survey. We surveyed their social and emotional experiences of loneliness, their self-reported digital information-sharing behavior, and their current egocentric networks. Here, we distinguished between close online contacts (i.e., mainly online exchanges) and close offline contacts (i.e., mainly in-person face-to-face exchanges). In addition, we derived the interconnectedness (i.e., the densities of the egocentric networks) and heterogeneity (operationalized with the entropy) of students' contacts. To obtain the latter, we used a novel two-step method combining t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) and cluster analysis. We explored the associations of the aforementioned predictors (i.e., information-sharing behavior, number of online and offline contacts, as well as interconnectedness and heterogeneity of the close contacts network) on social and emotional loneliness separately using two hierarchical multiple linear regression models. Our results suggest that social loneliness is strongly related to digital information-sharing behavior and the network structure of close contacts. In particular, high information-sharing behavior, high number of close contacts (whether offline or online), a highly interconnected network, and a homogeneous structure of close contacts were associated with low social loneliness. Emotional loneliness, on the other hand, was mainly related to network homogeneity, in the sense that students with homogeneous close contacts networks experienced low emotional loneliness. Overall, our study highlights the central role of students' close social network on feelings of loneliness in the context of COVID-19 restrictions. Limitations and implications are discussed.

Dataset Information

Influence of COVID-19 confinement on students' performance in higher education.

Publications

Influence of COVID-19 confinement on students' performance in higher education.

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