motivational essay for students this pandemic

My Get Up and Go Got Up and Went

• Posted May 10, 2021
• By Andrew Bauld
• Counseling and Mental Health
• Disruption and Crises
• Social Emotional Learning
• Student Achievement and Outcomes
• Teachers and Teaching

EVERYONE KNEW learning during a pandemic wouldn’t be easy, but could we have guessed it would be quite this hard?

Schools are still battling everything from poor internet service to low attendance. Parents are overwhelmed in homes that have also become workplaces and classrooms. Teachers are demoralized. And students are exhausted, burned out after hours of online classes, and that is if they even show up at all.

The result is students — and teachers — who have lost so much of what used to keep them motivated. Without the ballast of most extracurricular activities like athletics, drama, and band to keep them engaged, many students lost the motivation this year to turn in homework or turn on cameras during remote lessons. Teachers are burnt out, many discouraged by not keeping up with curriculum standards and constantly having to find new ways to keep their students invested in their learning.

Some schools have gone back, but with a return to “normal” school unlikely for many districts until the fall of 2021, teachers and students are having to find new ways to stay motivated to learn during a school year unlike any other.

The Science of Motivation

Abigail Williamson, Ed.M.’15, teaches English Language Development on Martha’s Vineyard. Her middle school students are brand new to the United States, working hard to learn a new language, many of them also taking care of younger siblings at home during remote learning while their parents are at work.

But for five minutes every day, students put aside the challenges they are facing and turn on their favorite song. Some students don sunglasses or fun hats, others grab stuffed animals to join them onscreen for their class DJ Dance Party.

“I wanted to give the kids jobs to keep them engaged and give them some ownership,” says Williamson. “The dance party offers some lightness and fun, but I believe also contributes to our strong attendance and participation.”

Especially during these stressful times, it is important for teachers to think about how students are doing not only academically but also emotionally, and to find ways to inject joy into their lessons.

Christina Hinton, Ed.M.’06, Ed.D.’12, founder and CEO of Research Schools International, which partners with schools to carry out collaborative research, says lessons like the DJ Dance Party can make a huge impact for students.

“There’s a misconception that learning can either be rigorous or fun. That’s not what we’re finding in our research,” Hinton says. “The more they are flourishing and happy, the better, on average, students are doing academically.”

Happy students are also motivated ones. Research has found that motivation is driven by a combination of a person’s earliest experiences and innate biological factors. According to a recent report from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, there are two types of motivation: one that seeks out pleasure (known as approach motivation) and the other that avoids danger (known as avoidance motivation).

Both of these types of motivation develop early in childhood, and both are influenced by intrinsic (like a child’s desire to explore or master a skill) and extrinsic factors (external validation from grades or awards). A healthy motivation system is one built on intrinsic drivers supported by positive extrinsic feedback.

For teachers and parents, there are many ways to encourage motivation. Activities like the DJ Dance Party that provide children space for playful exploration help fuel intrinsic motivation. Activities that appropriately challenge students are also great, but they must be carefully selected as students will lose motivation when an activity is too hard or too easy. Students are also more motivated when they feel a sense of ownership over their work.

These types of activities can also spur in students a sense of curiosity, another good driver of motivation. Ed School associate professor and cognitive research scientist Elizabeth Bonawitz says that curiosity is a core drive that all human beings are born with.

“It’s a drive like hunger or thirst, and it can get us learning very rapidly,” Bonawitz says. Under particularly stressful environments, however, say like during a global pandemic, the body must balance all its needs. “Do I have time to be curious or am I worried about my next meal, or if grandma is going to get sick? If you’re under a lot of duress, you don’t have time to indulge your curiosity,” so actively finding ways to encourage curiosity in the classroom is so important.

Williamson came up with the idea for the dance party at the beginning of this unusual school year, trying to think of ways to replicate traditional classroom management techniques for online learning. Some of her more hesitant learners were hooked from the beginning. Besides the opportunity to get up and move around, it also provided students a chance to show a bit about their personalities, connect over shared interests, and extend their learning, since the songs they choose have connections to the vocabulary they are learning.

Williamson says this break in the day has also given her a unique insight into her students. In her first year at a new school, Williamson says she was initially worried about building connections with students she had never met, but she says the same theories for building community when in-person apply to remote learning.

“Their creativity in activities like the dance party motivates me to find more ways to let them express their personalities,” Williamson says. “I ask students about their lives and listen and incorporate that into my lessons. You can have deep relationships with students even online.”

Find New Ways to Connect

Those relationships are a critical component of motivation. As Bonawtiz has found in her research, humans are social beings with minds designed to learn from other people. When students lose those important relationships with teachers and peers, they are far less likely to be motivated to learn.

The pandemic and remote learning have seriously disrupted those important connections, resulting in huge numbers of students losing the motivation to even show up for virtual classes, let alone participate. Bellwether Education Partners, an education nonprofit, estimates that between 1 million and 3 million U.S. students haven’t attended school since pandemic-related school closures began in March 2020, hitting high-risk groups including homeless students and children with disabilities particularly hard. And there is no silver bullet to solving the problem. Sruti Sriram is a current Ed School student and teaches English to 11th- and 12th-graders at a boarding school in Pune, India. Sriram says her school has tried different ways to keep students engaged, trying to find a balance between learning models. While there was early success with each new attempt, student engagement would inevitably drop off.

Sriram says from her own positive experience as a student in her Ed School classes, she has been inspired to be more intentional using tools like virtual breakout rooms to build relationships. She’s also recognized that, this year especially, the emphasis needs to be on how students are doing emotionally, not just academically.

“My students are going through so much at home. I’ve realized how important it is for students to feel supported in the classroom before I can harangue them about incomplete homework or give them a lot of corrections,” she says. “That’s always been true, but in remote learning it’s an even more apparent reminder that the job is to care for the whole student.”

Even during normal times, these relationships are important to academic development. During the pandemic, they are crucial. Research has shown that when teachers can build a good rapport with their students, those students are more motivated to do well in school. To build that rapport, students need to believe that their teacher has a good sense of their abilities.

“It’s critical to learning that a teacher has an accurate understanding of their students,” says Bonawitz. “When a child thinks a teacher doesn’t have a good sense of their abilities, it totally shapes what kind of exploration and projects they think they can pursue.”

In one lab experiment, Bonawitz has found that when children as young as 6 think their teacher is overestimating their abilities, they will choose less challenging work, while if a teacher underestimates their abilities, they will seek work that might be too difficult for them.

With the pandemic removing much of the one-on-one time for students and teachers to get to know each other well, it’s important for teachers to find new ways to show their students they know them.

“Reciprocity is really critical to make sure there is maximum engagement,” Bonawitz says. “Regular feedback and mini-assessments can help so that students know the teacher is aware of their current place and the teacher is using that information for tailoring the learning.”

Hinton says making room to provide students extra emotional support this year is so important, and finding additional opportunities, like through virtual office hours, can make a big difference for students and teachers to build relationships while apart and maintain motivation.

Jill Goldberg, Ed.M.’93, credits her students staying motivated thanks to recognizing new ways of building relationships. Goldberg, who teaches sixth grade English language arts in upstate New York, says it was challenging at first teaching to static profile pictures of students or empty black rectangles because her district, like many across the county, does not require students to turn on cameras when remote.

But then students, some shy or just unwilling to turn their cameras on during full class activities, started to reach out in other ways. Many found their voice over email. Others requested private Zoom breakout meetings to connect between classes or after school, sometimes to talk about academic work, other times just to share something personal, like a pair of twins in her class excited to share news of a new pet.

“It’s wonderful how many kids are so much more comfortable and proficient and proactive in initiating contact” over digital platforms, Goldberg says. Remote learning has also given Goldberg and her students a change of pace to their normal in-person schedule that left little time in the day to connect. Now, students have breaks between periods and teachers can use that time for extra help sessions or just one-on- one check-ins.

Professor Jal Mehta isn’t surprised that some students and teachers are finding positives during remote learning. Mehta says that while traditional in-person school can be exhausting for students required to be “on” and engaged all day with teachers and peers, remote learning has given some students a chance to slow down. “Teachers have reported more contact and conversations with students and families. I think some people have experienced that there’s less rush and a chance to do things in more depth,” Mehta says.

Caring for the Adults in the Room

Of course, not everyone is finding remote learning a happy new environment. In November, the Education Week Research Center found that nearly 75% of teachers say their morale is lower than it was before the pandemic. Trying to learn new technology, keep students invested, and deal with the challenges of their own lives is leaving many teachers burnt out.

With teachers feeling dejected from not keeping up with curriculum standards or blaming themselves for students falling behind, Hinton says now it’s more important than ever for teachers to not only show compassion for their students but also for themselves.

“Teachers have to treat this as a totally different year and be patient with themselves,” she says. “A great rule of thumb for practicing self-compassion is to treat yourself the way you would treat a best friend.”

That change in mentality was important for Ian Malmstrom, Ed.M.’10, a middle school history teacher and athletic director in Illinois.

“The most discouraging thing was realizing I wasn’t going to accomplish as much as I have in past years. That bothered me at first, the feeling I wasn’t doing as well as a teacher. But putting that stress on myself wasn’t going to work. I’ve accepted that,” Malmstrom says.

Malmstron isn’t alone. A survey by the RAND Corporation found in its American Educator Panels Survey in October that most classrooms are not proceeding at their normal pace, with 56% of teachers saying that they had covered half, or less than half, of their normal curriculum, and only 1 in 5 teachers saying they were on the same schedule as years past.

Rather than putting pressure on themselves to jam as much of the old curriculum into this year, experts like Mehta are advocating a “Marie Kondo” approach to curriculum, borrowing from the Japanese tidying expert. In his recent New York Times opinion piece, Mehta encourages teachers to accept a “less is more” attitude by “discarding the many topics that have accumulated like old souvenirs, while retaining essential knowledge and topics that spark joy.”

At her school in Providence, Rhode Island, academic dean Kaitlin Moran, Ed.M.’20, has worked with faculty and administrators to reduce their academic program to the most essential content and setting realistic learning goals. The school day itself has been shortened and longer blocks of instruction in subjects like math, science, and social studies have been shortened to accommodate students, including taking into account time spent on screens.

“I think what has helped students and teachers feel more motivated is by setting bite-size achievable goals that work towards a grade-level standard. As much as we can collaborate on best practices, that has also helped keep our team engaged and motivated,” Moran says.

To that end, Moran has also worked with teachers to implement targeted learning goals to address missed learning from the spring by having each student complete a diagnostic assessment, allowing teachers to know which areas of instruction to focus on to help close gaps. Not everything can simply be replaced virtually. One of the biggest losses since the pandemic hit has been extracurriculars. Malmstrom says athletics have been virtually nonexistent in Illinois since the start of the pandemic, and without them, many students have just given up.

“My students have just been starved for athletic opportunities,” Malmstrom says, citing several academically thriving students who have lost their motivation to do well in school. “We have more time, but people don’t have the desire to do as much as we used to. I have students who were mainly doing schoolwork to stay eligible for sports, and they’ve quit trying.”

Malmstrom and his colleagues have tried to find some replacements. In the fall, when the weather was nice, they started an afterschool running club, which had a great turnout of students eager to do any sort of outdoor activity. His school also launched a virtual chess club and quiz bowl team, offering online practices.

Malmstrom is realistic that these activities are only stopgaps until students can return to regular activities, but they have been helpful in keeping morale and motivation up.

“The students aren’t going to be interested in everything, but our hope is that each student can find something that engages him or her in addition to their regular classwork,” he says.

Eventually, the world will return to some new normal, and schools with it. While there are many challenges that students and teachers have faced during this year, there are some areas of remote learning that might endure.

Researchers like Mehta say the lessons learned during remote learning and the changes made to support students and teachers should spur an even greater effort to reimagine and rebuild schools.

“Schools weren’t working well for students pre-pandemic. To put things back exactly as they were is ignoring inequities and disengagement,” says Mehta.

When schools can be fully reopened, Mehta says leaders need to think about areas that helped keep students motivated this year and amplify them, including giving students greater agency over their learning and providing more time for teachers to connect with families.

“How do we create the space to do more of those things when we come back to regular school,” he says, “and what do we want to let go of to allow those things to grow? I think those are the questions I would ask everybody.”

Andrew Bauld, the communications coordinator at the Berkeley Carroll School in New York City, is a frequent contributor to Ed.

Happy Students Are Motivated Students

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Creating Learning Environments to Support Student Motivation Post-Pandemic

On March 30, 2022, TLL hosted a talk by Professor Carlton Fong of Texas State University on the many ways the COVID-19 pandemic impacted student motivation. Professor Fong discussed evidence-based strategies to maximize student confidence, learning, support, and belonging.

Why Discuss Motivation? 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought many challenges and uncertainties into the lives of adolescents, including mental/physical health concerns, disruptions to social connections, socio-economic concerns, worries about catching COVID-19 or complying with restrictions, uncertainties about the future, and academic challenges. Of these factors, Scott et al. (2021) found that academics, and specifically academic motivation, was the most common worry among adolescents. 

In a meta-analysis of over 150 studies that used the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI), Fong and a team of educational psychologists concluded that of the ten LASSI subscales, motivation strategies were the strongest predictors of  GPA and persistence (Fong et al., 2021). 

Some studies found that aspects of students’ motivation, such as their sense of self-efficacy for learning, decreased significantly at the start of the pandemic with the rapid shift to online instruction ( Hilpert et al., 2021 ). Given this, it is imperative to adopt practices that rekindle motivation if colleges want their students to be academically successful. 

Motivation theories 

In a recent article , Professor Fong synthesized five theories of motivation to create a framework for student motivation during the pandemic. These theories are described briefly below and in more depth in the associated paper. 

• Self-Determination Theory considers how a student’s environment can satisfy or thwart the student’s feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness and describes how these three basic needs, in turn, influence students’ motivation to engage in a learning environment. 
• Attribution Theory focuses on how students identify the causes of their success or failure, considering the extent to which students feel they can control the outcome. 
• Social Cognitive Theory explores the relationship between students and their environment, self-efficacy and perception of the situation, and behavior. Determinations of self-efficacy can include mastery experiences, vicarious experiences (i.e., the success or failure of peers), messages and feedback received from others (e.g., teachers), and emotions.
• Situated Expectancy-Value Theory considers how achievement choices are informed by expected outcomes and perceptions of the value and costs of engaging in an activity. 
• Goal Orientation Theory ascribes meaning to the attainment of mastery goals (i.e. developing competence) and performance goals (i.e. demonstrating competence).  

When viewed collectively, these five theories describe a range of past, present, and future factors that influence student motivation. Students arrive at college having been shaped by their identities, upbringing, interactions, successes, and failures. In college, student motivation is impacted by their sense of agency, how they can apply the assets they bring to the academic context, the personal and collective value of what they are learning, and their sense of belonging. Students are also considering their learning in the context of their future personal and familial goals, their sense of meaning, and their sense of what is possible for them given the realities of disparate opportunity structures. 

COVID-Related Shifts 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, students experienced instructional, social, future-oriented, and racial/sociocultural shifts that impacted their motivation in a variety of ways. 

Instructional shifts included the use of new technology and assessment types and a reduction in certain types of hands-on learning. Many students experienced lower self-efficacy because they had fewer mastery experiences in online contexts, limited background in online learning, limited vicarious experiences, limited verbal encouragement, and increased anxiety. Shifts in student feelings of autonomy were mixed. Many students felt that they had less autonomy due to the sudden mandatory shift online and the tendencies of some instructors to be more controlling due to their personal feelings of stress and burnout. At the same time, some students gained additional autonomy as instructors implemented asynchronous, student-paced learning options and more open-ended assessments such as projects.  

Socially, students had less reliable access to peers and instructors and many students faced mental health challenges. One study found that regardless of student beliefs about the effectiveness of online learning, a lower sense of belonging led to lower academic motivation. Similarly, poor mental health conditions also reduced motivation. Fortunately, virtual interactions increased positive emotions and feelings of relatedness, buffering some of the negative impacts of physical isolation from others. 

Student perceptions of the future also shifted as they contemplated a bleak economic outlook, gained new admiration for healthcare professionals, or struggled to stay engaged with their current academic work. The uncertainty about the future made it harder to derive motivation from a sense of utility value or clear mastery goals. Some students also worried about the cost of higher education, particularly if they were forced to take an extra semester or year to make up missed coursework. However, some students experienced a renewed interest in STEM, and medicine in particular, due to its perceived value during the pandemic. 

Race and sociocultural factors were also prominent during 2020 and 2021 as students witnessed increased attention to racialized police brutality, disparities in healthcare, and increased violence against APIDA individuals. In response, many students developed increased prosocial motivation aligned with community-oriented values. Many students also experienced oppression firsthand, which may have decreased their motivation or sparked motivational resilience.  

While these shifts were amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, they will continue to matter long after the pandemic ends. The college experience nearly always includes these four shifts, though their magnitude will vary by student, institution, and the state of the world. 

Instructional Strategies 

While certain aspects of student motivation remain outside of an instructor’s control, there are several strategies instructors can adopt to make their classroom a more motivating environment. To promote feelings of autonomy among students, instructors should take care to give students meaningful choices about what they work on and how. The more ownership students can take, the more motivated they will be to learn. 

Constructive feedback can also motivate students, but instructors should be mindful of how they deliver feedback. Positive feedback is more likely to increase student feelings of competence, but criticism can still be motivating if it outlines concrete ways to improve. When giving critical feedback, instructors should emphasize that they have high standards but believe in their students’ ability to meet those standards. Fong also highlighted the difference between feedback and grades. To effectively motivate students, instructors should deemphasize competition and numerical grades in favor of mastery. Practices like allowing assignment revisions can help students build competence and become more comfortable seeking and responding to feedback. 

Fong also recommends that instructors share their rationales for assigning particular work or including particular topics in a course. This additional context can help students relate their coursework to their personal goals and increase its perceived value.

To increase students’ sense of social belonging , Fong recommended that instructors try to normalize challenges and growth. Make it clear to students that struggling is common and feelings of belonging take time, but that you as the instructor believe in their ability to surmount the obstacles they face. Students with a growth mindset are more likely to seek feedback and put in the effort required to learn and improve. 

While Fong’s talk primarily focused on classroom learning, he directed faculty working with graduate students in research contexts to check out the work of Professor Nathan Hall at McGill University . 

Guest Speaker

Carlton Fong, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, Texas State University

Dr. Carlton J. Fong is an assistant professor in the Graduate Program in Developmental Education and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Texas State University. As a scholar-practitioner at the intersection of educational psychology and higher education, Dr. Fong uses a sociocultural lens to study motivational factors influencing postsecondary student engagement, achievement, and persistence. He is also an expert in meta-analysis and research synthesis and is currently the chair of the Motivation in Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In 2021, he was recognized as an Association for Psychological Science Rising Star and an AERA Deeper Learning Fellow .

Fong, C. J. (2022) Academic motivation in a pandemic context: a conceptual review of prominent theories and an integrative model, Educational Psychology , https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2022.2026891  

Fong, C. J., Krou, M. R., Johnston-Ashton, K., Hoff, M. A., Lin, S., & Gonzales, C. (2021). Lassi’s great adventure: A meta-analysis of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory and academic outcomes. Educational Research Review , 34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2021.100407  

Hilpert, J. C., Bernacki, M. L., & Cogliano, M. C. (2022) Coping with the transition to remote instruction: Patterns of self-regulated engagement in a large post-secondary biology course. Journal of Research on Technology in Education , 54:sup1, S219-S235, https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2021.1936702  

Scott, S. R., Rivera, K. M., Rushing, E., Manczak, E. M., Rozek, C. S., & Doom, J. R. (2021). “I Hate This”: A qualitative analysis of adolescents’ self-reported challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Journal of Adolescent Health , 68(2), 262–269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.11.010  

Written by Kate Weishaar

assessment belonging community growth mindset inclusive classroom student engagement student motivation wellbeing

The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld director of growth modeling and data analytics - nwea jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea karyn lewis , and karyn lewis vice president of research and policy partnerships - nwea emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea.

March 3, 2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns, academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents. In addition to surging COVID-19 cases at the end of 2021, schools have faced severe staff shortages , high rates of absenteeism and quarantines , and rolling school closures . Furthermore, students and educators continue to struggle with mental health challenges , higher rates of violence and misbehavior , and concerns about lost instructional time .

As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8. We focused on test scores from immediately before the pandemic (fall 2019), following the initial onset (fall 2020), and more than one year into pandemic disruptions (fall 2021).

Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina—math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees .

Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15% in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

These numbers are alarming and potentially demoralizing, especially given the heroic efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. From our perspective, these test-score drops in no way indicate that these students represent a “ lost generation ” or that we should give up hope. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic, and there is so much we don’t know about students’ capacity for resiliency in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are we suggesting that teachers are somehow at fault given the achievement drops that occurred between 2020 and 2021; rather, educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.

Clearly, however, there’s work to do. School districts and states are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to mitigate the learning declines during the last two years. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) investments from the American Rescue Plan provided nearly $200 billion to public schools to spend on COVID-19-related needs. Of that sum, $22 billion is dedicated specifically to addressing learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “ disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups. ” Reviews of district and state spending plans (see Future Ed , EduRecoveryHub , and RAND’s American School District Panel for more details) indicate that districts are spending their ESSER dollars designated for academic recovery on a wide variety of strategies, with summer learning, tutoring, after-school programs, and extended school-day and school-year initiatives rising to the top.

Comparing the negative impacts from learning disruptions to the positive impacts from interventions

To help contextualize the magnitude of the impacts of COVID-19, we situate test-score drops during the pandemic relative to the test-score gains associated with common interventions being employed by districts as part of pandemic recovery efforts. If we assume that such interventions will continue to be as successful in a COVID-19 school environment, can we expect that these strategies will be effective enough to help students catch up? To answer this question, we draw from recent reviews of research on high-dosage tutoring , summer learning programs , reductions in class size , and extending the school day (specifically for literacy instruction) . We report effect sizes for each intervention specific to a grade span and subject wherever possible (e.g., tutoring has been found to have larger effects in elementary math than in reading).

Figure 1 shows the standardized drops in math test scores between students testing in fall 2019 and fall 2021 (separately by elementary and middle school grades) relative to the average effect size of various educational interventions. The average effect size for math tutoring matches or exceeds the average COVID-19 score drop in math. Research on tutoring indicates that it often works best in younger grades, and when provided by a teacher rather than, say, a parent. Further, some of the tutoring programs that produce the biggest effects can be quite intensive (and likely expensive), including having full-time tutors supporting all students (not just those needing remediation) in one-on-one settings during the school day. Meanwhile, the average effect of reducing class size is negative but not significant, with high variability in the impact across different studies. Summer programs in math have been found to be effective (average effect size of .10 SDs), though these programs in isolation likely would not eliminate the COVID-19 test-score drops.

Figure 1: Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) Table 2; summer program results are pulled from Lynch et al (2021) Table 2; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span; Figles et al. and Lynch et al. report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. We were unable to find a rigorous study that reported effect sizes for extending the school day/year on math performance. Nictow et al. and Kraft & Falken (2021) also note large variations in tutoring effects depending on the type of tutor, with larger effects for teacher and paraprofessional tutoring programs than for nonprofessional and parent tutoring. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

Figure 2 displays a similar comparison using effect sizes from reading interventions. The average effect of tutoring programs on reading achievement is larger than the effects found for the other interventions, though summer reading programs and class size reduction both produced average effect sizes in the ballpark of the COVID-19 reading score drops.

Figure 2: Reading COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; extended-school-day results are from Figlio et al. (2018) Table 2; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) ; summer program results are pulled from Kim & Quinn (2013) Table 3; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: While Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span, Figlio et al. and Kim & Quinn report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

There are some limitations of drawing on research conducted prior to the pandemic to understand our ability to address the COVID-19 test-score drops. First, these studies were conducted under conditions that are very different from what schools currently face, and it is an open question whether the effectiveness of these interventions during the pandemic will be as consistent as they were before the pandemic. Second, we have little evidence and guidance about the efficacy of these interventions at the unprecedented scale that they are now being considered. For example, many school districts are expanding summer learning programs, but school districts have struggled to find staff interested in teaching summer school to meet the increased demand. Finally, given the widening test-score gaps between low- and high-poverty schools, it’s uncertain whether these interventions can actually combat the range of new challenges educators are facing in order to narrow these gaps. That is, students could catch up overall, yet the pandemic might still have lasting, negative effects on educational equality in this country.

Given that the current initiatives are unlikely to be implemented consistently across (and sometimes within) districts, timely feedback on the effects of initiatives and any needed adjustments will be crucial to districts’ success. The Road to COVID Recovery project and the National Student Support Accelerator are two such large-scale evaluation studies that aim to produce this type of evidence while providing resources for districts to track and evaluate their own programming. Additionally, a growing number of resources have been produced with recommendations on how to best implement recovery programs, including scaling up tutoring , summer learning programs , and expanded learning time .

Ultimately, there is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators, and parents are considerable. But this may be a moment when decades of educational reform, intervention, and research pay off. Relying on what we have learned could show the way forward.

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Covid-19’s Impact on Students’ Academic and Mental Well-Being

The pandemic has revealed—and exacerbated—inequities that hold many students back. Here’s how teachers can help.

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The pandemic has shone a spotlight on inequality in America: School closures and social isolation have affected all students, but particularly those living in poverty. Adding to the damage to their learning, a mental health crisis is emerging as many students have lost access to services that were offered by schools.

No matter what form school takes when the new year begins—whether students and teachers are back in the school building together or still at home—teachers will face a pressing issue: How can they help students recover and stay on track throughout the year even as their lives are likely to continue to be disrupted by the pandemic?

New research provides insights about the scope of the problem—as well as potential solutions.

The Achievement Gap Is Likely to Widen

A new study suggests that the coronavirus will undo months of academic gains, leaving many students behind. The study authors project that students will start the new school year with an average of 66 percent of the learning gains in reading and 44 percent of the learning gains in math, relative to the gains for a typical school year. But the situation is worse on the reading front, as the researchers also predict that the top third of students will make gains, possibly because they’re likely to continue reading with their families while schools are closed, thus widening the achievement gap.

To make matters worse, “few school systems provide plans to support students who need accommodations or other special populations,” the researchers point out in the study, potentially impacting students with special needs and English language learners.

Of course, the idea that over the summer students forget some of what they learned in school isn’t new. But there’s a big difference between summer learning loss and pandemic-related learning loss: During the summer, formal schooling stops, and learning loss happens at roughly the same rate for all students, the researchers point out. But instruction has been uneven during the pandemic, as some students have been able to participate fully in online learning while others have faced obstacles—such as lack of internet access—that have hindered their progress.

In the study, researchers analyzed a national sample of 5 million students in grades 3–8 who took the MAP Growth test, a tool schools use to assess students’ reading and math growth throughout the school year. The researchers compared typical growth in a standard-length school year to projections based on students being out of school from mid-March on. To make those projections, they looked at research on the summer slide, weather- and disaster-related closures (such as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina), and absenteeism.

The researchers predict that, on average, students will experience substantial drops in reading and math, losing roughly three months’ worth of gains in reading and five months’ worth of gains in math. For Megan Kuhfeld, the lead author of the study, the biggest takeaway isn’t that learning loss will happen—that’s a given by this point—but that students will come back to school having declined at vastly different rates.

“We might be facing unprecedented levels of variability come fall,” Kuhfeld told me. “Especially in school districts that serve families with lots of different needs and resources. Instead of having students reading at a grade level above or below in their classroom, teachers might have kids who slipped back a lot versus kids who have moved forward.” 

Disproportionate Impact on Students Living in Poverty and Students of Color

Horace Mann once referred to schools as the “great equalizers,” yet the pandemic threatens to expose the underlying inequities of remote learning. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center analysis , 17 percent of teenagers have difficulty completing homework assignments because they do not have reliable access to a computer or internet connection. For Black students, the number spikes to 25 percent.

“There are many reasons to believe the Covid-19 impacts might be larger for children in poverty and children of color,” Kuhfeld wrote in the study. Their families suffer higher rates of infection, and the economic burden disproportionately falls on Black and Hispanic parents, who are less likely to be able to work from home during the pandemic.

Although children are less likely to become infected with Covid-19, the adult mortality rates, coupled with the devastating economic consequences of the pandemic, will likely have an indelible impact on their well-being.

Impacts on Students’ Mental Health

That impact on well-being may be magnified by another effect of school closures: Schools are “the de facto mental health system for many children and adolescents,” providing mental health services to 57 percent of adolescents who need care, according to the authors of a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics . School closures may be especially disruptive for children from lower-income families, who are disproportionately likely to receive mental health services exclusively from schools.

“The Covid-19 pandemic may worsen existing mental health problems and lead to more cases among children and adolescents because of the unique combination of the public health crisis, social isolation, and economic recession,” write the authors of that study.

A major concern the researchers point to: Since most mental health disorders begin in childhood, it is essential that any mental health issues be identified early and treated. Left untreated, they can lead to serious health and emotional problems. In the short term, video conferencing may be an effective way to deliver mental health services to children.

Mental health and academic achievement are linked, research shows. Chronic stress changes the chemical and physical structure of the brain, impairing cognitive skills like attention, concentration, memory, and creativity. “You see deficits in your ability to regulate emotions in adaptive ways as a result of stress,” said Cara Wellman, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University in a 2014 interview . In her research, Wellman discovered that chronic stress causes the connections between brain cells to shrink in mice, leading to cognitive deficiencies in the prefrontal cortex. 

While trauma-informed practices were widely used before the pandemic, they’re likely to be even more integral as students experience economic hardships and grieve the loss of family and friends. Teachers can look to schools like Fall-Hamilton Elementary in Nashville, Tennessee, as a model for trauma-informed practices . 

3 Ways Teachers Can Prepare

When schools reopen, many students may be behind, compared to a typical school year, so teachers will need to be very methodical about checking in on their students—not just academically but also emotionally. Some may feel prepared to tackle the new school year head-on, but others will still be recovering from the pandemic and may still be reeling from trauma, grief, and anxiety. 

Here are a few strategies teachers can prioritize when the new school year begins:

• Focus on relationships first. Fear and anxiety about the pandemic—coupled with uncertainty about the future—can be disruptive to a student’s ability to come to school ready to learn. Teachers can act as a powerful buffer against the adverse effects of trauma by helping to establish a safe and supportive environment for learning. From morning meetings to regular check-ins with students, strategies that center around relationship-building will be needed in the fall.
• Strengthen diagnostic testing. Educators should prepare for a greater range of variability in student learning than they would expect in a typical school year. Low-stakes assessments such as exit tickets and quizzes can help teachers gauge how much extra support students will need, how much time should be spent reviewing last year’s material, and what new topics can be covered.
• Differentiate instruction—particularly for vulnerable students. For the vast majority of schools, the abrupt transition to online learning left little time to plan a strategy that could adequately meet every student’s needs—in a recent survey by the Education Trust, only 24 percent of parents said that their child’s school was providing materials and other resources to support students with disabilities, and a quarter of non-English-speaking students were unable to obtain materials in their own language. Teachers can work to ensure that the students on the margins get the support they need by taking stock of students’ knowledge and skills, and differentiating instruction by giving them choices, connecting the curriculum to their interests, and providing them multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning.

What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

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In this video, Navajo student Miles Johnson shares how he experienced the stress and anxiety of schools shutting down last year. Miles’ teacher shared his experience and those of her other students in a recent piece for Education Week. In these short essays below, teacher Claire Marie Grogan’s 11th grade students at Oceanside High School on Long Island, N.Y., describe their pandemic experiences. Their writings have been slightly edited for clarity. Read Grogan’s essay .

“Hours Staring at Tiny Boxes on the Screen”

By Kimberly Polacco, 16

I stare at my blank computer screen, trying to find the motivation to turn it on, but my finger flinches every time it hovers near the button. I instead open my curtains. It is raining outside, but it does not matter, I will not be going out there for the rest of the day. The sound of pounding raindrops contributes to my headache enough to make me turn on my computer in hopes that it will give me something to drown out the noise. But as soon as I open it up, I feel the weight of the world crash upon my shoulders.

Each 42-minute period drags on by. I spend hours upon hours staring at tiny boxes on a screen, one of which my exhausted face occupies, and attempt to retain concepts that have been presented to me through this device. By the time I have the freedom of pressing the “leave” button on my last Google Meet of the day, my eyes are heavy and my legs feel like mush from having not left my bed since I woke up.

Tomorrow arrives, except this time here I am inside of a school building, interacting with my first period teacher face to face. We talk about our favorite movies and TV shows to stream as other kids pile into the classroom. With each passing period I accumulate more and more of these tiny meaningless conversations everywhere I go with both teachers and students. They may not seem like much, but to me they are everything because I know that the next time I am expected to report to school, I will be trapped in the bubble of my room counting down the hours until I can sit down in my freshly sanitized wooden desk again.

“My Only Parent Essentially on Her Death Bed”

By Nick Ingargiola, 16

My mom had COVID-19 for ten weeks. She got sick during the first month school buildings were shut. The difficulty of navigating an online classroom was already overwhelming, and when mixed with my only parent essentially on her death bed, it made it unbearable. Focusing on schoolwork was impossible, and watching my mother struggle to lift up her arm broke my heart.

My mom has been through her fair share of diseases from pancreatic cancer to seizures and even as far as a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. It is safe to say she has been through a lot. The craziest part is you would never know it. She is the strongest and most positive person I’ve ever met. COVID hit her hard. Although I have watched her go through life and death multiple times, I have never seen her so physically and mentally drained.

I initially was overjoyed to complete my school year in the comfort of my own home, but once my mom got sick, I couldn’t handle it. No one knows what it’s like to pretend like everything is OK until they are forced to. I would wake up at 8 after staying up until 5 in the morning pondering the possibility of losing my mother. She was all I had. I was forced to turn my camera on and float in the fake reality of being fine although I wasn’t. The teachers tried to keep the class engaged by obligating the students to participate. This was dreadful. I didn’t want to talk. I had to hide the distress in my voice. If only the teachers understood what I was going through. I was hesitant because I didn’t want everyone to know that the virus that was infecting and killing millions was knocking on my front door.

After my online classes, I was required to finish an immense amount of homework while simultaneously hiding my sadness so that my mom wouldn’t worry about me. She was already going through a lot. There was no reason to add me to her list of worries. I wasn’t even able to give her a hug. All I could do was watch.

“The Way of Staying Sane”

By Lynda Feustel, 16

Entering year two of the pandemic is strange. It barely seems a day since last March, but it also seems like a lifetime. As an only child and introvert, shutting down my world was initially simple and relatively easy. My friends and I had been super busy with the school play, and while I was sad about it being canceled, I was struggling a lot during that show and desperately needed some time off.

As March turned to April, virtual school began, and being alone really set in. I missed my friends and us being together. The isolation felt real with just my parents and me, even as we spent time together. My friends and I began meeting on Facetime every night to watch TV and just be together in some way. We laughed at insane jokes we made and had homework and therapy sessions over Facetime and grew closer through digital and literal walls.

The summer passed with in-person events together, and the virus faded into the background for a little while. We went to the track and the beach and hung out in people’s backyards.

Then school came for us in a more nasty way than usual. In hybrid school we were separated. People had jobs, sports, activities, and quarantines. Teachers piled on work, and the virus grew more present again. The group text put out hundreds of messages a day while the Facetimes came to a grinding halt, and meeting in person as a group became more of a rarity. Being together on video and in person was the way of staying sane.

In a way I am in a similar place to last year, working and looking for some change as we enter the second year of this mess.

“In History Class, Reports of Heightening Cases”

By Vivian Rose, 16

I remember the moment my freshman year English teacher told me about the young writers’ conference at Bread Loaf during my sophomore year. At first, I didn’t want to apply, the deadline had passed, but for some strange reason, the directors of the program extended it another week. It felt like it was meant to be. It was in Vermont in the last week of May when the flowers have awakened and the sun is warm.

I submitted my work, and two weeks later I got an email of my acceptance. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the empty house; everyone was out, so I was left alone to celebrate my small victory. It was rare for them to admit sophomores. Usually they accept submissions only from juniors and seniors.

That was the first week of February 2020. All of a sudden, there was some talk about this strange virus coming from China. We thought nothing of it. Every night, I would fall asleep smiling, knowing that I would be able to go to the exact conference that Robert Frost attended for 42 years.

Then, as if overnight, it seemed the virus had swung its hand and had gripped parts of the country. Every newscast was about the disease. Every day in history, we would look at the reports of heightening cases and joke around that this could never become a threat as big as Dr. Fauci was proposing. Then, March 13th came around--it was the last day before the world seemed to shut down. Just like that, Bread Loaf would vanish from my grasp.

“One Day Every Day Won’t Be As Terrible”

By Nick Wollweber, 17

COVID created personal problems for everyone, some more serious than others, but everyone had a struggle.

As the COVID lock-down took hold, the main thing weighing on my mind was my oldest brother, Joe, who passed away in January 2019 unexpectedly in his sleep. Losing my brother was a complete gut punch and reality check for me at 14 and 15 years old. 2019 was a year of struggle, darkness, sadness, frustration. I didn’t want to learn after my brother had passed, but I had to in order to move forward and find my new normal.

Routine and always having things to do and places to go is what let me cope in the year after Joe died. Then COVID came and gave me the option to let up and let down my guard. I struggled with not wanting to take care of personal hygiene. That was the beginning of an underlying mental problem where I wouldn’t do things that were necessary for everyday life.

My “coping routine” that got me through every day and week the year before was gone. COVID wasn’t beneficial to me, but it did bring out the true nature of my mental struggles and put a name to it. Since COVID, I have been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I began taking antidepressants and going to therapy a lot more.

COVID made me realize that I’m not happy with who I am and that I needed to change. I’m still not happy with who I am. I struggle every day, but I am working towards a goal that one day every day won’t be as terrible.

Coverage of social and emotional learning is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation, at www.novofoundation.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the March 31, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

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Remaining motivated despite the limitations: University students’ learning propensity during the COVID-19 pandemic

Maila dh rahiem.

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Received 2020 Jul 17; Revised 2020 Dec 1; Accepted 2020 Dec 2; Issue date 2021 Jan.

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Despite all the limitations, students stayed motivated and kept moving forward.

Students were driven autonomously by mental fortitude.

They were often influenced by their social groups, their families and friends.

The students were motivated by their learning atmosphere and facilities.

Keywords: COVID-19, Emergency remote learning, University, Students, Youth, Online learning, Motivation, Resilience

This study explored how university students remained motivated to learn, despite all the limitations they encountered and endured during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work was carried out in Indonesia, but the benefits are beyond a state boundary. The study examines how university students in developing countries have faced obstacles, and yet despite this, they are still trying their hardest to stay focused on achieving their personal goals during the pandemic. This research employed a qualitative phenomenological approach, involving eighty students that were studying at the Faculty of Education at a state university in Jakarta, Indonesia. As data collection techniques, students were asked to write learning log diaries and reflective essays and to participate in an online focus group discussion. The results showed that the students' motivation to remain learning during the COVID-19 pandemic fell into three key themes, each with associated sub-themes. The three themes and sub-themes described were: (a) personal, with sub-themes of challenge, curiosity, self-determination, satisfaction and religious commitment; (b) social, with sub-themes of relationships, inspiration, and well-being of self and others; and (c) environmental, with sub-themes of facilities and conditioning. The themes and sub-themes indicate the source of motivation for these university students to learn during the pandemic. This study concluded that these emerging adults were both intrinsically and extrinsically autonomously motivated and committed to their studies. Most of these students were motivated by their consequential aspirations, not by a controlled motivation, nor were they motivated by a reward, a penalty, or a rule that propelled them. By defining how the students managed to empower themselves, this study recommends the importance of preparing students to be more resilient and to enable them to cultivate the ability to remain optimistic and motivated to succeed and overcome any of life’s adversities.

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an extremely fast expanding health crisis with drastic implications throughout 2020 ( Gómez-Salgado, Andrés-Villas, Domínguez-Salas, Díaz-Milanés, & Ruiz-Frutos, 2020 ). Most nations responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by swiftly enforcing public health containment measures known as non-pharmaceutical interventions ( Anderson et al., 2020 , Cauchemez et al., 2008 , Cauchemez et al., 2009 , Chinazzi et al., 2020 , Djidjou-Demasse et al., 2020 ); and adopted a school closure strategy ( Anderson et al., 2020 , Ebrahim et al., 2020 ).

In the first week of April, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization announced that 195 countries had implemented national school closures, affecting almost 91.3 percent of the student population, or 1.598.099.000 affected learners ( UNESCO, 2020 ). Courses moved from in-person learning to online learning, predominantly using information and communication technology (ICT) ( Evans et al., 2020 , Quezada et al., 2020 , Sandars et al., 2020 , Woolliscroft, 2020 ). These measures could not be easily enforced and created many issues due to a significant proportion of the curriculum being used, which was not originally planned for online or remote learning ( Bozkurt and Sharma, 2020 , Hodges et al., 2020 ); similarly educators themselves were not equipped for online learning or digital resource use ( Quezada et al., 2020 ); and many students did not have the required devices, internet access or resources needed to study remotely online ( Assunção Flores and Gago, 2020 , Rahiem, 2020a , Rahiem, 2020b ). Moreover, some learners and educators were not familiar with the digital platforms and online programs that they were required to use at such short notice ( Huber and Helm, 2020 , Rasmitadila et al., 2020 ).

The transition to working and studying from home, which took place rapidly, caused numerous issues for the education sector, including higher education with university students dealing with significant obstacles to their learning process. Schiff, Zasiekina, Pat-Horenczyk, and Benbenishty (2020) investigated the practical challenges and concerns that university students encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic in two countries: Israel and Ukraine, with two large samples of university students from both countries. Results showed that the students' key practical challenges in both countries included fears about their family health and their learning assignments. The study reported that the degree of exposure and difficulties in both countries varied, but their connection with the varying students' concerns appears robust. More precisely, the constant exposure to the threat posed to the community by the media contributed to their increased anxiety and affected the students' learning.

Huang et al. (2020) studied the Chinese government's policy on pandemic education, focusing on how the government ensured uninterrupted learning while classes were disrupted by transforming the entire education system and implementing online learning methods. They pointed out that there were many barriers to this rapid reform: 1) lack of preparation time, teachers had not prepared their learning material to enable them to adjust to online learning, and the preparation of such material was time-consuming; 2) teachers/students' isolation, left them frustrated and helpless; and 3) The need for an appropriate instructional approach to keep students motivated and engaged during the long period of online learning, especially because distance learning drop-out rates are typically higher than on-campus-based learning.

Many technologically advanced countries already had e-learning and online education programs in place when the pandemic first began. While in developing countries, where internet service and technological equipment availability is often limited, the learning adaptation was more complicated ( Farooq, Rathore, & Mansoor, 2020 ). Chung, Subramaniam, and Dass (2020) looked at online learning preparedness among university students in Malaysia. Data from 399 students in two different courses showed that respondents were generally prepared for online learning. However, more than half of the respondents implied that they did not want to continue studying online in the future, if they were given a choice. While internet access appears to be the biggest challenge for undergraduates, understanding the subject content was also a major issue for diploma students.

Emon, Alif, and Islam (2020) examined the problems in Bangladesh due to online learning in higher education during the COVID-19 enforced school closure. In Bangladesh, all the universities were directed by the Minister of Education to conduct online education. While some view this as an education-friendly policy, a recent survey of 2038 students in 45 higher education institutions run by BioTED, a novel training and research initiative, found that one-third of Bangladeshi students did not want to engage in online academic activities. The same study also found that 55 percent of students did not have adequate internet connectivity, and 44.7 percent did not have access to a computer (i.e., laptop, PC, tablet, etc.) to effectively participate in online teaching.

Ramij and Sultana (2020) researched the preparedness and practicality of online education in Bangladesh during the pandemic. The research analyzed primary information gathered through a survey. A logistic regression model was applied to explain the assumptions, in line with the collected data's descriptive interpretation. The results suggested that the lack of technical infrastructure, high internet prices, low internet speed, the financial crisis, and mental strain on students were the key barriers to online education in Bangladesh for the majority of students.

Another research in Bangladesh, Mamun, Chandrima, and Griffiths (2020) looked at the case of a private university student and his mother from Bogra, Bangladesh, who committed suicide together due to family issues that arose due to studying at home. He concluded that governments in Bangladesh and other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) should think very carefully about online schooling before making it mandatory. LMIC students are much less likely to have the required access to the internet and technology needed to enable online education.

Farooq et al. (2020) explored the problems faced by medical faculty members and students in Pakistan when participating in online medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their data identified the following challenges: lack of faculty preparation and institutional support, internet accessibility problems, student engagement, online evaluation, and difficulties in recognizing the unique complexities of online education.

Kapasia et al. (2020) examined the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on undergraduate and postgraduate students from various colleges and universities in West Bengal, India, using an online survey involving 232 students that was conducted from 1 May to 8 May 2020. The study showed that students, particularly those from remote areas and disadvantaged parts, were confronted with various problems related to depression, poor network connectivity, and an unfavorable home study climate.

The study discussed in this article is part of a larger project on Emergency Remote Learning (ERL) in tertiary education in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research found that students had paradoxical viewpoints and insights into learning; ERL was viewed as flexible yet challenging ( Rahiem, 2020a ). Students said that studying remotely at home allowed them the flexibility to control their own time, which provided them with additional time for self-care, daily exercise at home, and a lot of family time. At the same time, they also study in a comfortable and quiet environment. Contradictory to the degree of flexibility, they argued that lecturers overwhelmed them with assignments, and they, therefore, found it difficult to control their time. They felt distracted by their siblings and the noise at home, while a few of them thought that, compared to face-to-face learning, remote learning was much more tiring. They complained about technological interference while studying, costly internet costs, less structured courses, and difficulties accessing learning materials during the ERL ( Rahiem, 2020a ). The study also explained the technology barriers and challenges in using ICT that the students faced: device issues, internet connectivity, technology costs, and lack of technology skills. Students had problems with incompatible devices, sharing devices with other family members, unstable internet connection, restricted or unavailable internet access, data costs, purchasing new appliances, new programs or apps, inexperience with ICT, lack of ICT skills, and inadequate learning platforms ( Rahiem, 2020b ).

Students need to overcome all of these unexpected learning changes as quickly as possible ( Dhawan, 2020 ); A lack of certainty, insecurity, volatility, and reduced autonomy and self-directedness are typical feelings encountered by students during the pandemic crisis ( Germani, Buratta, Delvecchio, & Mazzeschi, 2020 ). Staying at home, worrying about being affected by the virus, changing their usual school routine, and not being able to socialize with friends affect their mental well-being ( Husky et al., 2020 , Rahiem, 2020a , Son et al., 2020 ). The pandemic brought the infection risk of death and led to intolerable psychological strain ( Cao et al., 2020 , Horesh and Brown, 2020 ). Stress has an impact on students' motivation ( Martin, Cayanus, Weber, & Goodboy, 2006 ). Some students with psychological hardiness will suffer a loss in motivation to perform and, even worse, a few will experience a severe state of depressed mood ( Cole, Feild, & Harris, 2004 ). All of these factors mean that students are often at risk of significant learning loss ( Dorn, Hancock, Sarakatsannis, & Viruleg, 2020 ).

However, the exploration of students' experiences conducted by the researcher showed that students remained positive and kept moving forward on their learning despite all the limitations they faced ( Rahiem, 2020a ). The students were still eagerly attending the online courses, working on assignments, and maintained their grades despite all the barriers and challenges they faced. In recognizing this, the researcher continued the study and aimed to explore what kept the student's motivated to learn amid all the difficulties and constraints of learning remotely online? The research discussed in this paper, in particular, is the subsequent issue of looking at the experiences of university students studying during the pandemic, discovering that they remained motivated, which led to further exploration into the source of this motivation. By understanding their motivation, we can learn what could be done to help students succeed despite all the limitations and help prepare them to be motivated during this time of difficulty.

This study used the case of students in Indonesia, but the lessons learned are applicable beyond the country's borders, especially developing countries. Technologically advanced countries are equipped with all the resources required for online education while developing countries only have full-fledged online education ( Ramij & Sultana, 2020 ). Many public institutions in developing countries also do not have access to structured online learning management systems (LMS) to promote contact between students and/or faculty members ( Sobaih, Hasanein, & Abu Elnasr, 2020 ).

2. Theory/Calculation

2.1. learning.

Vermunt and Donche (2017) conducted a systematic literature search to identify empirical and theoretical work research on students' learning patterns in higher education using the ILS inventory in the reference period (2004–2016). Their study recognized four qualitatively different learning patterns: reproduction-directed learning, meaning-directed learning, application-directed learning, and undirected learning. In reproduction-directed learning, students strive to recall the learning material to enable them to replicate it in a test. They memorize the learning materials and sequentially pass through them, step by step, rarely thinking about the relationship between larger units. Students pay a great deal of attention to the regulations made available by teachers and other external agents. The reason they study is to pass the exam or to test their ability.

Students who study in a meaningful-directed way take a deeper approach to learn. They try to grasp the significance of what they understand, explore relationships between different facts or views, structure learning materials into a greater whole and engage critically in what they know. They learn in a self-regulatory way and do not restrict themselves to prescribed materials. Students who study in an application-directed way strive to explore the connection between what they know and the outside world. They're trying to find examples of what they're doing and think about how they're going to apply what they're learning in reality. Students who study in an undirected way do not know how to handle their studies. This trend can also be seen with students transitioning from one type of schooling to another, e.g., from secondary to higher education, from undergraduate to graduate, or students from another country with different pedagogical methods. They continue to follow the approach they have used previously, as they do not yet know how to learn better. They attach great importance to fellow students and teachers to provide support and help them adapt.

In this study's initial research report, the researcher addressed how the change in learning methods had impacted students' learning habits. Students had been used to face-to-face conventional teaching methods and had not found it easy to adapt to remote online learning ( Rahiem, 2020a , Rahiem, 2020b ). The initial investigation results indicated that students appeared to have reproduction-directed learning patterns before the pandemic, in which they studied mainly for the examination. Because the students had previously been highly reliant on the teachers, they found it hard to adjust and could not catch up quickly with the learning when they were expected to study independently at home. They claimed that they felt that they were not learning because there was no lecturer to guide them in grasping the lesson ( Rahiem, 2020a ).

The study also showed that the university and its community were not well prepared to face an emergency, such as closing the campus due to a pandemic. The major and dramatic change in learning resulted in the students learning in a largely undirected way. As Vermunt and Donche (2017) explained above, students have lost their way of learning because they continued to study in a way that they had used before. They faced challenges in adapting to new circumstances: curriculums and lessons originally designed for conventional learning, the unprecedented use of technology in teaching and learning programs ( Rahiem, 2020b ), the need to study independently and the subsequent lack of structure ( Rahiem, 2020a ). Teachers' support in this situation is very important ( Vermunt & Donche, 2017 ). University learning should allow students to learn independently through various methods, with prior planning into how remote learning could be implemented if needed.

The biggest lesson from the COVID-19 crisis is that disasters or health crises could arise at any moment; therefore, prior preparation should enable society to face such threats, students to adapt, and trainers to be prepared with direct learning skills for emergencies. It is imperative that universities are better aware of the latest ICT available, as it is an alternative to schooling when learning is disrupted due to an emergency, and are better positioned to use these facilities in the future if another crisis is to occur.

However, the use of ICT for learning is not without problems. The students in this study explained that they missed getting the opportunity to socialize, develop relationships with peers, and work as a team on a class project during online learning ( Rahiem, 2020a , Rahiem, 2020b ). Millis (2010) described cooperative learning as one of ten high-impact learning activities that improve student learning. Haggis (2004) clarified that learning in higher education is social and relational; it should be operating adeptly in a realistic environment, learning problem-solving and rational thinking, language and interpersonal skills. Lotz-Sisitka, Wals, Kronlid, and McGarry (2015) argued that higher education needs to provide students with opportunities for engaged and experienced transformative praxis. For this reason, it is essential to explore alternative ways for students to develop skills to communicate and work together during online learning.

Another thing to be taken into account is that higher education is intended to prepare youth for the workforce ( Lester & Costley, 2010 ). How does learning pay attention to this during online learning? The researcher's study sample was prospective social science education teachers. They said that online learning could be effective for theoretical subjects, but not for more realistic lessons such as cartography or teaching practice (which they believed online learning would be ineffective). They also questioned how distance learning could prepare potential teachers for the world of work, as they had lost the required in-school training and face-to-face experience with students. Despite this, the unique benefit they have gained is a better insight into teaching online in a distant learning environment.

The changes in learning methods that influence student learning habits during emergency remote learning are feared to affect student motivation. In this study's initial research, students discussed online learning challenges, as mentioned above. The researcher found that students still completed the semester well despite all the challenges they faced during the 2019/2020 semester (February to June 2020). Understanding the learning concept is a solid basis for understanding the adaptation of student learning patterns to the emerging emergency learning environment during health crises and their measures to respond to the situation. This interpretation is used to clarify the research findings: amid all the limitations, what motivates the students to continue learning during the pandemic?

2.2. Motivation

Motivation is a complex aspect of human psychology and behavior that affects how people want to spend their time, how much energy they expend on each assigned task, how they think and feel about the task, and how long they are engaged in the task ( Urdan & Schoenfelder, 2006 ). Research has demonstrated that students with academic motivation continue to see school and learning as important, like to learn and enjoy learning-related activities ( Zimmerman, 2000a , Zimmerman, 2000b , Zimmerman, 2008 ). Conversely, a lack of motivation is a key explanation for academic underachievement ( Scheel, Madabhushi, & Backhaus, 2009 ). Numerous factors that have a real impact on learning and motivation are the school environment, educators' attitudes and expectations, and family and social values. These factors have been shown as critical factors that impact student participation and academic performance ( Wang & Pomerantz, 2009 ). Motivation is, therefore, essential to students' academic achievement.

In this study, the researcher used two motivational theories, namely Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and Self-Determination Theory (SDT), to outline the research context and results. SCT was first introduced as Social Learning Theory (SLT) in the 1960s by Albert Bandura. It evolved into SCT in 1986 and claimed that learning occurs in a social context with a complex and reciprocal interaction between the person, the environment and the actions. SCT's distinctive characteristic is its focus on social power and its importance on external and internal social reinforcement ( Bandura, 1989 , Bandura, 1999 , Bandura, 2002 , Bandura, 2012 ).

SCT has added emotions and cognitions compared to SLT so that one's feelings and thoughts influence one's behavior and that one's behavior can alter or provoke reactions from the social environment ( Oden, Ward, & Raisingani, 2019 ). The cognition of individuals on academic work is influenced by social-contextual factors such as teacher interaction, student expectations, and descriptions of the quality of learning content ( Bandura, 1986 , Dweck and Leggett, 1988 , Weiner, 1986 ). In this sense, motivation does not occur exclusively within the individual or entirely within the person's context. Rather, motivation is derived from individual encounters within the social context of the classroom and the school.

Self-Determination Theory (SDT), on the other hand, focuses on the forms of motivation: autonomous motivation, controlled motivation and amotivation ( Ackerman, 2020 , Ryan and Deci, 2000 ); as predictors of academic achievement. SDT was formulated by Deci and Ryan (2008) . This theory discusses the social factors that enhance and reduce motivation, proposing and finding that the degrees to which basic psychological requirements for autonomy, competence and relatedness are supported, compared to the negative impact, forms and strengthens the motivation. SDT also examines people's life goals or aspirations, displaying differential relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic life goals to performance and psychological wellbeing ( Deci & Ryan, 2008 ).

Autonomous motivation includes both the intrinsic and extrinsic types of motivation in which people have recognized the importance of action and hopefully incorporated it into their sense of self ( Willem, de Rycke, & Theeboom, 2017 ). If people are self-motivated, they exhibit volition or self-indulgence in their actions ( Zerbinati & Souitaris, 2005 ). Controlled motivation, on the other hand, consists of both external regulation, in which one's conduct as a result of external contingencies of reward or punishment, and initial regulation, in which the control of action has been partly internalized and is energized by factors such as the desire for acceptance, the prevention of guilt, conditional self-esteem and self-involvement. When people are controlled, they are under pressure to think, feel, or act in a certain way. Both autonomous and controlled motivations invigorate and direct behavior, and they stand in contrast to amotivation, which pertains to a lack of intention and motivation ( Ryan & Deci, 2000 ).

Vansteenkiste et al., 2006 , Vansteenkiste et al., 2007 ) claimed that SDT has proved useful for understanding differences in student learning approaches, success and persistence. In addition to the concepts of autonomous versus controlled motivation for learning-related behaviors, SDT researchers ( Kasser & Ryan, 1996 ) have increasingly paid more attention to the individual targets that students concentrate on. Individuals are said to have a natural propensity to focus on intrinsic and growth-oriented goals rather than extrinsic and out-of-the-box goals. The intrinsic goals are theorized to be more specifically related to the fulfillment of the essential psychological need for competence, partnership and autonomy. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic purposes was originally used to assess psychological health and wellbeing. More recently, it has been related to learning, success and engagement in learning activities.

In some experimental studies, it has been found that activities with intrinsic goals rather than extrinsic goals promote deeper processing and a greater conceptual understanding of learning content and encourage the person to arrange both short-term and long-term learning assignments ( Froiland and Worrell, 2016 , Vansteenkiste et al., 2005 ). Such results have been shown to occur because intrinsic goal-framing produces a particular level of motivation; for example, it encourages the task's orientation. However, extrinsic goals also have positive effects; namely, it encourages rote learning and provides higher persistence in short-term learning tasks ( Vansteenkiste et al., 2005 ).

These two literature studies (learning and motivation) form the framework for this research. In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, students' nature of learning, learning methods, and learning habits may change, which may affect student motivation to learn. However, in the initial study of this project, students were found to be able to complete one semester of study and obtain good grades. By understanding student motivation, we can learn what helps the students learn despite the varying limitations. Also, by learning more about student motivation, we can suggest how to help and prepare students to be more resilient in challenging times in the future. Additionally, this information may also help teachers understand the learning process better from a student's perspective, which may positively influence their teaching.

3. Material and methods

This study looked at how students remained motivated to learn during the COVID-19 crisis. The research discussed in this article is part of a larger project on tertiary ERL education in Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researcher used a qualitative phenomenological approach as the analytical method. A phenomenology is a research approach that aims to explain the nature of a phenomenon by examining it from the viewpoint of those who have experienced it ( Teherani, Martimianakis, Stenfors-Hayes, Wadhwa, & Varpio, 2015 ). Using a phenomenological approach, the researcher gathered and investigated the university students' insights on how they remained eager to learn, considering all the limitations they often faced when studying remotely from home. Phenomenology research investigates the nature of the experience and explores the phenomenon's plausible viewpoints ( Casmir, 1983 , MacDermott, 2002 ). The phenomenological approach outlines the meaning of experience, both in terms of what has been experienced and how it has been experienced ( Teherani et al., 2015 ).

A phenomenological approach is concerned with understanding social and psychological phenomena from the people involved ( Wellman & Krueger, 2002 ). The researcher obtained findings from the realities examined. Realities are thus treated as pure 'phenomena' and the only absolute data from where to begin ( Groenewald, 2004 ). However, the researcher did not detach herself from investigating the students' realities in this study. Following the hermeneutic tradition, the previous experiences and expertise of the researcher are important guides to study. The researcher's education and knowledge led her to recognize a phenomenon or incident worthy of investigation ( Neubauer, Witkop, & Varpio, 2019 ).

The researcher employed purposive sampling methods in selecting the study participants. This sampling method is the most important kind of a non-probability sampling to identify the primary participants ( Groenewald, 2004 ). The sample was selected based on both the researcher's judgment and the purpose of the research and respondents with experiences relating to the phenomenon to be researched ( Wellman & Krueger, 2002 ). The background and context of the data gathering are essential for interpreting the data and the findings' conclusion.

In the hermeneutic approach to phenomenology, theories help focus analysis and help decide which research participants will be involved and how research questions can be answered ( Lopez & Willis, 2004 ). The learning theory and motivation influenced the researcher in determining who the study participants were, which included 80 university students studying social science education in the fourth semester at a public university in Jakarta. They were all studying social science education, with forty participants from class 4A (majoring in sociology) and forty participants from class 4B (majoring in geography). The participants were halfway through their studies, which generally takes eight semesters for undergraduates to complete. They had considerable previous academic experiences that they could then use to compare and contrast to the ERL experienced during the COVID-19 outbreak. The students came from various social backgrounds. This variation augmented the data further. The researcher intentionally selected students from educational programs as they were training to become teachers and had, therefore, taken training courses in learning strategies, educational media and curricula. They may, therefore, link their previous courses to the ERL during the pandemic.

The research participants were fairly balanced in terms of gender, with fifty-eight percent of female respondents. Forty percent of students had rented a room near the university to reside in while studying. Yet, only one percent remained in this accommodation at the time the research was conducted. Sixty-eight percent of the total sample lived in suburban areas of Jakarta and the surrounding areas. Just 36 percent of students are economically adequate, estimated by their parents' total monthly revenue above the Jakarta basic income standard (Rp. 4,416,000 or USD 313). Sixty-eight percent had a personal PC/laptop of their own, while 3 percent did not have a PC/Laptop, and the rest shared devices with other family members. However, all students had smartphones. Thirty-eight percent used a Wi-Fi connection, while the remainder had internet access on the phone through a restricted data plan that they would then tether to connect to the internet on their laptop/PC.

Participants' identity and university name have been concealed to protect their privacy and encourage them to speak openly. The researcher used the class name (4A & 4B), followed by a number for each person to be identified in the data analysis and findings. Before the data was collected, the researcher explained the research's scope and purpose, and informed consent was signed by all students who agreed to participate in the study. If they felt dissatisfied, they had the right to withdraw from the analysis without being questioned. The researcher obtained a research approval letter from the university research center, where the researcher worked, and the authorization to collect data from the university's research center where the students were studying.

The researcher collected data in creative ways. In the absence of direct interviews, due to the large-scale social restrictions that were in place in Jakarta at the time of the research, the researcher collected information from students using written media: diaries and essays. The participants wrote a diary containing two weeks of daily learning activities (May 4–18, 2020). Later, they concluded their thoughts and opinions in a reflective essay on learning during the COVID-19 outbreak, which was compiled on May 20, 2020. The researcher also held two online focus group discussion meetings following Patton's suggestion ( Patton, 1990 ), which outlined the need to incorporate data collection methods for data triangulation and establish a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. Meetings were conducted twice; each discussion lasted for 120 min and was attended by 40 participants each time (May 26 and 27, 2020). The focus group discussions sought to enhance the accuracy, reliability, validity and adequacy of the findings (member check). The researcher introduced the overall results of the analysis and then opened a discussion session. The researcher explained her understanding of the participants' experiences. The participants and the researcher discussed the findings and concluded that the study appeared credible after the participants acknowledged the report's consistency and correctness.

Hermeneutic phenomenology is rooted in perception, recognizing events and phenomena in an individual's life, and then viewing these experiences through that context ( Neubauer et al., 2019 ). Hermeneutic phenomenology accepts that the researcher freely acknowledges her preconceptions and reflects on how her subjectivity is part of the study process rather than bracketing the researcher's subjective perspective ( Kerry-Moran & Aerila, 2019 ). The researcher was mindful of the importance of the individual's past and took note (analytical memo) of the influence they had on the experience ( Neubauer et al., 2019 ).

Hermeneutic phenomenology's interpretive work is not tied to a single set of analytical techniques; instead, it is an interpretive method involving several analytical activities ( Bynum & Varpio, 2018 ). Following Bynum and Varpio (2018) , the researcher began the study by defining a fascinating phenomenon that focused her attention: the students' learning motivation amid the limitations encountered during the COVID-19 crisis. The researcher studied the students' lived experience and focused on the phenomenological themes that defined the experience with the phenomenon by reflecting on her own experiences at the same time.

The researchers used NVivo to both store and analyze the data. This software allowed the researchers to interpret the detailed data that was gathered during the study process. The researchers also produced a continuous memo in the NVivo program that helped document ideas and analyze the participants' opinions, perceptions, and experiences. Analytical memos offer the researcher a means to record their thoughts during the study and code memos as supplementary proof for the thesis ( Saldaña, 2016 ). The analytical memos captured reflections in writing, which were then reflected upon and rewritten, creating a continuous, iterative cycle to develop increasingly robust and nuanced analyses.

Throughout the analysis, the researcher retained a clear orientation towards the phenomenon under study and examined sections individually and then wholly as a group. This last step, often identified as the hermeneutic circle, underlines the practice of consciously considering how data contributes to the evolving understanding of the phenomenon and how each strengthens the significance of the other ( Bynum & Varpio, 2018 ).

Phenomenological themes are the findings of the study. The researchers used the two-stage coding model of Miles, Huberman and Saldana to interpret the findings ( Miles et al., 2014 , Saldaña, 2009 ). The two stages of coding are not linear events; the data had indeed been continuously analyzed. In the first cycle, the researcher coded each essay and diary separately. During the second step, the researcher re-configured and re-analyzed the coded data in the first coding process. The second-cycle coding's main aim was to define the categorical, thematic, logical and theoretical sense of the first-cycle code set. The researcher updated the codes, added an array of different codes and withdrew a few codes to infer the study results. When recording the findings, the researcher made summative conclusions based on personal interpretations based on the data analysis facts.

Despite all the limitations of ERL, the university students studied remained motivated to study from home. What was their propensity to learn? Results showed that the motivation of the students fell into three major phenomenological themes, each with further associated sub-themes. The three themes and sub-themes described included: (a) personal, the sub-themes of challenge, curiosity, self-determination, satisfaction and religious commitment; (b) social, the sub-themes of relationships, inspiration, and well-being; (c) the environment, the sub-themes of facilities and conditioning.

On the basis of the researcher's interpretations, the researcher made summative findings based on the evidence of the data analysis. Data was systematically explored in a two-cycle phase. The following figure describes the analysis process and how the findings were established (see Fig. 1 , Fig. 2 , Fig. 3 , Fig. 4 , Fig. 5 , Fig. 6 ).

Theoretical model.

Students’ learning motivation.

Data analysis process and research findings.

The personal motivation.

The social motivation.

The environmental motivation.

4.1. Personal

The first phenomenological theme that emerged from the iterative and continuous research due to the two-cycle process was, “personal.” The theme of personal motivation included five sub-themes and thirteen key codes. The challenge, curiosity, self-determination satisfaction and religious commitment sub-themes were perceived by the researchers as personal motivation.

Students remained motivated to study remotely from home during the COVID-19 pandemic as their learning targets challenged them. The learning impediments increased their determination to learn, even though they believed that ERL was ineffective. The students explained that they wanted to improve their grades from the previous semester. They were confident that they could still achieve their goal(s) and gain a good grade.

Another personal aspiration is that they were challenged to have a career choice when they graduated and make their parents proud of them. One student expressed her desire to be an educator in the reflective essay. She pushed herself to be able to do well this semester despite all the limitations she had encountered.

What motivated me to learn during the COVID-19 pandemic was my desire to become a teacher, so even though learning during this semester was disrupted and learning was conducted online, I always pushed myself to be able to learn independently for the sake of my dream of becoming a teacher (4B10).

In the case of university students in Indonesia, their attachment to their parents is very close. It's different from young people in western society, who typically leave home after graduating from high school. Almost all students are also financially supported by their parents. In this social-cultural environment, the cost of studying in higher education is the responsibility of parents. Not only the tuition fees but also the students' daily living expenses, which are often financed by their parents. Almost all the students who participated in this research wrote, in the diary and essay, that they were still studying in a difficult situation because they didn't want to disappoint their parents. Learning at the university level is often a great sense of pride for students, parents and their wider family since it is still considered a luxury, and only thirty-three percent of the students have parents with a bachelor's degree.

The best way for me to remain inspired to keep learning during the COVID-19 pandemic is to recall my primary aim of studying at university. It's my dream to make my parents happy. My parents only graduated from elementary school, so I must become a graduate and make my parents proud (4B8).

Many of these students do not live comfortably, as many of their parents receive less than USD 300 a month. Yet, they have social solidarity and empathy for those who are not so lucky. Eleven students volunteered to teach in the Ayo Mengajar (Let's Teach) Movement in underdeveloped villages for a month, from January to February 2020. They said in the FGD that the experience of living and teaching in a remote village taught them to be thankful and to keep up their love of learning. They saw that certain people were in a worse situation, and it inspired them to continue learning, so if the students they had visited could do it, why couldn't they? “It was an experience that made me think about how lucky I was, and it is this experience that made me so eager to learn even in today's tough times (4B22).”

Another supporting code that was interpreted as personal motivation is curiosity. Students retained their enthusiasm to learn new things, overcome trouble, and succeed during a tough situation. In the reflective essay, many students wrote virtual learning is a new experience. In the FGD, the researcher found out that almost all of them had never used Zoom or Google Meet before. In the diary, they complained about the cost of accessing the internet and the meeting apps that used too much of their data plan. However, they wrote also that they were curious to use the new technology. As young people adapt to new experiences, it is challenging; overcoming adversities and keeping things going is an achievement. “These are all new things for me, but I am curious and would like to know more about how to use it (4C25).”

Self-determination is one category of code that led the researcher to infer that the student's personal motivation was what had kept them going despite all the limitations of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data showed that self-determination was a specific category: to carry out assignments, to remain active, to study hard, and to think that, since they have paid school fees, they are not willing to quit but need to keep going. As described in the initial study and stated in the literature review section, students' learning pattern tends to be reproduction-directed learning. They were studying because they wanted good grades, so the assignments were very important; the researcher interpreted it as a personal theme since their commitment to carry out assignments came from themselves.

In this situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am inspired to continue learning by knowing that I am not on leave, there are responsibilities that I must keep working on. There are schedules that need to be followed every day, there are assignments from the lecturer that I have to complete (4B39).

Self-determination is also illustrated by how the students remained active. The students found life at home tiring, while learning helped keep them occupied, especially as they felt stressed from continually thinking about the world's current situation. The respondents felt that exercise kept them more focused and productive. An exercise is an act of self-determination, being responsible for one's own body, being mindful and present, and making sense of doing. A participant wrote in the reflective essay: “I usually do exercise, yoga or aerobics, or practice breathing. These exercises help me to concentrate on and keep full of energy, to know what I want. (4A22)”

Another coding that the researcher felt contributed to the conclusion of self-determination was paying full school fees, especially as for the majority, their parents paid the school fees. Only a limited number of individuals earned a scholarship or paid for their education themselves with their own money. They felt obligated to succeed in learning and did not want to waste their parents' money by not being driven to learn. They, therefore, determined that every penny spent by their parents was worthy. A participant stated in her diary:

My motivation for learning is to remember that I paid the fees in full, but I need to study at home. The money is impossible to be returned, so I have to study hard and participate in online learning, maintain the GPA from last semester, or hopefully receive a better grade than before (4C3).

The next category of codes is satisfaction, a feeling of fulfillment. The researchers used this category after perceiving the realities shared by students in their writing: they were motivated to learn as they continued to think positively, to be grateful and to appreciate themselves. Students were happy if they learned, and they remained driven to learn, even though ERL had many limitations. Positive thinking helped them to keep moving in this uneasy time. To stay thinking positively was shared by many students who emphasized the importance of it.

Furthermore, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which inspired me to study, I keep on thinking positively. I tried to appreciate and be thankful for what was going on at the moment, so that I could continue to learn without coercion (4C30).

The research also revealed that the students rewarded themselves with small presents or alike. They marked their life achievements or any accomplishment with a little gift, however small or amazing the achievement was. One participant shared in the FGD: “I like to give rewards or small gifts to myself when I have finished tasks that I think are tough, such as things that I like: making my favorite food or watching movies, and so on (4B18).”

The last category, which was part of the phenomenological theme of “personal,” is religious commitment. The students were motivated by their religious devotion. They believed that learning was a Muslim responsibility, and they received God's reward for learning. This perception is probably uncommon in other cultures, but this is how the students in this study looked at worship and religion and how studying is viewed as worship. Since it is worship, learning then becomes a duty.

Learning is the duty of every Muslim, because I am a Muslim, I must therefore continue to study even if there is a pandemic like this. I have a deep belief that learning is worship, to repeat lessons is remembrance. Let's hope this pandemic comes to an end soon so that I can study again on campus (4B12).

One hundred percent of the participants in this study are Muslims. They all shared their religious practices in their daily diary and talked about their great faith in God and their religion. By having faith in God, they became thankful for what they have. A female student explained how she was grateful because Allah had allowed her to continue her education. She believed that God's grace that gave her a chance to study in higher education.

Despite the presence of the COVID-19 virus, which required us all to study online, even though it was difficult to do so, I had to remain grateful because Allah still allows me to continue my education. There are people out there who want to study at undergraduate level. A lot of people out there are trying to get to college, yet they cannot, so I will remain grateful even though I should study online now. Therefore, I keep studying hard, following the rules of the government, to stay at home and learn from home (4B34).

4.2. Social

The researcher interpreted the realities conveyed by the participants. Reading the diaries and reflective essays, it was concluded that they were also socially driven: their relationship with parents, family and friends; the social environment encouraged them to stay motivated to study.

The students' relationships with their siblings, parents, (extended) family and friends kept them learning in trying situations. Since school closures took place at all educational levels in Indonesia, students remained at home and studied with their siblings. They said that this also became one of their motivational outlets. “Looking at my siblings and cousins doing their school assignments makes me motivated to do mine (4B2).”

Family relationship is a close bond in Indonesian culture. Children often leave their parents' home when they are married and settled (have money to buy a house). Although many still stay in their parents' home, even if they already have their own families. Parents send children to study at a level that is as high as possible due to their responsibility and pride. These child-parent or family relationships are significant and become one of the key reasons students often expressed as what motivated them to keep studying despite all the limitations. They understood what their parents had sacrificed to meet their needs and send them to school.

My parents have always struggled to keep my sister and me going to school. So, there is no longer any reason for me and my brother to be lazy now. My parents are now working outside in the midst of a pandemic. Besides that, my parents really encouraged me and my younger sibling to keep learning online. My parents have made it easier for me and my sister to learn from home. We have equipment, such as laptops, smartphones, and ample internet and network data to make me ready to continue studying at home during the pandemic. (4B28).

Many students pointed out how their friendship with their classmates had driven them to continue learning in this unprecedented time. They found encouragement and enthusiasm by staying in touch and spending time together virtually. A student said during the FGD: “My friends and I are helping each other. We also have fun doing TikTok together and playing bingo to relieve the boredom of sitting at home for a long time. (4B31).”

If the students felt lost, they would look for inspiration. Inspiration is one category created from the data: reading and watching biographies and reading motivational quotes. Inspiration is a form of motivation that comes from social contact or learning from others about success, stories and thinking. Reading and observing other success stories (biographies) and inspirational quotes also kept them learning. “By watching and seeing smart people who have been successful and lived happily. I'm being inspired (4C19).”

They also drew inspiration from quotations, including quotations from a religious figure. One student explained how the words of Imam Shafi'i, a Muslim scholar, inspired him to keep learning any time he felt lazy: “If you are unable to withstand the fatigue of learning, you must be able to withstand the pain of ignorance (4B24).”

The last category was “well-being.” Students stayed motivated to study remotely during the outbreak of COVID-19 because they wanted to stay safe and keep others healthy. Even though they didn't like learning from home, they felt a mutual obligation to control the virus by remaining home. They were concerned not only with themselves or confined to the family but also with others in general. An individual could not win this war against the virus, but they need the communities' teamwork to take any required steps, such as wearing masks and social distances. It is the responsibility of society.

I always feel that this is my duty and obligation. This situation has occurred because the government is trying to disrupt the COVID-19 pandemic. By following the government's policy of studying from home, working from home, and conducting worship from home, it's a way of care and participation to help control the coronavirus pandemic, so that in the future my friends and I can study on campus again together. (4B21)

4.3. Environment

Besides being personally and socially inspired, their eagerness to continue learning has also been derived from the community. Students have exposed the realities of learning during the COVID-19 pandemic: how environmental conditioning and learning-promoting facilities are necessary to inspire students to succeed in learning despite all the limitations.

Students should have some provisions so that they can study effectively. They need a certain condition that will make them stay learning for a long time to come. Some students prefer a peaceful and quiet learning environment. “To be more interested in learning, I always build a serene environment to make learning more effective. I'm looking for a secluded spot, and I'm also preparing all the learning supplies (4B17).”

In contrast, some are more motivated to learn while they're in chaotic moments, such as learning while listening to hard rock music. “Loud music makes me more excited about studying (4C25).” Regardless of what they preferred, the students could create their learning environment that proved effective for them, something that might not have been possible if they were not distance learning.

Some students explained how the extended period of learning online was dangerous as they would overuse their cell phones. Some students were overwhelmed and wanted to turn off the phone for several hours per day. “I'm trying to limit the use of mobile phones, so it's not too excessive (4B24).” This change is intended to prepare the learning mood.

5. Discussion

The threat of the virus, rapid changes in learning and day-to-day behavior, including financial difficulties, could make anyone lose hope and become overshadowed by despair. The students in this study expressed their dissatisfaction with the ERL and their annoyance with all the changes that they had encountered. Yet, they all managed to complete the semester successfully. All students in this study participated in the lecture until the end of the semester, completed all the assignments and almost all had an achievement index above three (highest grade four). Quality index three means the students received a good grade (B). Out of 80 students, only six received an achievement index, which was less than three.

It is clear from the students' statements and responses that at times they had indeed lost some of their motivation to learn, frequently lacked energy, and were tired and bored, which is all understandable given the situation that they found themselves in. Yet despite all of this, the students did not give up and remained determined to study and finish the semester and the assignments given to them successfully. This motivation and the reasoning behind it, is what the researcher was trying to investigate in greater detail. The students encountered many limitations, but they remained motivated to study remotely from home during the crisis of COVID-19. They were personally, socially and environmentally driven. Students were personally motivated to study because they were challenged to achieve their personal goals, curious and eager to learn, determined and responsible to study, satisfied and grateful to remain healthy and to have the opportunity to study in higher education, and committed to their faith and believed that learning is part of worship.

5.1. Personal

Students shared what hindered them from studying, including their mental state. Most of the students, however, were motivated. The first phenomenological theme to describe what motivated the students was that they were driven autonomously by mental fortitude. From the researcher's analysis of students' shared realities, most of the students were self-motivated, determined or self-indulgent in their conduct. They had their own goals that guided them. They were not motivated by controlled motivation. It was not a reward, penalty or regulation that moved them.

Students had explicitly defined their individual goals, and all of them mentioned how these goals were their main source of motivation. They talked about how committed they were to reach their goals, no matter what was happening. Students concentrated on the plan. They had a natural tendency to focus on intrinsic growth-oriented objectives rather than extrinsic or guided intentions. Goals provide a context through which an individual reacts to events and results in a particular pattern of cognition, behavior and control ( Dweck & Leggett, 1988 ). The students had a long-term goal of making their parents proud and creating a successful future for themselves with a proximal goal of achieving a good grade.

Rowell and Hong (2013) described two forms of goals: mastery (or learning) goal orientation and performance goal orientation. Mastery-goal-oriented students are academically driven to study and master materials and to show their skills ( Pintrich, 2000 ). Students with performance goal orientation, on the other hand, show their competence relative to others and appear not to take academic risks. While both goals can improve achievement, mastery goals are positively linked to inner motivation and steady learning outcomes, whereas performance-oriented goals appear to be negatively related to intrinsic motivation ( Rowell & Hong, 2013 ). Students in this research have mostly been motivated by their intrinsic mastery of goal-oriented motivation.

The students verified their self-efficacy, autonomous and attributional motives for learning. They talked about their confidence in performing tasks and achieving good grades, including studying from home. They claimed that they could address the challenge of their study. Such behaviors were positive indicators that students were resilient and could overcome the daunting obstacles they encountered during the pandemic. The students gave encouraging signs that they had elevated efficacy expectations. Students with high efficacy expectations work on demanding assignments, make sacrifices, continue when faced with challenges, and anticipate that they will excel in the future. Students with poor self-efficacy for learning prefer to avoid undertaking assignments, avoid making an effort, and leave when they face learning problems ( Rowell & Hong, 2013 ).

Having a target is one of the important factors that ensured these students remained motivated. Goal setting means establishing an objective to serve as an individual's aim of action ( Schunk, 2012 ). A student who sets the goal of attending a university must commit to study hard to learn and gain good grades, which will help the student achieve their target. These goals direct the students' actions and help individuals track their learning progress and appear to improve academic achievements ( Rowell & Hong, 2013 ). When their performance is evaluated as positive, their performance improves, thus maintaining motivation ( Locke and Latham, 2002 , Locke et al., 2005 ). These findings are important for lecturers, as they need to ensure that they assess the students' performance to sustain and even improve their motivation. Informative input on their learning progress and whether students are on the right track to achieve their goals is beneficial for students to achieve their goals ( Rowell & Hong, 2013 ). Lecturers may also encourage students to set realistic targets based on their competence, as Locke and Latham (1990) argued that setting realistic targets based on student competence is more successful than setting goals that are simple or too difficult to achieve.

Vermunt and Donche (2017) researched learning patterns in higher education and found four learning patterns. One of those is reproduction-directed learning, which implies students learn because they want to reach goals, such as passing a test. Reproduction-directed learning is what best explains the learning patterns of students uncovered in this study.

Learning in tertiary institutions should provide students with opportunities to learn from their surroundings, solve problems and think critically ( Haggis, 2004 ). Students must be allowed to discuss and provide feedback on the actual events surrounding them ( Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2015 ). Thus, learning should use meaning-directed patterns, where students learn through context, not just by memorizing the text. Dieckmann, Friis, Lippert, and Østergaard (2012) offered target-oriented learning called simulation-based learning. Learning should use meaning-directed patterns, where students learn through context, not just by memorizing text. This learning approach's key process objectives are to improve learning, involve learners, and help apply what has been learned during the course.

Liem, Lau, and Cai (2016) summarized the empirical work on achieving goals and their effect on academic, social and well-being outcomes. The research was set up in Singapore. The researchers concluded that Singapore students would benefit from educational activities that concentrate on mastery or task-based objectives. This is also seen in this report's data, how the goal is important and is the main motivation for students to continue learning. Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to clearly describe the learning objectives and then discuss what steps need to be taken to achieve them. If this were to be completed in the remote online learning era, learning would be better organized. It could help address the issue raised by the students that during the COVID-19 period, they felt that they were left isolated and lacked direction.

5.2. Social

The students' social interactions should also be encouraged to help them continue studying even in the tumultuous times of COVID-19: their relationship with family and friends, their inspiration from biographies and insightful quotations, and their social duty to others to keep everyone healthy by staying at home safely. Motivation does not take place exclusively within the individual or completely within the context of the person. Rather, motivation stems from individual encounters within the classroom and the school ( Rowell & Hong, 2013 ). The researcher concluded from the revealing data that the second phenomenological theme was social, that students often found the driving force to study from within their social ties.

The students demonstrated how they supported each other. They repeatedly emphasized the importance of their peers and how they had become stronger together. When they were down, they looked for support and motivation from their peers. Social groups are very important to students. Ryan and Deci (2000) clarified that students' attitudes towards academics seem to vary depending on their social groups. Students prefer to identify with peers who share similar achievement and motivational characteristics. Peer groups affect shifts in students' intrinsic value or enjoyment of learning, and friends' attitudes about school become more similar. Therefore, peer attitudes are important to shape the classroom climate and influence academic sentiments ( Urdan & Schoenfelder, 2006 ).

Student perceptions towards school and learning can be detrimentally affected by negative social environments, such as family difficulties or peer ( Urdan & Schoenfelder, 2006 ). Some students in this research addressed the challenges of their parents in meeting the needs of their children. A few parents had lost their jobs in this difficult time. They also discussed how often they could not study because they had to help their younger siblings learn. However, almost all the students explicitly stated that their parents were their key reasons behind their motivation and a form of strength. They had very optimistic feelings towards their parents, aspirations, and how hard they needed to work to make their parents proud of their achievements.

Young, Sercombe, Sachdev, Naeb, and Schartner (2013) looked at international students in higher education adaptations. Findings revealed clear correlations between participants' academic performance, satisfaction with life in the new location and psychological well-being, and aspects of their intercultural competence, interaction with non-co-nationals, including hosts, and their language skills. Social support and interaction with non-co-nationals were found to be critical for these international students. Social support is required to adapt to the new learning environment; the students in this study experienced drastic learning techniques. Almost all of them addressed how important social support was to advance their learning and help them adapt. Parents and teachers should also be mindful of the student's need to support in words or gestures. Students should develop a strong relationship with their peers to help each other in good and bad times.

5.3. Environment

The environment is the third phenomenological theme. The students were motivated by their surroundings, the place they were studying, the atmosphere and the facilities. Vansteenkiste et al., 2006 , Vansteenkiste et al., 2007 ) explained how the interpersonal environment could affect autonomous and controlled motivation. Specifically, social contexts (e.g., classroom climates) in terms of the degree to which they were self-sustaining rather than controlling students' learning. Some research confirms that autonomy-supportive contexts strengthen autonomous motivation while controlling contexts decrease autonomous-motivation and increase controlled motivation ( Deci and Ryan, 2008 , Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). Students in this study perceived how the environment influenced their motivation independently. The environment did not directly affect their motivation. They explained how they prepared themselves to learn by conditioning their atmosphere and making themselves comfortable by learning in a certain place.

Reading their diaries and essays, they expressed their passion for learning in new ways, even though they had a hard time adapting. The main driving force behind their motivation was their self-determination, their autonomous and goal-oriented attitudes. The students pointed out two aspects of the theory of self-determination motivation and the theory of social cognitive motivation, which has not been identified in past studies: religious commitment and social responsibility to keep oneself and others healthy. Participation and involvement in the local cultural context enormously influence how individuals feel, think and behave independently of their values and beliefs ( Kitayama, 2002 ). Their religious beliefs affect the way they think, feel and behave. They considered learning to be part of the practice of their religious beliefs. Their faith motivated them to keep on learning. The importance of religious belief as a means of enabling young people to cope with and rebound from adversity is something that must be further studied. Modernization and globalization may introduce young people to world culture, but the cultural roots and traditional religious values of the society in which they live still influence how they work and respond to life's opportunities and challenges. The representation of young Indonesian adults in this research can also be seen in other Muslim societies, especially in developing countries.

Fear may be beneficial at some point during an outbreak, leading to behavior that might reduce the spread of the disease. Excessive fear can lead to the irrational belief that hinders control measures for infection and may precipitate, however, inadvertently, maladaptive coping strategies ( Paek, Oh, & Hove, 2016 ). Although fear is an important tool in public health messaging, excessive fear can hinder its reach and exacerbate another public health issue ( Hisham, Townsend, Gillard, Debnath, & Sin, 2020 ). Fear of being infected by the virus might keep students at home and encourage them to study at home. The students even said that learning from home during the pandemic was ineffective, but they were willing to stay home and explore from home to reduce the virus's spread. They transformed that fear they had developed into a sense of social responsibility.

Vermeulen and Schmidt (2008) investigated the relationship between the quality of the learning environment, the learning process, and graduates' career success. Responses to the questionnaire of 3324 graduates at the Dutch university, with a focus on traditional large-scale classes, were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings indicated an indirect effect of university education on career progress. The learning environment increases students' motivation, which in turn increases their learning outcomes. Learning results show a significant relationship to success in the early phase of graduate employment. During remote online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, students need to prepare their learning space and atmosphere at home. They said it could be a driving force to study when they're sitting in a place they felt comfortable at. Vermeulen and Schmidt (2008) agreed that the learning environment enhances the motivation of students.

6. Conclusion

In the tough times of the COVID-19 crisis, students still have a positive attitude towards learning. The innate factors that led to this attitude included; being challenged, their enthusiasm and self-determination, the satisfaction of attaining and accomplishing their personal goals, and their religious devotion. They were also inspired by their social circle, their families and their friends. They were influenced by biographies and inspiring quotes, were determined to remain at home to help contain the virus, and agreed that they should learn from home because they cared for their well-being and felt responsible for others' well-being. The environment also inspired them; the atmosphere and facilities at home helped them remain focused on learning. Their determination made them resilient, a source to overcome and thrive on adversity during the pandemic. They used what they had experienced to enable them to cope with the situation and make progress in their studies. The COVID-19 situation was their first experience of school closure for more than a semester and led to the students studying remotely, and adapting to challenges and many new experiences. They were not prepared, but many of them were able to make many adjustments and keep progressing. They will undoubtedly be able to manage these events better, should they do happen again in the future, if they are prepared. Education should prepare students not only for the workforce but also to empower them to be resilient in life's trials.

7. Limitations and further studies

This study is limited to the exploration of university students' insights and observations, uses only qualitative data, and a less representative sample; the researcher suggested further studies involving more dispersed samples and using mixed methods. This research focused on studying motivation, which could be expanded to investigate adolescents' and children's vulnerability and resilience and establish a resilience education model.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial entity, or non-for-profit organization.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105802 .

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current events conversation

What Students Are Saying About Living Through a Pandemic

Teenage comments in response to our recent writing prompts, and an invitation to join the ongoing conversation.

By The Learning Network

The rapidly-developing coronavirus crisis is dominating global headlines and altering life as we know it. Many schools worldwide have closed. In the United States alone, 55 million students are rapidly adjusting to learning and socializing remotely, spending more time with family, and sacrificing comfort and convenience for the greater good.

For this week’s roundup of student comments on our writing prompts , it was only fitting to ask teenagers to react to various dimensions of this unprecedented situation: how the coronavirus outbreak is affecting their daily lives, how we can all help one another during the crisis and what thoughts or stories the term “social distancing” conjures for them.

Every week, we shout out new schools who have commented on our writing prompts. This week, perhaps because of many districts’ move to remote online learning, we had nearly 90 new classes join us from around the world. Welcome to the conversation to students from:

Academy of St. Elizabeth; Abilene, Tex.; Alabama; Anna High School, Tex.; Arlington, Va.; Austria-Hungary; Baltimore, Md.; Bellingham, Wash.; Ben Lippen School; Bloomington, Ind.; Branham High School, San Jose, Calif.; Boston; Buffalo High School, Wyo.; Camdenton, Mo.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Collierville, Tenn.; Dawson High School, Tex.; Denmark; Desert Vista High School; Doylestown, Penn.; Dublin, Calif.; Dunkirk, N.Y. ; Eleanor Murray Fallon Middle School; Elmhurst, Ill.; Fairfax, Va.; Framingham, Mass.; Frederick, Md.; Hartford, Conn.; Jefferson, N.J.; Kantonschule Uster, Switzerland; Laconia, N.H.; Las Vegas; Lashon Academy; Lebanon, N.H.; Ledyard High School; Leuzinger High School; Livonia, Mich.; Manistee Middle School; Miami, Fla.; Melrose High School; Milton Hershey School, Hershey, Penn.; Milwaukee; Montreal; Naguabo, Puerto Rico; Nebraska; Nessacus Regional Middle School; New Rochelle, N.Y.; Newport, Ky.; Newton, Mass.; North Stanly High School; Oakland, Calif.; Papillion Middle School; Polaris Expeditionary Learning School; Pomona, Calif.; Portsmouth, N.H.; Pueblo, Colo.; Reading, Mass.; Redmond Wash.; Richland, Wash.; Richmond Hill Ontario; Ridgeley, W.Va.; Rockford, Mich.; Rovereto, Italy; Salem, Mass.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Seattle, Wash.; Sequoyah School Pasadena; Shackelford Junior High, Arlington, Tex.; South El Monte High School; Sugar Grove, Ill.; St. Louis, Mo.; Timberview High School; Topsfield, Mass.; Valley Stream North High School; Vienna, Va.; Waupun, Wis.; Wauwatosa, Wis.; Wenatchee, Wash.; Westborough Mass.; White Oak Middle School, Ohio; and Winter Park High School.

We’re so glad to have you here! Now, on to this week’s comments.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

The coronavirus has changed how we work, play and learn : Schools are closing, sports leagues have been canceled, and many people have been asked to work from home.

We asked students how their lives have changed since the onset of this pandemic. They told us about all the things they miss, what it’s like to learn online, and how they’re dealing with the uncertainty. But, they also pointed out the things that have brought them joy and peace amid the chaos.

Life as we know it, upended

Yesterday my school district announced that our school would be closed until May 5. Upon receiving the email, I immediately contacted my friends to share our responses. To most of my friends and me, this news was no surprise. Already finishing week one of quarantine, I find myself in a state of pessimism in regards to life in the midst of a pandemic. My days have blurred into Google Classroom assignments, hobby seeking, aimless searching on Netflix, and on exceptionally boring days, existential contemplation.

The dichotomy of chance freedom from school and yet the discombobulated feelings of helplessness and loneliness plague my time home alone. My parents are yet working and as an only child, I try my best to stay sane with blasting music and shows. Other times I call my friends to pass the time doing school assignments. Even then, schoolwork seems increasingly pointless.

With most of my classes being APs, the recent CollegeBoard update for the 2020 AP exams was a blow to my educational motivation. I am naturally a driven, passionate learner with intense intellectual curiosity. But in the midst of this chaos, I can’t help feeling like all the assignments from my classes are just busywork. I manage to stay afloat, keeping in mind that everyone is doing their best. Despite no ostensible end in sight, I hope this quarantine brings out the best in me, in society, and in nature.

— Brenda Kim, Valencia High School

The struggles (and joys) of distance learning

Although we do have online school now, it is not the same. Working from home is worse as I don’t care to admit, my work habits from home are not the best. I am easily able to procrastinate at home and having class in bed is not the best idea. Plus, I can no longer get the one on one help teachers provide if needed.

— larisa, california

The coronavirus affected me because now having to do school virtually is kinda hard because I don’t have much of a good wi-fi, and its nerve-racking to know about what we’re gonna do about the tests we have to take in order to pass because I do care about graduating, and going to next grade in order to keep going to finally graduate school and get my diploma I just hope this virus doesn’t affect anything else besides school.

— julien phillips, texas

I personally have to do 2-3 hours of work a day instead of the usual 8 hours (including homework), and it feels more tiring somehow. I’m in the comfort of my home all the time, but have to do this for a few hours, and it feels much more monotonous than 8 hours in a classroom, and that’s what everybody has been doing for a lot of their life.

But in that sense, it also feels a lot calmer not being around people constantly, having anxiety and autism. The people in classrooms are insane. It didn’t affect my life negatively by much, but it really makes me think. If the school system were like this in the near future, I think it would be much more sustainable, in many ways.

— Alexen, Lawrence, Massachusetts

I never understood how much social interaction I experienced at school until the end of the first week of my self quarantine. I had been trapped in my house with my family for about 5 days at that point, when my AP Language and Composition class had a Zoom conference. I had done them for other classes so I wasn’t exactly excited for the opportunity. It was just another zoom lecture.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a lecture, it was a conversation. It was a discussion about our last current events assignment that I didn’t know I desperately needed. The conversation was explosive. Differing opinions flew left and right, people brought their cats to join in the fun, family members popped in and out of the frames, and the controlled chaos felt incredible. I relished in the opportunity to argue and challenge their opinions. I didn’t even realize how isolated I was feeling until I was able to talk to them in a creative and intellectual setting once again.

— Yaffa Segal, New Rochelle High School

Finding new ways to socialize

Finding new ways to stay social has been essential, and recently, my friends and I all drove our cars to a large parking lot, parked more than 6 feet apart from each other, sat in our trunks, talked and enjoyed each other’s company for over an hour and a half. This was crucial in keeping our sanity. We missed each other and being in the presence of people other than our family; however, we were sure to maintain our distance and continue social distancing. We did not touch anything new and we stayed more than 6 feet apart from each other speaking about the adjustments we have been making and the ways we have been coping with all of the changes we are experiencing.

— Carly Rieger, New Rochelle High School

…[T]his “corona-cation” has given me a lot of time to reflect, and while I haven’t seen my friends in person for a week and half, I feel closer to them than ever. We’ve FaceTimed almost every day and we play some of our favorite group games; Psych and PhotoRoulette are two apps I highly recommend to have fun from the comfort of everyone’s homes.

Because my mom has a weak immune system, I’ve been quarantined since the moment my school closed, so social distancing has been a little more than 6 feet for me. However, my friends did make me a care package filled with my favorite candy and a puzzle which my family completed in a week.

— Jessica Griffin, Glenbard West HS Glen Ellyn, IL

Mourning canceled events

To say that this virus has completely changed my day to day living would just be an understatement. I went from having things to do from 7:20am to 8:45pm every week day to absolutely nothing. The whole month of March was going to be booked as well. I had activities such as the Wilmington Marathon that I work at and the Masters Swim meet that I was going to volunteer for. Then I had a club swim meet but everything got canceled. Everything that I was looking forward to just came to a halt and nothing is going to be postponed, just canceled.

— Ellen Phillips, Hoggard

As a High School senior, this quarantine has seemed to just chop off the fun part of our senior year. We had made it so far, and were so close to getting to experience all of the exciting events and traditions set aside for seniors. This includes our graduation, prom (which is a seniors only event at my school), senior picnic, theme weeks, and much more.

— Cesar, Los Angeles

Like many other students involved in their school theatre programs, I was severely affected by the closing of schools due the growing pandemic. My theatre company had been rehearsing our play for months and in an instant, we were no longer allowed to work on our show. The Texas UIL One-Act Play Contest was postponed because of the coronavirus, and while it is a reasonable action, it left an army of theatre students with nothing to do but vent through memes, TikTok, and other forms of social media. These coping mechanisms helped me, as well as my fellow company members, process the reality that after all the hard work we put in, we may never get to perform for an audience.

— Ryan C, Dawson High School

Living with mental, emotional and financial strain

The coronavirus is having a pretty significant impact on me. Physically, it’s reducing my daily physical activity to the point where the most exercise I get is walking around my house and dancing around my room to songs that make me feel like I’m not in the middle of a pandemic. Emotionally, it has also been very straining. My mom is a substitute teacher and she is out of work for the rest of the school year with no pay. I myself am missing my closest friends a lot right now, and feel lonely often.

— Sela Jasim, Branham High School

I struggle a lot with mental health. I have had depression and ptsd, as well as anxiety for years. Seeing people outside of my family is what keeps me sane, especially those closest to me. Having to FaceTime my therapist is weird and scary. Things are so different now, and I’m slowly losing motivation. My thoughts recently have been “don’t think about it” when I think of how long this could possibly last. I am scared for my grandparents, who live across the country. I feel like I haven’t spent enough time with them and I’m losing my chance. Everything is weird. I can’t find a better way to describe it without being negative. This is a really strange time and I don’t like it. I’m trying my hardest to stay positive but that has never been one of my strong suits.

— Caileigh Robinson, Bellingham, Washington

My mom is a nurse so she has to face the virus, in fact today she is at work, her unit is also the unit that will be taking care of coronavirus patients. My whole family is very afraid that she will get very sick.

— Maddie H., Maryland

Appreciating the good

Although we are going through a horrific time filled with all kinds of uncertainty, we are given the opportunity to spend more time with our loved family and learn more about ourselves to a broader extent while also strengthening our mental mindset. I can’t stress the amount of frustration I have to return to class and my everyday routine however, I’ve learned to become stronger mentality while also becoming creative on how I live my life without being surrounded by tons of people everyday.

— anthony naranjo, Los Angeles

Although I could list all the negatives that come with Covid-19, being a junior in high school, this quarantine has been a really nice calm break from a life that seemed to never stop. A break from 35 hour school weeks along with 15 hours worth of work, being able to sit down and do hobbies I missed is something I am really appreciating.

— Ella Fredrikson, Glenbard West, Glen Ellyn, IL

An upside to these past weeks of quarantine is being able to see my usually busy family more, especially my father. I’ve had more talks and laughs with my family the last few days than I’ve had in the past couple of months, which helped lighten such a stressful time in my opinion.

— Marlin Flores, Classical High School

Several months before the outbreak my mom randomly asked me what would I study if I could choose anything, not for a grade, not for any credit. Now, because of corona, I am learning Greek with my father! He can’t travel for work now and doesn’t attend meetings as frequently, so he is at home too.

— Lily, Seoul, Korea

How Can We Help One Another During the Coronavirus Outbreak?

In a series of recent Times articles , authors wrote about the need for solidarity and generosity in this time of fear and anxiety and the need for Americans to make sacrifices to ensure their safety and that of others in their community.

So we asked students what they and their friends, family and community could do to help and look out for one another during the coronavirus outbreak. Here is what they said:

Help your neighbors, especially the sick and elderly.

There are so many things we can do to help each other during this pandemic. Use gloves when you go shopping or are in public, masks if you think that it would be best for you, those who have more wiggle room financially can help out others who don’t have that same wiggle room financially and who are now struggling, buy groceries for those who can’t afford it or are at risk if they were to go out in public. Donate if you can, and help the elderly or those who desperately need it, and for goodness sake wash your hands and (for all that need to hear the reminder) SOCIAL DISTANCING IS A FRIEND. Social distancing is proven to help drastically, so please, social distance.

— Dakodah, Camdenton, MO

As a person, we have the ability to help our friends, families, elders, people with illnesses in our community and people with high risks of getting the virus. We can accomplish this by simply observing who may need help with shopping, for groceries or clothes, with yard work, or any kind of outside work that is done where there are rooms full of people, such as going to the bank. As a younger person and a person with a low risk of getting the virus, I have the capability to walk to places and go in and out of buildings with a smaller chance of getting the virus as compared to one of my elder neighbors. My friends and I can go around the neighborhood and see who needs help during this hard time, whether I have to give them money or food to help them out.

— Adrianna P, New York

Many elderly people in my vicinity suffer from chronic conditions and illnesses and there are others who often live alone. Going to the grocery store or the pharmacy can also be hassle for many. Due to the recent pandemic, people are stocking up necessities however, some people are not being practical and overstock, not leaving anything for others. Fights are breaking out in grocery stores and this is a dangerous situation to put the elderly in.

— Sydney, B

In our American society we tend to be very individualistic. This pandemic has truly proved that point as people do not care for other but themselves. During this time we should consider not only ourselves but the people in need, which are the elderly and young children. Instead of hoarding all the food share some with a neighbor or an old person that doesn’t quite have the ability to run around store to store grabbing what they can. Make sure when you feel ill or if a family member feels ill to stay contained in your home. If this is not an option you could always take your ideas to social media, posting ways to stay clean and making sure we support the people who need it.

— Marley Gutierrez, Pomona, CA

Stay connected.

We could help one another just by the simple ways of: texting your friends every now and then and keep them in check and give them positive reinforcements; call your far away family and report to them on how you are doing and make sure that they are doing OK as well; help elders that are not safe to go out by running errands for them.

— Xammy Yang, California

It’s really important for everyone to stay in contact with others. Be open to talking to people you don’t necessarily talk to all the time just so you can fulfill your own social requirements. It’s also important to listen to others and take into account their feelings. We are all in a time of stress and anxiety about the unknown and we have to just go with the flow and wait it out. I’m stressed about possibly missing milestones in my life, like prom and graduation, but there are others suffering. We all just need to be prepared, stay healthy, and reach out to others.

— Elysia P., Glenbard West HS, Glen Ellyn, IL

Stay apart.

The most important thing one can do during this time of uncertainty is to protect oneself, that is how one can protect others. By practicing social distancing, the risk of spreading germs or disease is reduced. From within one’s home, much can be done. Keeping in touch with close friends and family, donating money and food to those in need and not hoarding or stockpiling too much are all things one could do to support one’s community. Every little thing counts.

— Francheska M-Q, Valley Stream North

Honestly, as boring as it sounds, staying home is the best way we can help against the coronavirus. The second best in my opinion would be spreading the word and encouraging others to wash their hands often and to not go in large groups. Our number one priority should be protecting the elderly and people more vulnerable to getting the disease, or more likely for it to be fatal. If I were to get the virus, my chances of death would be very low, but I would be most worried about accidentally passing on the virus to an elderly person who might not be so lucky. Staying home, clean, and avoiding large groups is the safest and best way for us to help in efforts against the coronavirus.

— Christian Cammack, Hoggard High School In Wilmington, NC

Stay informed.

During this time of crisis, seeking accurate information should remain people’s main focus. Reading articles from trusted sources such as the CDC and New York Times rather than sensationalized media that spreads false rumors for attention will improve reactions to this scary situation because it has the potential to reduce panic and allow people to find ways proven to slow the spread of the virus.

— Argelina J., NY

Donate to those in need.

We can help one another during the virus break by doing online donations to people who need it the most, not taking supplies that you know you don’t need, and/or offering online support for those who have relatives that have the virus and want someone to talk to. We, as a community, can keep distance and update each other on the constant updating news.

— Marisa Mohan<3, NY

… donate food to food banks or homeless shelters. Food is even more of a necessity right now, so it is crucial that everyone has what they need because some people get their food from school or from work, which isn’t available at the moment. Finally, even if we feel we’re healthy and we’re not afraid to get the Coronavirus, it is very vital to participate in social distancing because it will help society overall.

— Bridget McBride, Glenbard West HS, Glen Ellyn, IL

Encourage positivity.

In my opinion, we should all do our best to help and encourage each other with healthy habits and staying positive. Too many people are worried about the coronavirus. What will happen because of this is more stress and anxiety. In turn, this leads to people stocking up on products and taking resources from other people who need them. As long as we all contribute and help one another, we will be able to keep things under control.

— Mieko, CA

Learn lessons for future preparedness.

I believe that this horrible trouble we are all put into is teaching our younger generations such as me, to be prepared when these unexpected events happen. We can help the elders and take care of them because if we don’t prepare next time then we will struggle to survive if the coronavirus becomes a long term thing. This situation is also bringing our communities together, or at least teaching us to. We can learn to share resources that maybe we have to much of. Just a couple days ago, my grandma had ran out of cleaning supplies and she didn’t have a working car at the time. My family and I decided to give her some of our extra supplies since we stocked up on so much. I believe that we can definitely use this time to help our minds grow and learn new things.

— Becky Alonso, CA

Things we shouldn’t do

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” -Hippocrates This quote describes my opinion of the COVID-19 crisis. Our communities must make sacrifices in order to overcome the trials we are facing. Instead of describing what we should do, I am going to shortly convey examples of what our local communities shouldn’t do. We shouldn’t panic. Panic causes the nervous system to spark and will create unsettling emotions that will produce nothing helpful for the situation at hand. We shouldn’t buy abundant amounts of resources unless instructed to. Please be considerate towards these people because they probably are struggling a lot more than you at the moment. We should be mindful of others. I am not saying we have to interact with everyone (DO NOT DO THAT), but I am saying we should be kind when we do interact.

— Adrianna Waterford, Bloomington, IN

What Story Could This Image Tell?

In our Picture Prompt, “ Social Distancing, ” we asked students to write memoirs and poems inspired by the illustration above, or tell a short story from the perspective of one of the people pictured. In prose and poetry, they expressed a range of responses to the pandemic , from fear, panic and anxiety to resilience and hope.

Creative short stories

From the perspective of the Binocular guy:

I thought social distancing would be great, no one would bother me or interrupt my work. But actually doing it makes me realize that those things, those pains in my neck that would annoy me, are the things I miss the most. I miss the smell of Phyllis’s choking perfume. I miss Michael pacing around the office. I miss the way that Pam would bite her pen when she was focusing. I miss people. Now that I’m alone in my apartment, I hunger for human interaction. I have taken to staring out the window at people walking past and imagining the conversations they have. Oh how I wish to be a part of them, but I can’t risk going outside. I thought my window would cure my loneliness, but it has only made it worse. Social distancing has hurt me more than any virus could.

— Andrew B., Abilene

It’s another day in the city. Car horns honking, people scurrying over town, and there I am. No, not that person or the other. In the upper left corner. Do you see me? Yes, you found me! The only creature not on a screen. I have never understood why they sit there and look at their own devices. I enjoy sitting on the roof and looking at others. People watching is my favorite, but the only thing that most people are watching is a tiny screen. Everyone is wrapped up in their circumstances. Sick in bed with their computer, walking down the stairs with a device. But I’ll be here, waiting for someone to notice me — just the dog on the rooftop.

— Hope Heinrichs, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Opening to short story for the homeless man:

It’s so cold out today. My blanket is the only that is keeping me partially warm. Before today, my HELP sign got me a few dimes. That way I could buy some food. But today, the streets are empty. The only people passing by either have masks covering their face or run past me with their hands full of food and supplies. I wonder what’s going on?

— Ariel S., Los Angeles

Cold: That’s all he feels as he’s reclining on a random door.

Scared: That’s what he wants to avoid feeling as he sees people coughing around him.

Alone: That’s what he is as he wanders from place to place, looking for somewhere to spend the night.

Worried: That the door’s owner might make him leave his only sanctuary.

Pity: That’s the emotion he evokes on the few that are brave enough to wander the streets.

Remorse: That’s the emotion that the passersby show when they refuse to stop to help.

Cold: That’s all he feels as he realizes that he has no one.

— Laura Arbona, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Memoirs in the time of coronavirus

Trapped. The walls are closing in. Someone coughs from outside, I immediately close the blinds and clorox the window. The television is on loud. The person on the other end of the line of dad’s phone is obviously deaf because dad is yelling into our end. In line for the computer, I have been waiting for two hours.

— Allison Coble, Hoggard High School

It all began with just one human. After days there where more and more infected people and everything started to be different. We all thought it isn’t that bad and China is the only one who suffers but we were absolutely wrong … Now there are too much cities which are in quarantine and there are about 16 thousand deaths. I’m scared. And I can#t do anything than staying at home and pray. I often watch videos and try to distract myself. When people ask me what has changed I can say: Everything. The human has changed. The human attitude has changed. Just everything. It’s not surprising for me if you can’t find toilet paper or water. The people are going crazy because of this virus. They know that they can be in danger fast if they just make one false decision. In this time we all have our anxiety. Either we are scared of being infected or we are scared that a loved one is infected.

— jana.hhg, Germany

This pic remind to me that we live in this period. Under from the outbreak of pandemic’s coronavirus, we stop to go out in order to avoid each social contact. So, we stay our home every day, all day. Most of the people stop working regularly and they work from home. The schools and other utilities are closed down and remain still open grocery stores and services for essential products. The whole world is in quarantine. Our effort to be uninfected is captured from this pic.

— Joanna, Greece

This photo shows that even in a time where socializing is not advising, humans are naturally social and are still coexisting in this time of distancing. The way the artist drew this made me feel a sense of separation but also togetherness at the same time, which is similar to the way I feel now. We’re all living our different lives with different situations and yet, we’re all somewhat connected.

— Ella Shynett, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Its Day 3 of quarantine and its starting to hit. This picture shows us how people are pretty much keeping as much distance away from people as possible. They’re still living their lives normally, just alone. But at my house it’s anything but normal. Every time I touch a light switch, my mom swoops in and wipes it down with a Clorox wipe. When I have to itch my nose, my mom screams at me. But I know deep down she’s just trying to keep me and my sister safe from the virus. She mainly wants to protect my grandma, who is very vulnerable at this time. Its gonna take some time to adjust to this type of living, not seeing friends in person for weeks, or just going to starbucks. But I know that it will all pass in no time and we can go back to living our normal lives. I actually can’t wait for school to start for once.

— Dean, Glenbard West Highschool

Stuck inside with nothing to do I’m really bored can’t think of anything at all :/. All I can do is homework woohoo Cant see my friends all I can do is call Trying to get it all done before its due With this virus I sadly can’t even go to the mall Thinking of you and you and you Can’t wait to go back to school and walk the fourth grade hall!

— Isabella V Grade 4, Jefferson Township, NJ

Poem by The Lady Running With Toilet Paper:

TP TP Why do people have to hoard it It’s the coronavirus, not diarrhea Don’t’ jack up the prices, I can’t afford it One pack, that’s it It’s all I could find To those hoarding the toilet paper You make me lose my hope in mankind

As I rush down the vacant street I pass by some stores Some open, some closed As I scramble past the doors No one seems to be coughing But I can feel it in the air A dull creeping paranoia Assembling into a scare

Up the stairs I make sure to not touch anything Don’t forget to use your elbows Don’t touch the key ring In through the door, drop the TP, wash my hands Wipe down the counter, wipe down the door Make sure to cancel any plans

Sit in solitude Turn on the TV and watch the news All I’m able to think is, “Oh god we’re screwed!”

— Ellinor Jonasson, Minnesota

Is social distancing impractical, when we live at such close proximity, drink tea with the neighbors, or buy food from the Deli,

You could choose to be stubborn, and get frustrated from being indoors, or you could be compliant, And watch the birds soar,

In the end it’s our choice where we decide to look, The dirty wall to the left, or the canvas on the right,

— Saharsh Satheesh, Collierville High School, Tennessee

• Open access
• Published: 10 November 2022

Understanding the role of stress, personality and coping on learning motivation and mental health in university students during a pandemic

• Chris Gibbons   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6631-721X 1  

BMC Psychology volume  10 , Article number:  261 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

7000 Accesses

9 Citations

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Metrics details

The aims explored the associations between stress, personality and coping on student mental health and compared defensive-pessimism and optimism as influences on learning motivation. Most research construes ‘stress’ as ‘distress’, with little attempt to measure the stress that enhances motivation and wellbeing. Undergraduate psychology students (N = 162) were surveyed on student and pandemic-related stressors, personality, support, control, mental health and learning motivation. Overall, adverse mental health was high and the lack of motivation acute. While positive ratings of teaching and optimistic thinking were associated with good mental health, context control was key. Adverse ratings of teaching quality lowered learning motivation. Support and conscientiousness bolstered learning motivation and conscientiousness buffered against the adverse impact of stress on motivation. Openness was associated with the stress involved in learning. For those anxious-prone, defensive-pessimism was as effective as optimism was in stimulating learning motivation. Developing context control, support and strategies linked to personality could bolster student resilience during and post Covid-19.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Stress has historically been defined as a physiological and psychological response [ 1 , 2 ], and as the external stimuli that trigger or result in that reaction [ 3 ]. This early stimulus–response framework saw psychological factors as largely a consequence of the stress response. In contrast, in the Transactional model of stress, psychological and social factors are front and centre in recognizing and interpreting demands (the primary appraisal) and in managing those demands (the secondary appraisal). Adopting this model, stress is defined as the demands that exceed one’s capacity to cope [ 4 ].

The primary appraisal refers to the initial perception and assessment of the stressor. This can lead to the judgment that it is irrelevant (or benign), a challenge or a threat. As illustrated in Fig.  1 , sources of stress that are interpreted as demands in which one can achieve are called eustress (B) and those that are perceived as associated with apathy or boredom (A) or, more often, as exceeding one’s capacity to cope (C), are sources of distress [ 5 ]. The traditional health psychology approach construed stress in terms of degrees of distress. This study adopted a positive psychology perspective with university demands measured using an adapted National Student Survey (Higher Education Funding Council in England, 2017), with a response scale that allowed stress demands to be rated as hassles (that hold the potential to have an adverse effect on wellbeing) and as uplifts (that hold the potential to enhance wellbeing). This is consistent with the ‘threat’ and ‘challenge’ or distress and eustress primary appraisal judgments in the Transactional model. This study measured daily and ongoing demands, rather than life-events. This is consistent with Moos and Swindle’s (1990) argument that daily and ongoing stressors are important influences on wellbeing [ 6 ].

Adapted from the Yerkes–Dodson curve (1908) [ 7 ]

Sources of student stress

Sources of student stress include academic demands, such as coursework, assessment, exams and work-life balance [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]; to fear of failure and lack of timely feedback on assessments and to the quality of teaching [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. Personal sources of stress include financial concerns, managing apparent free time, frequently working part-time while studying, and concerns about future careers [ 13 ]. The changes students experience as they transition to university are frequently a source of acute stress. For most, they are learning to live independently, meet new people and often live in close confines with strangers, as well as managing their own finances, and all along with the challenges posed by a course that may leave them feeling overwhelmed [ 14 ].

Stress effects in students

Wellbeing is defined as: ‘…a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity’ [ 15 ]. While critics question the assumption of ‘completeness’ as integral to wellbeing, the definition highlights the critical role of psychology in wellbeing. Perceived stress can affect student wellbeing, including depression [ 16 ]; happiness [ 14 ] and even suicidal ideation [ 17 ]. Macaskill (2012) reports that students under 26 report more adverse wellbeing because they are still transitioning into adulthood [ 18 ].

A widely used measure of self-reported mental health is the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), with approximately, 15–19% of the general population categorised as ‘at risk’ of developing a stress-related illness based on this measure [ 19 ]. This is not a life-threatening illness but complaints ranging from tension headaches, back problems, mouth ulcers and cold sores to digestive and intestinal problems, mood swings and irritability. Among student populations, this can range from 30% to over 60% [ 11 , 20 ]. These stress effects have been observed in students in the UK; in North America [ 21 , 22 ]; Australia [ 23 ] and Sweden [ 24 ] and the experience of stress has been directly linked to student attrition and retention issues [ 25 ].

Pandemic stressors and effects

Following the global spread of the Covid-19 virus, a UK national lockdown was declared on 23 rd March 2020. This led to a dramatic change in students’ university experience. Learning and teaching became a virtual experience, with students, in this sample, receiving online pre-recorded lectures, live virtual seminars and tutorials. Rogowska, Kusnierz and Bokszczanin (2020) examined stress, coping and wellbeing in Polish students (n = 914) during Covid lockdown. Self-rated health and anxiety were poorer compared to normative data and those high in perceived stress more frequently used emotion-based coping [ 26 ]. Awoke, Mamo, Abdu and Terefe (2021), reported that over a third of health-professional students (n = 337) in Ethiopia, surveyed during the pandemic, reported high perceived stress [ 27 ]. However, neither study was longitudinal. Elmer, Mepham and Stadfeld (2020) measured the sources of stress and wellbeing in students (n = 212) before and after the onset of the pandemic in Sweden [ 28 ]. Within sample comparisons showed marked increases in depression, anxiety, loneliness and distress. Key sources of stress included the health of family and friends and uncertainty about their future, along with physically and emotionally isolation.

In a survey of 69,054 quarantined students in France, between April and May 2020, Wathelet et al., (2020) found that students worried more about any symptom of illness, indicating high anticipatory anxiety and the loss in part-time income was associated with higher anxiety, depression and even suicidal ideation [ 29 ]. In a longitudinal survey of 454 students in Italy, higher rates of mental health symptoms, related to depression, anxiety and obsessive–compulsive tendencies, were reported during lockdown, compared to when restrictions were lifted and females suffered disproportionately more [ 30 ]. A similar sex difference and overall deterioration in physical and mental health was observed in a longitudinal test in May and June, 2020, in university students in Germany (n = 917), [ 31 ].

What seems to add to the weight of stress and mental health concerns is not just the impact Covid might have on students but on their family and friends too. Of 7,143 students surveyed in China in January and February 2020, those whose family and friends had Covid, scored higher on anxiety [ 32 ], and similar results were found among students in Spain [ 33 ].

Since October 2020, the Office for National Statistics in England (ONS) have carried out three pilot surveys of university students (in mid-October and the start and end of November) with over 100 000 students in England and Scotland invited to participate via emails from the National Union of Students [ 34 ]. Between 2016- to pre-pandemic 2020, wellbeing measures (operationalised through life satisfaction, life worthwhile, happiness and anxiety), had already declined for students compared with similar aged non-students in the general population [ 35 ]. The differences are likely to be influenced not just by the increased demands and life changes students faced but that students are typically more willing, than non-students, to share mental health issues and university cultures are more supportive and focused on addressing student mental health.

In the Student Academic Experience Survey, a UK wide UCAS survey of first year students, taken in March, after most students had stopped face-to-face teaching, there was a drop in happiness scores [ 35 ]. The results from these and other large surveys [ 34 , 36 ] lays testament to the adverse impact Covid-19 has had on students’ lives and mental health.

Coping with stress

The secondary appraisal refers to individual coping resources, personality and the past experiences drawn on to perceive and manage stress demands. Key student coping resources include support [ 37 ] and control [ 13 , 38 , 39 ]. While trait-related control is a strong predictor of good coping, so is context control or the skills one acquires to feel in control in a given situation [ 11 , 40 , 41 ]. Given the potential context control has over trait-related control in improving coping, it is this type that is measured. Important personality ingredients, related to coping, include those measured by the Big Five [ 42 ], including extraversion [ 43 ] and conscientiousness, levels of emotional stability and openness [ 44 ]—in education contexts, openness is important if learning is to expand; and optimistic thinking strategies have been associated with improved wellbeing, performance and health [ 45 , 46 , 47 ]. Those scoring high on optimism construe stress demands in a way that makes success more likely. They tend to perceive change and stress demands as opportunities to grow and achieve, for example, those who cope well more frequently score stress demands as higher on uplifts and lower when rated as hassles [ 12 ]. They are biased to attend more to positive events over negative events (called defensive optimism) and they are more active in learning from their coping mistakes [ 4 ].

Norem and Cantor (1986) dispute the claim that adopting optimistic thinking strategies offers a panacea to the downside of stress [ 48 ]. They argue that for those anxious-prone, a more effective strategy is defensive pessimism. This involves setting yourself unrealistically low expectations in situations that cause you anxiety. Setting a high expectation of success could add to already heightened anxiety and inhibit performance, tipping you past the peak of the curve in Fig.  1 .

Aims and hypotheses

Most of the research into student stress and coping comes from pre-pandemic findings and the pandemic forced universities to turbo-charge their digital learning provision, providing a different environment to explore the role of stress and coping on mental health and learning motivation. Despite the education potential that digital and remote learning holds, its impact on learning motivation in higher education is mixed [ 49 , 50 , 51 ]. This underscores the need to explore its effect on student motivation during a pandemic, along with the coping and moderating influence played by personality, support and control on motivation and mental health. The factors affecting the rating of stress associated with achievement (i.e., eustress) is a relatively under-researched area in students [ 13 , 41 ]. This study, therefore, aims to explore the relationship between sources of stress (rated as hassles and again as uplifting opportunities) and influences on coping (ratings on support, context control and personality) on mental health and learning motivation. A second aim was to see if defensive pessimism, compared to optimism, was an effective strategy to harness anxiety as motivation towards learning goals.

The following hypotheses were tested:

H1: There will be a difference in the mental health of students studying during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic norms.

H2: There will be a difference in stress ratings (on hassles and uplifting ratings and pandemic-related stress) between those ‘at risk’ and ‘not at risk’ of a stress-related illness.

H3: There will be correlations between sources of stress, support, control and personality and the outcomes – mental health and learning motivation.

H4: Support, control and personality will have a moderating influence on the impact stress has on mental health and learning motivation.

H5: There will be no difference in learning motivation between those high on defensive pessimism and optimism.

A survey-based, correlational design was employed. The predictor variables were: course-related demands (rated as hassles and as uplifts), amended from the National Student Survey; pandemic-related stressors, including social media use and changes in diet and exercise; and, finally, aspects and influences on coping, namely support, context control and personality.

Participants

A sample of 162 university students (81% of the second-year cohort) were recruited from the second-year of a psychology BSc programme. The inclusion criteria were second year full-time psychology students. Part-time students and those first year were excluded to avoid conflating the different, additional demands they face with those measured (e.g. related to time management and transitioning to university). On demographics, 86.4% were female (n = 140) and 13% male (n = 21). Participants’ average age was 22 years (SD = 4.55 and range 18–59 years).

Students completed an online survey that included a brief and instructions and 89 items gathering information on demographics, sources of student stress, influences on coping—control, support and personality and on anxiety, course satisfaction, learning motivation and mental health.

The cohort was made aware of the study via email and in links on their course homepage to a google survey link. Participation was voluntary and respondents were told they could stop at any time without penalty. The survey took approximately 12 min to complete. They were given the opportunity to complete this in class.

The national student survey (NSS) [ 52 ]

NSS items were adapted so participants could rate each item twice – once as a “hassle” (a perceived source of distress) and once as an “uplift” (a perceived source of eustress). A continuous response scale, from 0 to 5, was used to rate each item as a hassle or uplift – 0 indicating that the item caused no source of distress or eustress and 5 indicating an extreme source. A range of factors were measured using 23 items from the NSS, such as teaching demands, assessment and feedback, time management etc. An example item is: ‘The extent to which teaching staff explain things’. Banked items from the NSS were selected to measure learning motivation . This was a two-item measure with a 5-point Likert scale. An example item is: ‘I have found the course motivating’. The Alpha coefficients for all factors ranged from .64–.85.

Pandemic-related stressors (generated by the author)

This scale contained six items that split into two sub-scales: time on devices and lack of motivation . They were generated following focus group interviews with three groups of second year students. Respondents rated each item on a 10-point response scale from 1 (Not at all True) to 10 (Very True). Sample items included: ‘During the period of Covid-19 restrictions, have you found that you have been: ‘…using social media more than usual’ (time on devices), ‘…losing your mojo’ (lack of motivation) The Alpha coefficient for time on devices was .67 and lack of motivation .85.

Context control [ 12 ]

This scale, of three items, aimed to measure how much participants had developed control in specific contexts. A 5-point Likert scale was used. A sample item is: ‘The pace of learning often leaves me with little feeling of control.’ Two of the three items are reverse scored. The Alpha coefficient was .80.

The values in action scale [ 53 ]

This eight-item scale measures levels of optimistic thinking. Participants respond on a five-point Likert scale. A sample item is: ‘I always look on the bright side’. The Alpha coefficient was .81.

Big five inventory-10 (BFI-10) [ 54 ]

This is a ten-item scale using a 5-point Likert scale. Respondents are asked to rate statements that describe their personality. A sample item is: ‘I see myself as someone who is reserved’. Two items measure each of the Big Five traits, with one of those two being reversed. Alpha coefficient ranged from .61–.74.

Defensive pessimism scale [ 48 ]

This is a twelve-item scale using a 7-point response scale from ‘Not at all true of me’ (1) to ‘Very true of me’ (7). A sample item is: ‘I often start out expecting the worst, even though I will probably do okay’. The Cronbach’s alpha was .87.

General health questionnaire (GHQ) [ 55 ]

This a twelve-item scale and respondents answer on a four-point frequency scale. GHQ measures general levels of self-confidence, happiness, anxiety, depression and sleep disturbance and, taken together, this comprises a general measure of mental health. An example item is: ‘Have you recently been able to concentrate on whatever you’re doing?’ Response options include: ‘Better than usual’, ‘Same as usual’, ‘Less than usual’, ‘Much less than usual’. The scale measures transitory distress. A scoring key of 0–3 was used to determine totals for the analysis and a scoring key of 0, 0, 1, 1 was used to determine ‘caseness’ or those ‘at risk’, where totals on the measure above 3 indicated a risk of developing a stress-related illness [ 50 ]. The Alpha coefficient was .89.

Hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS) [ 56 ]

The anxiety sub-scale of the HADS was used to measure anxiety. Respondents rated seven statements, each on a scale from 0–3, where 0 is “not at all” and 3 is “most of the time”. An example item is: “I feel tense or wound up”. The Alpha coefficient was .87.

The course satisfaction scale (abridged from the national student survey, [ 52 ]

This is a three-item scale, using a 5-point Likert scale. Respondents are asked to rate statements that describe their course, such as: ‘I enjoy my studies.’ The Alpha coefficient was .89.

The study received ethical approval from the Ethics committee at the host university. All participants received a brief and a point of contact for further clarifications. All were informed that participation was voluntary and they were free to stop at any time and all acknowledged informed consent before participating, in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

One sample t -tests were carried out to compare the mental health of the students studying during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic normative data (H1). Independent sample t -tests were carried out between those ‘at risk’ and ‘not at risk’ on sources of stress (H2) and between those identified as high in defensive pessimism and optimism on learning motivation (H5). Multiple hierarchical regressions were run using SPSS version 27. Predictors were entered in line with the Transactional model—Sources of stress (primary appraisal factors) were entered in block one and personality and the influences on coping (secondary appraisal factors) in block two, along with demographics. The regression tables illustrate the final block for each model. Regression assumptions were checked and confirmed, and the guidelines proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986) were followed to arrive at the most parsimonious model and in testing for moderation [ 57 ].

The GHQ results in this sample (M = 18.44, SD = 7.40) were compared with and significantly higher than normative data from James, Yates and Ferguson (2013) with a cohort (n = 251) of UK (medical) students (M = 13.39, SD = 5.77), t (159) = 8.63, p  < .001 [ 58 ]. The scores were computed for caseness and 68.5% (n = 111) were ‘at risk’ and 30.2% (n = 49) ‘not at risk’. This compares with 19% ‘at risk’ in the Health Survey for England report (n = 8034) [ 19 ]. This supports H1.

Table 1 compares those ‘at risk’ and ‘not at risk’ on stress ratings for the different sources of stress from the NSS scale, for example, those ‘at risk’ more frequently perceived ‘Teaching on my course’ (one of the demands they were asked to rate) as a hassle, compared to those ‘not at risk’:

There were significant differences in nine out of eleven stress demands, when rated as a hassle, with those ‘at risk’ rating the demands higher than those ‘not at risk’. There were no significant differences in the uplifting ratings between these two groups. This supports H2 for the difference in hassle ratings for the two groups, but not for the difference in uplifting ratings.

Pandemic-related stressors

Those ‘at risk’ (n = 110), (M = 15.55, SD = 4.01), compared to those ‘not at risk’ (n = 49), (M = 12.93, SD = 4.98), spent more time on their devices, t (157) = 3.51, p  = .001, and the ‘at risk’ group (n = 110), (M = 16.79, SD = 3.58), compared to those ‘not at risk’ (n = 49), (M = 11.08, SD = 4.80), scored higher on lack of motivation, t (157) = 8.32, p  < .001. This supports H2.

The regression model explained, 63.4% of the variance in scores on GHQ (Table 2 ). The results of the regression indicated that there was a collective significant effect between lack of motivation, neuroticism, context control, optimism and openness on mental health, F (6, 145) = 44.54, p  < .001, R2 = .648, Adjusted R2 = .634). The individual predictors were examined further and indicated that: Lack of Motivation, Beta = .33, ( p  < .001); neuroticism, Beta = .28, ( p  < .001); context control, Beta = − .26, ( p  < .001); and optimism, Beta = − .14, ( p  = .024) and openness, Beta = .10, ( p  = .041) were predictors in the model and offered partial support for H3.

Optimism and pessimism as predictors of learning motivation

Following the procedure first adopted by Norem and Cantor (1986), the participants in the upper quartile on defensive pessimism were identified and, from this group, those in the upper quartile on anxiety and course satisfaction were selected and they were compared with those in the upper quartile on optimism. Results of the independent sample t -tests indicated no significant differences in learning motivation between the 11 participants selected for being in the upper quartile on defensive pessimism, anxiety and course satisfaction (M = 7.6, SD = 1.2) compared with the 44 participants in the upper quartile on optimism (M = 7.2, SD = 2.1), ( t (53) = .56, p  = .159). There were no significant differences between the defensive pessimism group (M = 12.86, SD = 2.07) and the optimism group (M = 12.83, SD = 2.50) on course satisfaction ( t (53) = .04, p  = 967), with the defensive pessimism group scoring higher (M = 18.55, SD = 2.50) than the optimism group (M = 8.45, SD = 4.83) on anxiety ( t (53) = 6.68, p  < .001). This supports H5 – defensive pessimism was just as effective as optimism on learning motivation for those anxious-prone.

However, significant differences were reported between the defensive pessimism group (M = 3.6, SD = 1.5) and the optimistic group (M = 5.1, SD = .9) on satisfaction in life, ( t (53) = 3.97, p  < .05) and between the defensive pessimism group (M = 10.6, SD = 4.5) and the optimistic group (M = 16.9, SD = 2.4) on happiness, ( t (53) = 6.40, p  < .05).

The optimistic group scored higher on context control (M = 6.94, SD = 1.75) than the defensive pessimism group (M = 4.45, SD = 1.06), ( t (53) = 4.49, p  < .001). However, there was no evidence that context control played a mediating role between optimism and life satisfaction or between optimism and happiness.

The regression model explained 40.9% of the variance in scores on learning motivation (Table 3 ). The results of the regression indicated that there was a collective significant effect between teaching demands rated as hassle, social opportunities rated as an uplift, lack of motivation, conscientiousness and teaching on my course hassle-conscientiousness moderator on learning motivation, F (5, 144) = 21.59, p  < .001, R2 = .43, Adjusted R2 = .41). The individual predictors were examined further and indicated that: teaching demands rated as hassle, Beta = − .37 ( p  < .0001); social opportunities rated as an uplift, Beta = .22 ( p  < .001); lack of motivation, Beta = − .22 ( p  < .001); and conscientiousness and teaching on my course hassle-conscientiousness moderator, Beta = .13 ( p  < .05) were predictors in the model and offered partial support for H3.

The results indicate that high levels of conscientiousness moderated the effects of teaching demands students found disruptive during a pandemic on learning motivation (Fig. 2 ). This supports H4.

Slope graph testing the interaction between conscientiousness and teaching demands rated as hassle on learning motivation

The ‘at risk’ caseness analysis

A striking finding, related to H1, was that 68.5% of respondents were ‘at risk’ of a stress-related illness. This exceeded that reported in pre-pandemic populations of students and non-students of similar age [ 13 , 19 , 20 ] and the average GHQ score was higher compared with pre-pandemic normative student populations [ 58 ]. This reflects the marked stress associated with living and learning during a pandemic and the pattern of results is consistent with that found across Europe and the international comparisons made earlier [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ].

For H2, the NSS items were sub-divided into eleven factors or stress demands, rated once as a hassle and again as an uplift. For nine of eleven of these factors, those ‘at risk’ scored higher on hassles ratings compared with those ‘not at risk’ (Table 1 ). Some of these differences may, in part, be attributable to actual differences in the demands. For example, there may be differences in the quality of support offered between peers or from tutor to tutor or from one’s family and friends.

However, for other demands, such as the teaching experience, workload and course resources (a source of intellectual stimulation), these were the same or similar. That is, students followed the same modules, received the same pre-recorded lectures and faced the same assignments. So, the differences in hassles ratings for these demands was more likely to be attributable to differences in student appraisals, with those ‘at risk’ and, by implication, not coping well, more likely to interpret those demands as distressing. It is possible that some of those ‘at risk’ were not, de facto, bad at coping but given these different appraisals to the same stressors, the contention offered here is that most in the ‘at risk’ group could improve in how they cope. That it was differences in the individual coping rather than material differences in the stressors faced, is supported by the finding in relation to pandemic-related stress: Those ‘at risk’ spent more time on their devices and they were more likely to struggle to find the motivation to be productive and they more often reported changes in sleeping habits i.e., they engaged in behaviours that impacted on their coping or reflected poor coping.

The mental health regression analysis

For H3, in this analysis (Table 2 ), lack of motivation was the strongest predictor of adverse mental health and it referred to the loss of mojo or motivation towards learning demands during a pandemic. It appears that apathy and a lack of energy to undertake necessary tasks was a major source of stress. Procrastination is a perennial problem for most people from time to time and frequently for students. It is a state that is negatively reinforcing but avoidance adversely impacts on learning and wellbeing [ 13 , 59 ]. The challenge of studying during a pandemic has created a set of circumstances where, despite one’s aspirations, struggling to overcome a state of procrastination proved especially difficult and this was the strongest predictor of adverse mental health.

Those students that are worry-prone or anxious by nature appear to suffer most. This was suggested by the positive correlation between neuroticism and GHQ. Consistent with earlier research [ 13 , 41 ], developing a sense of control in specific contexts is a powerful coping mechanism – high scores on context control were associated with low scores on GHQ.

Optimism was predictive in the same way but weaker than context control. Several studies lay testament to the value of optimism, but others show that it either does not feature or is only weakly related to measures of wellbeing [ 13 , 38 ]. Context control is a frequent robust predictor of health and wellbeing and this measure of control is learnt, not dispositional [ 40 ]. Developing context control holds potential to help students cope in the face of changing pandemic challenges. Both context control and optimistic strategies can be developed through learnt strategies, however, based on these findings, it is the former that may offer more benefits.

Openness was a significant predictor. Higher scores on openness were associated with higher scores on GHQ. On the face of it, this suggests that openness has an adverse effect on mental health. However, it is important to remember that stress is not always distress and if one is to learn and develop new knowledge and new skills, one has to be willing to move out of one’s comfort zone. Feeling vulnerable and accepting that one might get things wrong and make mistakes and accepting that one’s self-esteem may take a hit in some disappointing marks or critical feedback, for example, are best interpreted as the growing pains of a growth mindset [ 60 ]. Hand-in-hand with this, is the feeling that one may occasionally doubt that one can meet the learning challenge. This is consistent with the large number of students who eventually succeed, if not shine, in their performance but who experience imposter syndrome en route [ 61 ]. Being open-minded is integral if one is to effectively master new learning, and so too is its association with heightened stress.

‘Teaching on my course’, when rated as an uplift, was associated with lower scores on GHQ. This is likely to reflect the efforts by faculty to engage their students remotely and to provide effective teaching through pre-recordings, live seminars and more frequent live tutorials (these were held weekly instead of fortnightly, the pre-pandemic format). It also reflects the tendency by those scoring high on optimism, to more readily interpret stress demands as opportunities to achieve.

Openness and high scores on idealism, as opposed to cynicism, have been associated with more frequent and more intense experiences of ‘elevation’. This is an uplifting emotion, where one feels inspired, experiences awe or a general feeling of emotional warmth [ 62 ]. Teaching and learning experiences are more likely to be elevating if one adopts an open-minded perspective and this might be part of the explanation behind the dominance of the uplifting ratings for teaching and the openness predictor in the model.

Support, as a coping resource, was removed in the process of arriving at the most parsimonious regression model. This is not to suggest that support is not important. The literature supporting its efficacy is strong [ 37 ]. Its absence here could be attributed to the lack of in-person support during the pandemic and its significance was over-shadowed by the importance of those predictors in the model. In the second analysis it did feature, in the form of social opportunities. This suggests that it remains important, but less so in predicting mental health, as measured by the GHQ.

Is there a place for defensive pessimism in coping?

For H5, defensive pessimism was helpful for those anxious-prone in relation to learning motivation: There was no difference in levels of learning motivation between those respondents high on defensive pessimism and anxiety compared with those high on optimism. This suggests that for individuals who are anxious-prone, rather than adopt those ubiquitous optimistic thinking strategies, setting unrealistically low learning expectations, might relieve them of the pressure to achieve and actually (ironically) enhance performance. Only those in the upper quartile on defensive pessimism, anxiety and course satisfaction were selected and compared against those in the upper quartile on optimism. Selecting those high in course satisfaction was used because it made it more likely that their pessimism was defensive not realistic – the satisfaction rating was an indicator that they had been achieving. Had those with lower scores in course satisfaction been included it would make it more likely that their pessimism was, for some, a realistic reflection of a disappointing course performance.

A cautionary note

It was noteworthy that while not hypothesized, defensive pessimism did not offer the same dividends for happiness and satisfaction with life. The defensive pessimist group scored significantly lower than the optimists on these measures. Moreover, optimism remained a significant predictor of happiness and life satisfaction when context control was tested as a potential mediator. This suggests that for anxious-prone individuals, defensive pessimism offers an effective strategy for harnessing motivation towards learning goals, but optimistic thinking strategies and context control should be employed to help bolster these other wellbeing ingredients.

Consistent with the tenets of positive psychology, one does not always need to work directly on one’s coping deficits, such as trying to lower measures of neuroticism. Rather, if one focuses on building one’s coping strengths, such as improved techniques in context control and in optimistic thinking strategies, and in defensive pessimism for those anxious-prone, it can buffer against the costs of neuroticism on mental health [ 47 , 48 ].

Regression analysis for learning motivation

For H3, in this analysis (Table 3 ), teaching demands was the strongest predictor of learning motivation but not in the positive way observed in the first regression – the more these demands were rated as a hassle, the more learning motivation declined. The benefit of asking participants to identify the distress and eustress elements of demands allows one to identify their subtle and disparate influences. The nature of learning and teaching took on a new meaning when students did it virtually and in isolation, and in a way that involved many more hours sat in front of a computer screen. Where faculty introduced changes that helped, it significantly improved mental health (Table 2 ). However, so dramatic were the changes in learning that this inevitable shift in practice is likely to be associated with added hassle ratings. If there are other added disappointments, perhaps related to teaching variability or in the levels of effort faculty engaged in to support students, then it is understandable that these combined influences had an adverse impact on learning motivation.

Previous research justified testing the role of personality, support and control but several key influences—extraversion, neuroticism, control and optimism, did not feature in this second analysis. Conscientiousness did however, and it was the most effective in maintaining learning motivation. It is likely that the isolation of the pandemic meant there was little scope to derive the same wellbeing benefits (for example in happiness and general motivation) that extraversion is normally associated with [ 63 ]. Studying remotely and virtually put an increased importance on how learning and teaching was delivered and rated and, not unsurprisingly, when the experience was positive it was rated very favourably (its uplifting rating in the first regression) and when it was disappointing, it had a greater adverse impact on learning motivation because the pandemic-induced isolation took away most of the coping benefits that come from being extraverted.

The items underpinning the social opportunities predictor asked respondents to rate opportunities to interact with other students on the course and in university clubs and societies. The predictor represents a proxy for support. Its positive relationship with learning motivation shows that, despite the restricted opportunities imposed by the pandemic, having the contact and support of other students, whether course-related or recreationally, increased learning motivation.

Consistent with the mental health regression, students who reported losing general motivation as a fall-out of the prolonged Covid restrictions, found this carried over to the motivation towards their studies. In both regressions, as part of H4, all the predictors were tested for moderation effects and the slope graph in Fig.  2 illustrates the moderating influence of conscientiousness on learning motivation in response to teaching demands: For those low in conscientiousness (the bottom line), the more teaching demands were experienced as a hassle the more dramatically learning motivation declined. For those average in conscientiousness (the middle line) the decline in learning motivation was less dramatic. For those high in conscientiousness (the top line), motivation was higher and increased ratings of teaching as a hassle had only a nominal influence on rates of learning motivation compared to the other two groups. This suggests conscientiousness was an important buffer for learning motivation against the adverse changes in the quality of teaching.

Limitations

The NSS was used because it is recognized as the, de facto, measure of student experience. However, the evidence of its validity does not yet match the frequency of its use [ 64 ]. The use of a survey method and volunteer sample are not without limitations and while the sample size was good, relative to target population, a larger sample across all cohorts in the psychology department would have allowed more insights into the difference demands faced in each year of study.

Norem and Cantor (1986) used upper quartile measures on GPA to benchmark those respondents whose pessimism was likely to be defensive not realistic. Here, course satisfaction was used. While past performance is likely to be an influence on course satisfaction, it is not the only influence – so is the quality of teaching and how engaging learning resources might be. This may question the validity of using course satisfaction alone to identify those that are defensive rather than realistic pessimists. Using course satisfaction and GPA, rather than either alone, would be a useful way to increase the confidence in identifying those whose pessimism was defensive.

Identifying the sources and experience of stress that are likely to enhance performance and are thereby uplifting as opposed to a hinderance or hassle, is a key challenge for those of us who explore this aspect of positive psychology. The stress that helps you achieve may be experienced as unpleasant and unwanted at the time and, because of that, be more likely to be rated as a hassle. This was the argument offered to explain the relationship between openness and GHQ. A fuller explanation on the distinction between the sources of stress that can help and that can inhibit performance was added to the participant brief in this study, compared to similar earlier studies, but, as an online survey, it was difficult to drive home this distinction. An improvement might be to adopt different labels for ‘hassles’ and ‘uplifts’ such as sources of stress that ‘hinder’ performance and that are ‘necessary to facilitate’ performance.

Overall, the lack of motivation was acute. While positive ratings of teaching and optimistic thinking were associated with good mental health, context control was a stronger predictor. Support and conscientiousness were positively associated with learning motivation, and conscientiousness buffered against the adverse impact of stress on motivation. Openness was associated with the stress involved in learning and, for those anxious-prone, defensive-pessimism was as effective as optimism in stimulating learning motivation.

Recommendations

Studying during a pandemic imposed dramatic and significant changes in student learning and coping. The interpretation offered suggests specific pointers to help students cope; to improve mental health and learning motivation. During induction and early in their studies, students could be offered resilience training that includes tips on the thinking strategies adopted by optimists (for example, that change can be construed as a challenge even if one’s initial reaction is one of threat; in defensive optimism, active disputing, problem-based coping) and in defensive pessimism for those high in anxiety or who experience situations associated with high anxiety, such as early in the semester for new and returning students. It would be useful to raise awareness to re-interpret ‘stress and change’ in a positive light. Understanding our evolved tendency to perceive change as a threat is, to that end, likely to improve coping.

Control, in an education context, could be developed by empowering students with an HE skill-set that goes beyond exercises in time and task management, important though they are, and that incorporates apps that imbed daily and weekly schedules anchored around assignment deadlines; for better time management, and that utilize evidence-based positive psychology techniques. Students can be supported in their learning independence by using some of the psychology-based apps designed for this purpose; along with selected subject-specific podcasts to help enthuse them in their learning and to help move them from a lay understanding to a progressively more academic and in-depth understanding at a pace that leaves them feeling in control.

As universities move to return to in-person teaching, they are more likely to retain some elements of virtual learning. Both regression analyses showed this can be associated with uplifting and hassle ratings. It is important, therefore, to look to maximise its positive impact. For example, by recording virtual learning for students to revisit; using transcript options to facilitate (not replace) student note-taking; allowing student participation through chat features and break-out rooms. Many faculty drew on these elements and are getting better at doing this. However, during this study, there was a mixed take-up in encouraging students to turn on their cameras during learning and where some educators did not turn on their camera when presenting. Evidence in multi-sensory processing [ 65 ] and the animacy effect in memory [ 66 ], support the benefit to learners if they can see as well as hear each other and the presenter. Finally, support opportunities should continue to be enhanced through extended freshers’ fayre events; student inductions with a strong peer-networking focus, along with peer-mentoring initiatives.

These are just some suggestions to help develop specific personality ingredients; student control and support and which, in turn, increases the likelihood that a conscientious approach is one that quickly translates into effective learning and coping. These initiatives hold the potential to combat procrastination, improve learning motivation and mental health.

Availability of data and materials

The data set is available at: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6631-721X . The question items are subject to copyright but the sources for all the measures used are referenced and interested parties can contact any of these sources. The authors vary on their decisions to make their tests available for free for educational purposes.

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Dr Chris Gibbons is associate professor in psychology at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focus is on health psychology, positive psychology, including the influences on student wellbeing and performance in higher education. He has been Chair of the Association for Psychology Teachers (https://www.associationforpsychologyteachers.com/) since it was founded in 1995 and is the recipient of numerous teaching awards. In August 2021 he received a National Teaching Hero Award from the National Forum For The Enhancement Of Teaching And Learning In Higher Education.

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Gibbons, C. Understanding the role of stress, personality and coping on learning motivation and mental health in university students during a pandemic. BMC Psychol 10 , 261 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00971-w

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