cause and effect of online learning essay

Impact of Online Classes on Students Essay

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Background study

• Impacts of online education

Introduction to Online Education

Online learning is one of the new innovative study methods that have been introduced in the pedagogy field. In the last few years, there has been a great shift in the training methods. Students can now learn remotely using the internet and computers.

Online learning comes in many forms and has been developing with the introduction of new technologies. Most universities, high schools, and other institutions in the world have all instituted this form of learning, and the student population in the online class is increasing fast. There has been a lot of research on the impacts of online education as compared to ordinary classroom education.

If the goal is to draw a conclusion of online education, considerable differences between the online learning environment and classroom environment should be acknowledged. In the former, teachers and students don’t meet physically as opposed to the latter, where they interact face to face. In this essay, the challenges and impact of online classes on students, teachers, and institutions involved were examined.

Thesis Statement about Online Classes

Thus, the thesis statement about online classes will be as follows:

Online learning has a positive impact on the learners, teachers, and the institution offering these courses.

Online learning or E learning is a term used to describe various learning environments that are conducted and supported by the use of computers and the internet. There are a number of definitions and terminologies that are used to describe online learning.

These include E learning, distance learning, and computer learning, among others (Anon, 2001). Distant learning is one of the terminologies used in E learning and encompasses all learning methods that are used to train students that are geographically away from the training school. Online learning, on the other hand, is used to describe all the learning methods that are supported by the Internet (Moore et al., 2011).

Another terminology that is used is E learning which most authors have described as a learning method that is supported by the use of computers, web-enabled communication, and the use of new technological tools that enhance communication (Spector, 2008). Other terminologies that are used to describe this form of online learning are virtual learning, collaborative learning, web-based learning, and computer-supported collaborative learning (Conrad, 2006).

Impacts of Online Classes on Students

Various studies and articles document the merits, demerits, and challenges of online studies. These studies show that online study is far beneficial to the students, teachers, and the institution in general and that the current challenges can be overcome through technological advancement and increasing efficiency of the learning process.

One of the key advantages of online learning is the ability of students to study in their own comfort. For a long time, students had to leave their comfort areas and attend lectures. This change in environment causes a lack of concentration in students. In contrast, E-learning enables the students to choose the best environment for study, and this promotes their ability to understand. As a result, students enjoy the learning process as compared to conventional classroom learning.

Another benefit is time and cost savings. Online students are able to study at home, and this saves them travel and accommodation costs. This is in contrast with the classroom environment, where learners have to pay for transport and accommodation costs as well as any other costs associated with the learning process.

Online study has been found to reduce the workload on the tutors. Most of the online notes and books are availed to the students, and this reduces the teacher’s workload. Due to the availability of teaching materials online, tutors are not required to search for materials. Teachers usually prepare lessons, and this reduces the task of training students over and over again.

Accessibility to learning materials is another benefit of online learning. Students participating in online study have unlimited access to learning materials, which gives them the ability to study effectively and efficiently. On the other hand, students in the classroom environment have to take notes as the lecture progress, and these notes may not be accurate as compared to the materials uploaded on the websites.

Unlimited resources are another advantage of online study. Traditionally, learning institutions were limited in the number of students that could study in the classroom environment. The limitations of facilities such as lecture theaters and teachers limited student enrollment in schools (Burgess & Russell, 2003).

However, with the advent of online studies, physical limitations imposed by classrooms, tutors, and other resources have been eliminated. A vast number of students can now study in the same institution and be able to access the learning materials online. The use of online media for training enables a vast number of students to access materials online, and this promotes the learning process.

Promoting online study has been found by most researchers to open the students to vast resources that are found on the internet. Most of the students in the classroom environment rely on the tutors’ notes and explanations for them to understand a given concept.

However, students using the web to study most of the time are likely to be exposed to the vast online educational resources that are available. This results in the students gaining a better understanding of the concept as opposed to those in the classroom environment (Berge & Giles, 2008).

An online study environment allows tutors to update their notes and other materials much faster as compared to the classroom environment. This ensures that the students receive up-to-date information on a given study area.

One of the main benefits of E-learning to institutions is the ability to provide training to a large number of students located in any corner of the world. These students are charged training fees, and this increases the money available to the institution. This extra income can be used to develop new educational facilities, and these will promote education further (Gilli et al., 2002).

Despite the many advantages that online study has in transforming the learning process, there are some challenges imposed by the method. One of the challenges is the technological limitations of the current computers, which affect the quality of the learning materials and the learning process in general.

Low download speed and slow internet connectivity affect the availability of learning materials. This problem is, however, been reduced through the application of new software and hardware elements that have high access speeds. This makes it easier to download learning materials and applications. As computing power increases, better and faster computers are being unveiled, and these will enable better access to online study facilities.

Another disadvantage of online learning as compared to the classroom environment is the lack of feedback from the students. In the classroom environment, students listen to the lecture and ask the tutors questions and clarifications any issues they didn’t understand. In the online environment, the response by the teacher may not be immediate, and students who don’t understand a given concept may find it hard to liaise with the teachers.

The problem is, however, been circumvented by the use of simple explanation methods, slideshows, and encouraging discussion forums between the teachers and students. In the discussion forums, students who don’t understand a concept can leave a comment or question, which will be answered by the tutor later.

Like any other form of learning, online studies have a number of benefits and challenges. It is, therefore, not logical to discredit online learning due to the negative impacts of this training method. Furthermore, the benefits of e-learning far outweigh the challenges.

Conclusion about Online Education

In culmination, a comparative study between classroom study and online study was carried out. The study was done by examining the findings recorded in books and journals on the applicability of online learning to students. The study revealed that online learning has many benefits as compared to conventional learning in the classroom environment.

Though online learning has several challenges, such as a lack of feedback from students and a lack of the proper technology to effectively conduct online learning, these limitations can be overcome by upgrading the E-Leaning systems and the use of online discussion forums and new web-based software.

In conclusion, online learning is beneficial to the students, tutors, and the institution offering these courses. I would therefore recommend that online learning be implemented in all learning institutions, and research on how to improve this learning process should be carried out.

Anon, C. (2001). E-learning is taking off in Europe. Industrial and Commercial Training , 33 (7), 280-282.

Berge, Z., & Giles, L. (2008). Implementing and sustaining e-learning in the workplace. International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies , 3(3), 44-53.

Burgess, J. & Russell, J. (2003).The effectiveness of distance learning initiatives in organizations. Journal of Vocational Behaviour , 63 (2),289-303.

Conrad, D. (2006). E-Learning and social change, Perspectives on higher education in the digital age . New York: Nova Science Publishers.

Gilli, R., Pulcini, M., Tonchia, S. & Zavagno, M. (2002), E-learning: A strategic Instrument. International Journal of Business Performance Management , 4 (1), 2-4.

Moore, J. L., Camille, D. & Galyen, K. (2011). E-Learning, online learning and distance learning environments: Are they the same? Internet and Higher Education, 14(1), 129-135.

Spector, J., Merrill, M., Merrienboer, J. & Driscoll, M. P. (2008). Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (3rd ed.), New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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How does virtual learning impact students in higher education?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, stephanie riegg cellini stephanie riegg cellini nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

August 13, 2021

In 2020, the pandemic pushed millions of college students around the world into virtual learning. As the new academic year begins, many colleges in the U.S. are poised to bring students back to campus, but a large amount of uncertainty remains. Some institutions will undoubtedly continue to offer online or hybrid classes, even as in-person instruction resumes. At the same time, low vaccination rates, new coronavirus variants, and travel restrictions for international students may mean a return to fully online instruction for some U.S. students and many more around the world.

Public attention has largely focused on the learning losses of K-12 students who shifted online during the pandemic. Yet, we may have reason to be concerned about postsecondary students too. What can we expect from the move to virtual learning? How does virtual learning impact student outcomes? And how does it compare to in-person instruction at the postsecondary level?

Several new papers shed light on these issues, building on previous work in higher education and assessing the efficacy of online education in new contexts. The results are generally consistent with past research: Online coursework generally yields worse student performance than in-person coursework. The negative effects of online course-taking are particularly pronounced for less-academically prepared students and for students pursuing bachelor’s degrees. New evidence from 2020 also suggests that the switch to online course-taking in the pandemic led to declines in course completion. However, a few new studies point to some positive effects of online learning, too. This post discusses this new evidence and its implications for the upcoming academic year.

Evaluating online instruction in higher education

A number of studies have assessed online versus in-person learning at the college level in recent years. A key concern in this literature is that students typically self-select into online or in-person programs or courses, confounding estimates of student outcomes. That is, differences in the characteristics of students themselves may drive differences in the outcome measures we observe that are unrelated to the mode of instruction. In addition, the content, instructor, assignments, and other course features might differ across online and in-person modes as well, which makes apples-to-apples comparisons difficult.

The most compelling studies of online education draw on a random assignment design (i.e., randomized control trial or RCT) to isolate the causal effect of online versus in-person learning. Several pathbreaking studies were able to estimate causal impacts of performance on final exams or course grades in recent years. Virtually all of these studies found that online instruction resulted in lower student performance relative to in-person instruction; although in one case , students with hybrid instruction performed similarly to their in-person peers. Negative effects of online course-taking were particularly pronounced for males and less-academically prepared students.

A new paper by Kofoed and co-authors adds to this literature looking specifically at online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in a novel context: the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. When many colleges moved classes completely online or let students choose their own mode of instruction at the start of the pandemic, West Point economics professors arranged to randomly assign students to in-person or online modes of learning. The same instructors taught one online and one in-person economics class each, and all materials, exams, and assignments were otherwise identical, minimizing biases that otherwise stand in the way of true comparisons. They find that online education lowered a student’s final grade by about 0.2 standard deviations. Their work also confirms the results of previous papers, finding that the negative effect of online learning was driven by students with lower academic ability. A follow-up survey of students’ experiences suggests that online students had trouble concentrating on their coursework and felt less connected to both their peers and instructors relative to their in-person peers.

Cacault et al. (2021) also use an RCT to assess the effects of online lectures in a Swiss university. The authors find that having access to a live-streamed lecture in addition to an in-person option improves the achievement of high-ability students, but lowers the achievement of low-ability students. The key to understanding this two-pronged effect is the counterfactual: When streamed lectures substitute for no attendance (e.g., if a student is ill), they can help students, but when streaming lectures substitute for in-person attendance, they can hurt students.

Broader impacts of online learning

One drawback of RCTs is that these studies are typically limited to a single college and often a single course within that college, so it is not clear if the results generalize to other contexts. Several papers in the literature draw on larger samples of students in non-randomized settings and mitigate selection problems with various econometric methods. These papers find common themes: Students in online courses generally get lower grades, are less likely to perform well in follow-on coursework, and are less likely to graduate than similar students taking in-person classes.

In a recent paper , my co-author Hernando Grueso and I add to this strand of the literature, expanding it to a very different context. We draw on data from the country of Colombia, where students take a mandatory exit exam when they graduate. Using these data, we can assess test scores as an outcome, rather than (more subjective) course grades used in other studies. We can also assess performance across a wide range of institutions, degree programs, and majors.

We find that bachelor’s degree students in online programs perform worse on nearly all test score measures—including math, reading, writing, and English—relative to their counterparts in similar on-campus programs. Results for shorter technical certificates, however, are more mixed. While online students perform significantly worse than on-campus students on exit exams in private institutions, they perform better in SENA, the main public vocational institution in the country, suggesting substantial heterogeneity across institutions in the quality of online programming. Interviews with SENA staff indicate that SENA’s approach of synchronous learning and real-world projects may be working for some online students, but we cannot definitively call this causal evidence, particularly because we can only observe the students who graduate.

A new working paper by Fischer et al. pushes beyond near-term outcomes, like grades and scores, to consider longer-term outcomes, like graduation and time-to-degree, for bachelor’s degree-seeking students in a large public university in California. They find reason to be optimistic about online coursework: When students take courses required for their major online, they are more likely to graduate in four years and see a small decrease in time-to-degree relative to students taking the requirements in-person.

On the other hand, new work considering course completion during the pandemic is less promising. Looking at student outcomes in spring 2020 in Virginia’s community college system, Bird et al. find that the switch to online instruction resulted in an 8.5% reduction in course completion. They find that both withdrawals and failures rose. They also confirm findings in the literature that negative impacts are more extreme among less-academically-prepared students.

Online learning in the fall and beyond

Much more research on virtual learning will undoubtedly be forthcoming post-pandemic. For now, college professors and administrators should consider that college students pushed online may be less prepared for future follow-on classes, their GPAs may be lower, course completion may suffer, and overall learning may have declined relative to in-person cohorts in previous years. These results seem particularly problematic for students with less academic preparation and those in bachelor’s degree programs.

The research is less clear on the impact of virtual instruction on college completion. Although course completion rates appear to be lower for online courses relative to in-person, the evidence is mixed on the impact of virtual instruction on graduation and time-to-degree. The negative learning impacts, reduced course completion, and lack of connection with other students and faculty in a virtual environment could ultimately reduce college completion rates. On the other hand, there is also evidence that the availability of online classes may allow students to move through their degree requirement more quickly.

As the fall semester approaches, colleges will need to make critical choices about online, hybrid, and in-person course offerings. Maintaining some of the most successful online courses will enhance flexibility at this uncertain time and allow some students to continue to make progress on their degrees if they get sick or cannot return to campus for other reasons. For those transitioning back to campus, administrators might consider additional in-person programming, review sessions, tutoring, and other enhanced supports as students make up for learning losses associated with the virtual instruction of the past year.

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How Effective Is Online Learning? What the Research Does and Doesn’t Tell Us

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Editor’s Note: This is part of a series on the practical takeaways from research.

The times have dictated school closings and the rapid expansion of online education. Can online lessons replace in-school time?

Clearly online time cannot provide many of the informal social interactions students have at school, but how will online courses do in terms of moving student learning forward? Research to date gives us some clues and also points us to what we could be doing to support students who are most likely to struggle in the online setting.

The use of virtual courses among K-12 students has grown rapidly in recent years. Florida, for example, requires all high school students to take at least one online course. Online learning can take a number of different forms. Often people think of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, where thousands of students watch a video online and fill out questionnaires or take exams based on those lectures.

In the online setting, students may have more distractions and less oversight, which can reduce their motivation.

Most online courses, however, particularly those serving K-12 students, have a format much more similar to in-person courses. The teacher helps to run virtual discussion among the students, assigns homework, and follows up with individual students. Sometimes these courses are synchronous (teachers and students all meet at the same time) and sometimes they are asynchronous (non-concurrent). In both cases, the teacher is supposed to provide opportunities for students to engage thoughtfully with subject matter, and students, in most cases, are required to interact with each other virtually.

Coronavirus and Schools

Online courses provide opportunities for students. Students in a school that doesn’t offer statistics classes may be able to learn statistics with virtual lessons. If students fail algebra, they may be able to catch up during evenings or summer using online classes, and not disrupt their math trajectory at school. So, almost certainly, online classes sometimes benefit students.

In comparisons of online and in-person classes, however, online classes aren’t as effective as in-person classes for most students. Only a little research has assessed the effects of online lessons for elementary and high school students, and even less has used the “gold standard” method of comparing the results for students assigned randomly to online or in-person courses. Jessica Heppen and colleagues at the American Institutes for Research and the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research randomly assigned students who had failed second semester Algebra I to either face-to-face or online credit recovery courses over the summer. Students’ credit-recovery success rates and algebra test scores were lower in the online setting. Students assigned to the online option also rated their class as more difficult than did their peers assigned to the face-to-face option.

Most of the research on online courses for K-12 students has used large-scale administrative data, looking at otherwise similar students in the two settings. One of these studies, by June Ahn of New York University and Andrew McEachin of the RAND Corp., examined Ohio charter schools; I did another with colleagues looking at Florida public school coursework. Both studies found evidence that online coursetaking was less effective.

About this series

This essay is the fifth in a series that aims to put the pieces of research together so that education decisionmakers can evaluate which policies and practices to implement.

The conveners of this project—Susanna Loeb, the director of Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and Harvard education professor Heather Hill—have received grant support from the Annenberg Institute for this series.

To suggest other topics for this series or join in the conversation, use #EdResearchtoPractice on Twitter.

Read the full series here .

It is not surprising that in-person courses are, on average, more effective. Being in person with teachers and other students creates social pressures and benefits that can help motivate students to engage. Some students do as well in online courses as in in-person courses, some may actually do better, but, on average, students do worse in the online setting, and this is particularly true for students with weaker academic backgrounds.

Students who struggle in in-person classes are likely to struggle even more online. While the research on virtual schools in K-12 education doesn’t address these differences directly, a study of college students that I worked on with Stanford colleagues found very little difference in learning for high-performing students in the online and in-person settings. On the other hand, lower performing students performed meaningfully worse in online courses than in in-person courses.

But just because students who struggle in in-person classes are even more likely to struggle online doesn’t mean that’s inevitable. Online teachers will need to consider the needs of less-engaged students and work to engage them. Online courses might be made to work for these students on average, even if they have not in the past.

Just like in brick-and-mortar classrooms, online courses need a strong curriculum and strong pedagogical practices. Teachers need to understand what students know and what they don’t know, as well as how to help them learn new material. What is different in the online setting is that students may have more distractions and less oversight, which can reduce their motivation. The teacher will need to set norms for engagement—such as requiring students to regularly ask questions and respond to their peers—that are different than the norms in the in-person setting.

Online courses are generally not as effective as in-person classes, but they are certainly better than no classes. A substantial research base developed by Karl Alexander at Johns Hopkins University and many others shows that students, especially students with fewer resources at home, learn less when they are not in school. Right now, virtual courses are allowing students to access lessons and exercises and interact with teachers in ways that would have been impossible if an epidemic had closed schools even a decade or two earlier. So we may be skeptical of online learning, but it is also time to embrace and improve it.

A version of this article appeared in the April 01, 2020 edition of Education Week as How Effective Is Online Learning?

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Capturing the benefits of remote learning

How education experts are applying lessons learned in the pandemic to promote positive outcomes for all students

Vol. 52 No. 6 Print version: page 46

• Schools and Classrooms

With schools open again after more than a year of teaching students outside the classroom, the pandemic sometimes feels like a distant memory. The return to classrooms this fall brings major relief for many families and educators. Factors such as a lack of reliable technology and family support, along with an absence of school resources, resulted in significant academic setbacks, not to mention stress for everyone involved.

But for all the downsides of distance learning, educators, psychologists, and parents have seen some benefits as well. For example, certain populations of students found new ways to be more engaged in learning, without the distractions and difficulties they faced in the classroom, and the general challenges of remote learning and the pandemic brought mental health to the forefront of the classroom experience.

Peter Faustino, PsyD, a school psychologist in Scarsdale, New York, said the pandemic also prompted educators and school psychologists to find creative new ways of ensuring students’ emotional and academic well-being. “So many students were impacted by the pandemic, so we couldn’t just assume they would find resources on their own,” said Faustino. “We had to work hard at figuring out new ways to connect with them.”

Here are some of the benefits of distance learning that school psychologists and educators have observed and the ways in which they’re implementing those lessons post-pandemic, with the goal of creating a more equitable, productive environment for all students.

Prioritizing mental health

Faustino said that during the pandemic, he had more mental health conversations with students, families, and teachers than ever. “Because COVID-19 affected everyone, we’re now having mental health discussions as school leaders on a daily and weekly basis,” he said.

This renewed focus on mental health has the potential to improve students’ well-being in profound ways—starting with helping them recover from the pandemic’s effects. In New York City, for example, schools are hiring more than 600 new clinicians, including psychologists , to screen students’ mental health and help them process pandemic-related trauma and adjust to the “new normal” of attending school in person.

Educators and families are also realizing the importance of protecting students’ mental health more generally—not only for their health and safety but for their learning. “We’ve been seeing a broader appreciation for the fact that mental health is a prerequisite for learning rather than an extracurricular pursuit,” said Eric Rossen, PhD, director of professional development and standards at the National Association of School Psychologists.

As a result, Rossen hopes educators will embed social and emotional learning components into daily instruction. For example, teachers could teach mindfulness techniques in the classroom and take in-the-moment opportunities to help kids resolve conflicts or manage stress.

Improved access to mental health resources in schools is another positive effect. Because of physical distancing guidelines, school leaders had to find ways to deliver mental health services remotely, including via online referrals and teletherapy with school psychologists and counselors.

Early in the pandemic, Faustino said he was hesitant about teletherapy’s effectiveness; now, he hopes to continue offering a virtual option. Online scheduling and remote appointments make it easier for students to access mental health resources, and some students even enjoy virtual appointments more, as they can attend therapy in their own spaces rather than showing up in the counselor’s office. For older students, Faustino said that level of comfort often leads to more productive, open conversations.

Autonomy as a key to motivation

Research suggests that when students have more choices about their materials and activities, they’re more motivated—which may translate to increased learning and academic success. In a 2016 paper, psychology researcher Allan Wigfield, PhD, and colleagues make the case that control and autonomy in reading activities can improve both motivation and comprehension ( Child Development Perspectives , Vol. 10, No. 3 ).

During the period of online teaching, some students had opportunities to learn at their own pace, which educators say improved their learning outcomes—especially in older students. In a 2020 survey of more than 600 parents, researchers found the second-most-valued benefit of distance learning was flexibility—not only in schedule but in method of learning.

In a recent study, researchers found that 18% of parents pointed to greater flexibility in a child’s schedule or way of learning as the biggest benefit or positive outcome related to remote learning ( School Psychology , Roy, A., et al., in press).

This individualized learning helps students find more free time for interests and also allows them to conduct their learning at a time they’re most likely to succeed. During the pandemic, Mark Gardner, an English teacher at Hayes Freedom High School in Camas, Washington, said he realized how important student-centered learning is and that whether learning happens should take precedence over how and when it occurs.

For example, one of his students thrived when he had the choice to do work later at night because he took care of his siblings during the day. Now, Gardner posts homework online on Sundays so students can work at their own pace during the week. “Going forward, we want to create as many access points as we can for kids to engage with learning,” he said.

Rosanna Breaux , PhD, an assistant professor of psychology and assistant director of the Child Study Center at Virginia Tech, agrees. “I’d like to see this flexibility continue in some way, where—similar to college—students can guide their own learning based on their interests or when they’re most productive,” she said.

During the pandemic, many educators were forced to rethink how to keep students engaged. Rossen said because many school districts shared virtual curricula during the period of remote learning, older students could take more challenging or interesting courses than they could in person. The same is true for younger students: Megan Hibbard, a teacher in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, said many of her fifth graders enjoyed distance learning more than in-person because they could work on projects that aligned with their interests.

“So much of motivation is discovering the unique things the student finds interesting,” said Hunter Gehlbach, PhD, a professor and vice dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Education. “The more you can facilitate students spending more time on the things they’re really interested in, the better.”

Going forward, Rossen hopes virtual curricula will allow students greater opportunities to pursue their interests, such as by taking AP classes, foreign languages, or vocational electives not available at their own schools.

Conversely, Hibbard’s goal is to increase opportunities for students to pursue their interests in the in-person setting. For example, she plans to increase what she calls “Genius Hours,” a time at the end of the school day when students can focus on high-interest projects they’ll eventually share with the class.

Better understanding of children's needs

One of the most important predictors of a child’s success in school is parental involvement in their education. For example, in a meta-analysis of studies, researchers linked parental engagement in their middle schoolers’ education with greater measures of success (Hill, N. E., & Tyson, D. F., Developmental Psychology , Vol. 45, No. 3, 2009).

During the pandemic, parents had new opportunities to learn about their kids and, as a result, help them learn. According to a study by Breaux and colleagues, many parents reported that the pandemic allowed them a better understanding of their child’s learning style, needs, or curriculum.

James C. Kaufman , PhD, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut and the father of an elementary schooler and a high schooler, said he’s had a front-row seat for his sons’ learning for the first time. “Watching my kids learn and engage with classmates has given me some insight in how to parent them,” he said.

Stephen Becker , PhD, a pediatric psychologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, said some parents have observed their children’s behavior or learning needs for the first time, which could prompt them to consider assessment and Individualized Education Program (IEP) services. Across the board, Gehlbach said parents are realizing how they can better partner with schools to ensure their kids’ well-being and academic success.

For example, Samantha Marks , PsyD, a Florida-based clinical psychologist, said she realized how much help her middle school daughter, a gifted and talented student with a 504 plan (a plan for how the school will offer support for a student’s disability) for anxiety, needed with independence. “Bringing the learning home made it crystal clear what we needed to teach our daughter to be independent and improve executive functioning” she said. “My takeaway from this is that more parents need to be involved in their children’s education in a healthy, helpful way.”

Marks also gained a deeper understanding of her daughter’s mental health needs. Through her 504 plan, she received help managing her anxiety at school—at home, though, Marks wasn’t always available to help, which taught her the importance of helping her daughter manage her anxiety independently.

Along with parents gaining a deeper understanding of their kids’ needs, the pandemic also prompted greater parent participation in school. For example, Rossen said his kids’ school had virtual school board meetings; he hopes virtual options continue for events like back-to-school information sessions and parenting workshops. “These meetings are often in the evening, and if you’re a single parent or sole caregiver, you may not want to pay a babysitter in order to attend,” he said.

Brittany Greiert, PhD, a school psychologist in Aurora, Colorado, says culturally and linguistically diverse families at her schools benefited from streamlined opportunities to communicate with administrators and teachers. Her district used an app that translates parent communication into 150 languages. Parents can also remotely participate in meetings with school psychologists or teachers, which Greiert says she plans to continue post-pandemic.

Decreased bullying

During stay-at-home orders, kids with neurodevelopmental disorders experienced less bullying than pre-pandemic (McFayden, T. C., et al., Journal of Rural Mental Health , No. 45, Vol. 2, 2021). According to 2019 research, children with emotional, behavioral, and physical health needs experience increased rates of bullying victimization ( Lebrun-Harris, L. A., et al., ), and from the U.S. Department of Education suggests the majority of bullying takes place in person and in unsupervised areas (PDF) .

Scott Graves , PhD, an associate professor of educational studies at The Ohio State University and a member of APA’s Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education (CPSE), said the supervision by parents and teachers in remote learning likely played a part in reducing bullying. As a result, he’s less worried his Black sons will be victims of microaggressions and racist behavior during online learning.

Some Asian American families also report that remote learning offered protection against racism students may have experienced in person. Shereen Naser, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Cleveland State University and a member of CPSE, and colleagues found that students are more comfortable saying discriminatory things in school when their teachers are also doing so; Naser suspects this trickle-down effect is less likely to happen when students learn from home ( School Psychology International , 2019).

Reductions in bullying and microaggressions aren’t just beneficial for students’ long-term mental health. Breaux said less bullying at school results in less stress, which can improve students’ self-esteem and mood—both of which impact their ability to learn.

Patricia Perez, PhD, an associate professor of international psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology and a member of CPSE, said it’s important for schools to be proactive in providing spaces for support and cultural expression for students from vulnerable backgrounds, whether in culture-specific clubs, all-school assemblies that address racism and other diversity-related topics, or safe spaces to process feelings with teachers.

According to Rossen, many schools are already considering how to continue supporting students at risk for bullying, including by restructuring the school environment.

One principal, Rossen said, recently switched to single-use bathrooms to avoid congregating in those spaces once in-person learning commences to maintain social distancing requirements. “The principal received feedback from students about how going to the bathroom is much less stressful for these students in part due to less bullying,” he said.

More opportunities for special needs students

In Becker and Breaux’s research, parents of students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), particularly those with a 504 plan and IEP, reported greater difficulties with remote learning. But some students with special learning needs—including those with IEPs and 504 plans—thrived in an at-home learning environment. Recent reporting in The New York Times suggests this is one reason many students want to continue online learning.

According to Cara Laitusis, PhD, a principal research scientist at Educational Testing Service ( ETS ) and a member of CPSE, reduced distractions may improve learning outcomes for some students with disabilities that impact attention in a group setting. “In assessments, small group or individual settings are frequently requested accommodations for some students with ADHD, anxiety, or autism. Being in a quiet place alone without peers for part of the instructional day may also allow for more focus,” she said. However, she also pointed out the benefits of inclusion in the classroom for developing social skills with peers.

Remote learning has improved academic outcomes for students with different learning needs, too. Marks said her seventh-grade daughter, a visual learner, appreciated the increase in video presentations and graphics. Similarly, Hibbard said many of her students who struggle to grasp lessons on the first try have benefited from the ability to watch videos over again until they understand. Post-pandemic, she plans to record bite-size lessons—for example, a 1-minute video of a long division problem—so her students can rewatch and process at their own rate.

Learners with anxiety also appreciate the option not to be in the classroom, because the social pressures of being surrounded by peers can make it hard to focus on academics. “Several of my students have learned more in the last year simply due to the absence of anxiety,” said Rosie Reid, an English teacher at Ygnacio Valley High School in Concord, California, and a 2019 California Teacher of the Year. “It’s just one less thing to negotiate in a learning environment.”

On online learning platforms, it’s easier for kids with social anxiety or shyness to participate. One of Gardner’s students with social anxiety participated far more in virtual settings and chats. Now, Gardner is brainstorming ways to encourage students to chat in person, such as by projecting a chat screen on the blackboard.

Technology has helped school psychologists better engage students, too. For example, Greiert said the virtual setting gave her a new understanding of her students’ personalities and needs. “Typing out their thoughts, they were able to demonstrate humor or complex thoughts they never demonstrated in person,” she said. “I really want to keep incorporating technology into sessions so kids can keep building on their strengths.”

Reid says that along with the high school students she teaches, she’s seen her 6-year-old daughter benefit from learning at her own pace in the familiarity of her home. Before the pandemic, she was behind academically, but by guiding her own learning—writing poems, reading books, playing outside with her siblings—she’s blossomed. “For me, as both a mother and as a teacher, this whole phenomenon has opened the door to what education can be,” Reid said.

Eleanor Di Marino-Linnen, PhD, a psychologist and superintendent of the Rose Tree Media School District in Media, Pennsylvania, says the pandemic afforded her district a chance to rethink old routines and implement new ones. “As challenging as it is, it’s definitely an exciting time to be in education when we have a chance to reenvision what schools have looked like for many years,” she said. “We want to capitalize on what we’ve learned.”

Further reading

Why are some kids thriving during remote learning? Fleming, N., Edutopia, 2020

Remote learning has been a disaster for many students. But some kids have thrived. Gilman, A., The Washington Post , Oct. 3, 2020

A preliminary examination of key strategies, challenges, and benefits of remote learning expressed by parents during the COVID-19 pandemic Roy, A., et al., School Psychology , in press

Remote learning during COVID-19: Examining school practices, service continuation, and difficulties for adolescents with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder Becker S. P., et al., Journal of Adolescent Health , 2020

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Assessing the impact of online-learning effectiveness and benefits in knowledge management, the antecedent of online-learning strategies and motivations: an empirical study.

1. Introduction

2. literature review and research hypothesis, 2.1. online-learning self-efficacy terminology, 2.2. online-learning monitoring terminology, 2.3. online-learning confidence in technology terminology, 2.4. online-learning willpower terminology, 2.5. online-learning attitude terminology, 2.6. online-learning motivation terminology, 2.7. online-learning strategies and online-learning effectiveness terminology, 2.8. online-learning effectiveness terminology, 3. research method, 3.1. instruments, 3.2. data analysis and results, 4.1. reliability and validity analysis, 4.2. hypothesis result, 5. discussion, 6. conclusions, 7. limitations and future directions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Hongsuchon, T.; Emary, I.M.M.E.; Hariguna, T.; Qhal, E.M.A. Assessing the Impact of Online-Learning Effectiveness and Benefits in Knowledge Management, the Antecedent of Online-Learning Strategies and Motivations: An Empirical Study. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 2570. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052570

Hongsuchon T, Emary IMME, Hariguna T, Qhal EMA. Assessing the Impact of Online-Learning Effectiveness and Benefits in Knowledge Management, the Antecedent of Online-Learning Strategies and Motivations: An Empirical Study. Sustainability . 2022; 14(5):2570. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052570

Hongsuchon, Tanaporn, Ibrahiem M. M. El Emary, Taqwa Hariguna, and Eissa Mohammed Ali Qhal. 2022. "Assessing the Impact of Online-Learning Effectiveness and Benefits in Knowledge Management, the Antecedent of Online-Learning Strategies and Motivations: An Empirical Study" Sustainability 14, no. 5: 2570. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052570

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• Published: 25 January 2021

Online education in the post-COVID era

• Barbara B. Lockee 1  

Nature Electronics volume  4 ,  pages 5–6 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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The coronavirus pandemic has forced students and educators across all levels of education to rapidly adapt to online learning. The impact of this — and the developments required to make it work — could permanently change how education is delivered.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to engage in the ubiquitous use of virtual learning. And while online and distance learning has been used before to maintain continuity in education, such as in the aftermath of earthquakes 1 , the scale of the current crisis is unprecedented. Speculation has now also begun about what the lasting effects of this will be and what education may look like in the post-COVID era. For some, an immediate retreat to the traditions of the physical classroom is required. But for others, the forced shift to online education is a moment of change and a time to reimagine how education could be delivered 2 .

Looking back

Online education has traditionally been viewed as an alternative pathway, one that is particularly well suited to adult learners seeking higher education opportunities. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has required educators and students across all levels of education to adapt quickly to virtual courses. (The term ‘emergency remote teaching’ was coined in the early stages of the pandemic to describe the temporary nature of this transition 3 .) In some cases, instruction shifted online, then returned to the physical classroom, and then shifted back online due to further surges in the rate of infection. In other cases, instruction was offered using a combination of remote delivery and face-to-face: that is, students can attend online or in person (referred to as the HyFlex model 4 ). In either case, instructors just had to figure out how to make it work, considering the affordances and constraints of the specific learning environment to create learning experiences that were feasible and effective.

The use of varied delivery modes does, in fact, have a long history in education. Mechanical (and then later electronic) teaching machines have provided individualized learning programmes since the 1950s and the work of B. F. Skinner 5 , who proposed using technology to walk individual learners through carefully designed sequences of instruction with immediate feedback indicating the accuracy of their response. Skinner’s notions formed the first formalized representations of programmed learning, or ‘designed’ learning experiences. Then, in the 1960s, Fred Keller developed a personalized system of instruction 6 , in which students first read assigned course materials on their own, followed by one-on-one assessment sessions with a tutor, gaining permission to move ahead only after demonstrating mastery of the instructional material. Occasional class meetings were held to discuss concepts, answer questions and provide opportunities for social interaction. A personalized system of instruction was designed on the premise that initial engagement with content could be done independently, then discussed and applied in the social context of a classroom.

These predecessors to contemporary online education leveraged key principles of instructional design — the systematic process of applying psychological principles of human learning to the creation of effective instructional solutions — to consider which methods (and their corresponding learning environments) would effectively engage students to attain the targeted learning outcomes. In other words, they considered what choices about the planning and implementation of the learning experience can lead to student success. Such early educational innovations laid the groundwork for contemporary virtual learning, which itself incorporates a variety of instructional approaches and combinations of delivery modes.

Online learning and the pandemic

Fast forward to 2020, and various further educational innovations have occurred to make the universal adoption of remote learning a possibility. One key challenge is access. Here, extensive problems remain, including the lack of Internet connectivity in some locations, especially rural ones, and the competing needs among family members for the use of home technology. However, creative solutions have emerged to provide students and families with the facilities and resources needed to engage in and successfully complete coursework 7 . For example, school buses have been used to provide mobile hotspots, and class packets have been sent by mail and instructional presentations aired on local public broadcasting stations. The year 2020 has also seen increased availability and adoption of electronic resources and activities that can now be integrated into online learning experiences. Synchronous online conferencing systems, such as Zoom and Google Meet, have allowed experts from anywhere in the world to join online classrooms 8 and have allowed presentations to be recorded for individual learners to watch at a time most convenient for them. Furthermore, the importance of hands-on, experiential learning has led to innovations such as virtual field trips and virtual labs 9 . A capacity to serve learners of all ages has thus now been effectively established, and the next generation of online education can move from an enterprise that largely serves adult learners and higher education to one that increasingly serves younger learners, in primary and secondary education and from ages 5 to 18.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to have a lasting effect on lesson design. The constraints of the pandemic provided an opportunity for educators to consider new strategies to teach targeted concepts. Though rethinking of instructional approaches was forced and hurried, the experience has served as a rare chance to reconsider strategies that best facilitate learning within the affordances and constraints of the online context. In particular, greater variance in teaching and learning activities will continue to question the importance of ‘seat time’ as the standard on which educational credits are based 10 — lengthy Zoom sessions are seldom instructionally necessary and are not aligned with the psychological principles of how humans learn. Interaction is important for learning but forced interactions among students for the sake of interaction is neither motivating nor beneficial.

While the blurring of the lines between traditional and distance education has been noted for several decades 11 , the pandemic has quickly advanced the erasure of these boundaries. Less single mode, more multi-mode (and thus more educator choices) is becoming the norm due to enhanced infrastructure and developed skill sets that allow people to move across different delivery systems 12 . The well-established best practices of hybrid or blended teaching and learning 13 have served as a guide for new combinations of instructional delivery that have developed in response to the shift to virtual learning. The use of multiple delivery modes is likely to remain, and will be a feature employed with learners of all ages 14 , 15 . Future iterations of online education will no longer be bound to the traditions of single teaching modes, as educators can support pedagogical approaches from a menu of instructional delivery options, a mix that has been supported by previous generations of online educators 16 .

Also significant are the changes to how learning outcomes are determined in online settings. Many educators have altered the ways in which student achievement is measured, eliminating assignments and changing assessment strategies altogether 17 . Such alterations include determining learning through strategies that leverage the online delivery mode, such as interactive discussions, student-led teaching and the use of games to increase motivation and attention. Specific changes that are likely to continue include flexible or extended deadlines for assignment completion 18 , more student choice regarding measures of learning, and more authentic experiences that involve the meaningful application of newly learned skills and knowledge 19 , for example, team-based projects that involve multiple creative and social media tools in support of collaborative problem solving.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, technological and administrative systems for implementing online learning, and the infrastructure that supports its access and delivery, had to adapt quickly. While access remains a significant issue for many, extensive resources have been allocated and processes developed to connect learners with course activities and materials, to facilitate communication between instructors and students, and to manage the administration of online learning. Paths for greater access and opportunities to online education have now been forged, and there is a clear route for the next generation of adopters of online education.

Before the pandemic, the primary purpose of distance and online education was providing access to instruction for those otherwise unable to participate in a traditional, place-based academic programme. As its purpose has shifted to supporting continuity of instruction, its audience, as well as the wider learning ecosystem, has changed. It will be interesting to see which aspects of emergency remote teaching remain in the next generation of education, when the threat of COVID-19 is no longer a factor. But online education will undoubtedly find new audiences. And the flexibility and learning possibilities that have emerged from necessity are likely to shift the expectations of students and educators, diminishing further the line between classroom-based instruction and virtual learning.

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Lockee, B.B. Online education in the post-COVID era. Nat Electron 4 , 5–6 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-00534-0

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Students’ experience of online learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A province‐wide survey study

Lixiang yan.

1 Centre for Learning Analytics at Monash, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Clayton VIC, Australia

Alexander Whitelock‐Wainwright

2 Portfolio of the Deputy Vice‐Chancellor (Education), Monash University, Melbourne VIC, Australia

Quanlong Guan

3 Department of Computer Science, Jinan University, Guangzhou China

Gangxin Wen

4 College of Cyber Security, Jinan University, Guangzhou China

Dragan Gašević

Guanliang chen, associated data.

The data is not openly available as it is restricted by the Chinese government.

Online learning is currently adopted by educational institutions worldwide to provide students with ongoing education during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Even though online learning research has been advancing in uncovering student experiences in various settings (i.e., tertiary, adult, and professional education), very little progress has been achieved in understanding the experience of the K‐12 student population, especially when narrowed down to different school‐year segments (i.e., primary and secondary school students). This study explores how students at different stages of their K‐12 education reacted to the mandatory full‐time online learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic. For this purpose, we conducted a province‐wide survey study in which the online learning experience of 1,170,769 Chinese students was collected from the Guangdong Province of China. We performed cross‐tabulation and Chi‐square analysis to compare students’ online learning conditions, experiences, and expectations. Results from this survey study provide evidence that students’ online learning experiences are significantly different across school years. Foremost, policy implications were made to advise government authorises and schools on improving the delivery of online learning, and potential directions were identified for future research into K‐12 online learning.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Online learning has been widely adopted during the COVID‐19 pandemic to ensure the continuation of K‐12 education.
• Student success in K‐12 online education is substantially lower than in conventional schools.
• Students experienced various difficulties related to the delivery of online learning.

What this paper adds

• Provide empirical evidence for the online learning experience of students in different school years.
• Identify the different needs of students in primary, middle, and high school.
• Identify the challenges of delivering online learning to students of different age.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Authority and schools need to provide sufficient technical support to students in online learning.
• The delivery of online learning needs to be customised for students in different school years.

INTRODUCTION

The ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic poses significant challenges to the global education system. By July 2020, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2020) reported nationwide school closure in 111 countries, affecting over 1.07 billion students, which is around 61% of the global student population. Traditional brick‐and‐mortar schools are forced to transform into full‐time virtual schools to provide students with ongoing education (Van Lancker & Parolin,  2020 ). Consequently, students must adapt to the transition from face‐to‐face learning to fully remote online learning, where synchronous video conferences, social media, and asynchronous discussion forums become their primary venues for knowledge construction and peer communication.

For K‐12 students, this sudden transition is problematic as they often lack prior online learning experience (Barbour & Reeves,  2009 ). Barbour and LaBonte ( 2017 ) estimated that even in countries where online learning is growing rapidly, such as USA and Canada, less than 10% of the K‐12 student population had prior experience with this format. Maladaptation to online learning could expose inexperienced students to various vulnerabilities, including decrements in academic performance (Molnar et al.,  2019 ), feeling of isolation (Song et al.,  2004 ), and lack of learning motivation (Muilenburg & Berge,  2005 ). Unfortunately, with confirmed cases continuing to rise each day, and new outbreaks occur on a global scale, full‐time online learning for most students could last longer than anticipated (World Health Organization,  2020 ). Even after the pandemic, the current mass adoption of online learning could have lasting impacts on the global education system, and potentially accelerate and expand the rapid growth of virtual schools on a global scale (Molnar et al.,  2019 ). Thus, understanding students' learning conditions and their experiences of online learning during the COVID pandemic becomes imperative.

Emerging evidence on students’ online learning experience during the COVID‐19 pandemic has identified several major concerns, including issues with internet connection (Agung et al.,  2020 ; Basuony et al.,  2020 ), problems with IT equipment (Bączek et al.,  2021 ; Niemi & Kousa,  2020 ), limited collaborative learning opportunities (Bączek et al.,  2021 ; Yates et al.,  2020 ), reduced learning motivation (Basuony et al.,  2020 ; Niemi & Kousa,  2020 ; Yates et al.,  2020 ), and increased learning burdens (Niemi & Kousa,  2020 ). Although these findings provided valuable insights about the issues students experienced during online learning, information about their learning conditions and future expectations were less mentioned. Such information could assist educational authorises and institutions to better comprehend students’ difficulties and potentially improve their online learning experience. Additionally, most of these recent studies were limited to higher education, except for Yates et al. ( 2020 ) and Niemi and Kousa’s ( 2020 ) studies on senior high school students. Empirical research targeting the full spectrum of K‐12students remain scarce. Therefore, to address these gaps, the current paper reports the findings of a large‐scale study that sought to explore K‐12 students’ online learning experience during the COVID‐19 pandemic in a provincial sample of over one million Chinese students. The findings of this study provide policy recommendations to educational institutions and authorities regarding the delivery of K‐12 online education.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Learning conditions and technologies.

Having stable access to the internet is critical to students’ learning experience during online learning. Berge ( 2005 ) expressed the concern of the divide in digital‐readiness, and the pedagogical approach between different countries could influence students’ online learning experience. Digital‐readiness is the availability and adoption of information technologies and infrastructures in a country. Western countries like America (3rd) scored significantly higher in digital‐readiness compared to Asian countries like China (54th; Cisco,  2019 ). Students from low digital‐readiness countries could experience additional technology‐related problems. Supporting evidence is emerging in recent studies conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic. In Egypt's capital city, Basuony et al. ( 2020 ) found that only around 13.9%of the students experienced issues with their internet connection. Whereas more than two‐thirds of the students in rural Indonesia reported issues of unstable internet, insufficient internet data, and incompatible learning device (Agung et al.,  2020 ).

Another influential factor for K‐12 students to adequately adapt to online learning is the accessibility of appropriate technological devices, especially having access to a desktop or a laptop (Barbour et al., 2018 ). However, it is unlikely for most of the students to satisfy this requirement. Even in higher education, around 76% of students reported having incompatible devices for online learning and only 15% of students used laptop for online learning, whereas around 85% of them used smartphone (Agung et al.,  2020 ). It is very likely that K‐12 students also suffer from this availability issue as they depend on their parents to provide access to relevant learning devices.

Technical issues surrounding technological devices could also influence students’ experience in online learning. (Barbour & Reeves,  2009 ) argues that students need to have a high level of digital literacy to find and use relevant information and communicate with others through technological devices. Students lacking this ability could experience difficulties in online learning. Bączek et al. ( 2021 ) found that around 54% of the medical students experienced technical problems with IT equipment and this issue was more prevalent in students with lower years of tertiary education. Likewise, Niemi and Kousa ( 2020 ) also find that students in a Finish high school experienced increased amounts of technical problems during the examination period, which involved additional technical applications. These findings are concerning as young children and adolescent in primary and lower secondary school could be more vulnerable to these technical problems as they are less experienced with the technologies in online learning (Barbour & LaBonte,  2017 ). Therefore, it is essential to investigate the learning conditions and the related difficulties experienced by students in K‐12 education as the extend of effects on them remain underexplored.

Learning experience and interactions

Apart from the aforementioned issues, the extent of interaction and collaborative learning opportunities available in online learning could also influence students’ experience. The literature on online learning has long emphasised the role of effective interaction for the success of student learning. According to Muirhead and Juwah ( 2004 ), interaction is an event that can take the shape of any type of communication between two or subjects and objects. Specifically, the literature acknowledges the three typical forms of interactions (Moore,  1989 ): (i) student‐content, (ii) student‐student, and (iii) student‐teacher. Anderson ( 2003 ) posits, in the well‐known interaction equivalency theorem, learning experiences will not deteriorate if only one of the three interaction is of high quality, and the other two can be reduced or even eliminated. Quality interaction can be accomplished by across two dimensions: (i) structure—pedagogical means that guide student interaction with contents or other students and (ii) dialogue—communication that happens between students and teachers and among students. To be able to scale online learning and prevent the growth of teaching costs, the emphasise is typically on structure (i.e., pedagogy) that can promote effective student‐content and student‐student interaction. The role of technology and media is typically recognised as a way to amplify the effect of pedagogy (Lou et al.,  2006 ). Novel technological innovations—for example learning analytics‐based personalised feedback at scale (Pardo et al.,  2019 ) —can also empower teachers to promote their interaction with students.

Online education can lead to a sense of isolation, which can be detrimental to student success (McInnerney & Roberts,  2004 ). Therefore, integration of social interaction into pedagogy for online learning is essential, especially at the times when students do not actually know each other or have communication and collaboration skills underdeveloped (Garrison et al.,  2010 ; Gašević et al.,  2015 ). Unfortunately, existing evidence suggested that online learning delivery during the COVID‐19 pandemic often lacks interactivity and collaborative experiences (Bączek et al.,  2021 ; Yates et al.,  2020 ). Bączek et al., ( 2021 ) found that around half of the medical students reported reduced interaction with teachers, and only 4% of students think online learning classes are interactive. Likewise, Yates et al. ( 2020 )’s study in high school students also revealed that over half of the students preferred in‐class collaboration over online collaboration as they value the immediate support and the proximity to teachers and peers from in‐class interaction.

Learning expectations and age differentiation

Although these studies have provided valuable insights and stressed the need for more interactivity in online learning, K‐12 students in different school years could exhibit different expectations for the desired activities in online learning. Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory illustrated children's difficulties in understanding abstract and hypothetical concepts (Thomas,  2000 ). Primary school students will encounter many abstract concepts in their STEM education (Uttal & Cohen,  2012 ). In face‐to‐face learning, teachers provide constant guidance on students’ learning progress and can help them to understand difficult concepts. Unfortunately, the level of guidance significantly drops in online learning, and, in most cases, children have to face learning obstacles by themselves (Barbour,  2013 ). Additionally, lower primary school students may lack the metacognitive skills to use various online learning functions, maintain engagement in synchronous online learning, develop and execute self‐regulated learning plans, and engage in meaningful peer interactions during online learning (Barbour,  2013 ; Broadbent & Poon,  2015 ; Huffaker & Calvert, 2003; Wang et al.,  2013 ). Thus, understanding these younger students’ expectations is imperative as delivering online learning to them in the same way as a virtual high school could hinder their learning experiences. For students with more matured metacognition, their expectations of online learning could be substantially different from younger students. Niemi et al.’s study ( 2020 ) with students in a Finish high school have found that students often reported heavy workload and fatigue during online learning. These issues could cause anxiety and reduce students’ learning motivation, which would have negative consequences on their emotional well‐being and academic performance (Niemi & Kousa,  2020 ; Yates et al.,  2020 ), especially for senior students who are under the pressure of examinations. Consequently, their expectations of online learning could be orientated toward having additional learning support functions and materials. Likewise, they could also prefer having more opportunities for peer interactions as these interactions are beneficial to their emotional well‐being and learning performance (Gašević et al., 2013 ; Montague & Rinaldi, 2001 ). Therefore, it is imperative to investigate the differences between online learning expectations in students of different school years to suit their needs better.

Research questions

By building upon the aforementioned relevant works, this study aimed to contribute to the online learning literature with a comprehensive understanding of the online learning experience that K‐12 students had during the COVID‐19 pandemic period in China. Additionally, this study also aimed to provide a thorough discussion of what potential actions can be undertaken to improve online learning delivery. Formally, this study was guided by three research questions (RQs):

RQ1 . What learning conditions were experienced by students across 12 years of education during their online learning process in the pandemic period? RQ2 . What benefits and obstacles were perceived by students across 12 years of education when performing online learning? RQ3 . What expectations do students, across 12 years of education, have for future online learning practices ?

Participants

The total number of K‐12 students in the Guangdong Province of China is around 15 million. In China, students of Year 1–6, Year 7–9, and Year 10–12 are referred to as students of primary school, middle school, and high school, respectively. Typically, students in China start their study in primary school at the age of around six. At the end of their high‐school study, students have to take the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE; also known as Gaokao) to apply for tertiary education. The survey was administrated across the whole Guangdong Province, that is the survey was exposed to all of the 15 million K‐12 students, though it was not mandatory for those students to accomplish the survey. A total of 1,170,769 students completed the survey, which accounts for a response rate of 7.80%. After removing responses with missing values and responses submitted from the same IP address (duplicates), we had 1,048,575 valid responses, which accounts to about 7% of the total K‐12 students in the Guangdong Province. The number of students in different school years is shown in Figure  1 . Overall, students were evenly distributed across different school years, except for a smaller sample in students of Year 10–12.

The number of students in each school year

Survey design

The survey was designed collaboratively by multiple relevant parties. Firstly, three educational researchers working in colleges and universities and three educational practitioners working in the Department of Education in Guangdong Province were recruited to co‐design the survey. Then, the initial draft of the survey was sent to 30 teachers from different primary and secondary schools, whose feedback and suggestions were considered to improve the survey. The final survey consisted of a total of 20 questions, which, broadly, can be classified into four categories: demographic, behaviours, experiences, and expectations. Details are available in Appendix.

All K‐12 students in the Guangdong Province were made to have full‐time online learning from March 1, 2020 after the outbreak of COVID‐19 in January in China. A province‐level online learning platform was provided to all schools by the government. In addition to the learning platform, these schools can also use additional third‐party platforms to facilitate the teaching activities, for example WeChat and Dingding, which provide services similar to WhatsApp and Zoom. The main change for most teachers was that they had to shift the classroom‐based lectures to online lectures with the aid of web‐conferencing tools. Similarly, these teachers also needed to perform homework marking and have consultation sessions in an online manner.

The Department of Education in the Guangdong Province of China distributed the survey to all K‐12 schools in the province on March 21, 2020 and collected responses on March 26, 2020. Students could access and answer the survey anonymously by either scan the Quick Response code along with the survey or click the survey address link on their mobile device. The survey was administrated in a completely voluntary manner and no incentives were given to the participants. Ethical approval was granted by the Department of Education in the Guangdong Province. Parental approval was not required since the survey was entirely anonymous and facilitated by the regulating authority, which satisfies China's ethical process.

The original survey was in Chinese, which was later translated by two bilingual researchers and verified by an external translator who is certified by the Australian National Accreditation Authority of Translators and Interpreters. The original and translated survey questionnaires are available in Supporting Information. Given the limited space we have here and the fact that not every survey item is relevant to the RQs, the following items were chosen to answer the RQs: item Q3 (learning media) and Q11 (learning approaches) for RQ1, item Q13 (perceived obstacle) and Q19 (perceived benefits) for RQ2, and item Q19 (expected learning activities) for RQ3. Cross‐tabulation based approaches were used to analyse the collected data. To scrutinise whether the differences displayed by students of different school years were statistically significant, we performed Chi‐square tests and calculated the Cramer's V to assess the strengths of the association after chi‐square had determined significance.

For the analyses, students were segmented into four categories based on their school years, that is Year 1–3, Year 4–6, Year 7–9, and Year 10–12, to provide a clear understanding of the different experiences and needs that different students had for online learning. This segmentation was based on the educational structure of Chinese schools: elementary school (Year 1–6), middle school (Year 7–9), and high school (Year 10–12). Children in elementary school can further be segmented into junior (Year 1–3) or senior (Year 4–6) students because senior elementary students in China are facing more workloads compared to junior students due to the provincial Middle School Entry Examination at the end of Year 6.

Learning conditions—RQ1

Learning media.

The Chi‐square test showed significant association between school years and students’ reported usage of learning media, χ 2 (55, N  = 1,853,952) = 46,675.38, p  < 0.001. The Cramer's V is 0.07 ( df ∗ = 5), which indicates a small‐to‐medium effect according to Cohen’s ( 1988 ) guidelines. Based on Figure  2 , we observed that an average of up to 87.39% students used smartphones to perform online learning, while only 25.43% students used computer, which suggests that smartphones, with widespread availability in China (2020), have been adopted by students for online learning. As for the prevalence of the two media, we noticed that both smartphones ( χ 2 (3, N  = 1,048,575) = 9,395.05, p < 0.001, Cramer's V  = 0.10 ( df ∗ = 1)) and computers ( χ 2 (3, N  = 1,048,575) = 11,025.58, p <.001, Cramer's V  = 0.10 ( df ∗ = 1)) were more adopted by high‐school‐year (Year 7–12) than early‐school‐year students (Year 1–6), both with a small effect size. Besides, apparent discrepancies can be observed between the usages of TV and paper‐based materials across different school years, that is early‐school‐year students reported more TV usage ( χ 2 (3, N  = 1,048,575) = 19,505.08, p <.001), with a small‐to‐medium effect size, Cramer's V  = 0.14( df ∗ = 1). High‐school‐year students (especially Year 10–12) reported more usage of paper‐based materials ( χ 2 (3, N  = 1,048,575) = 23,401.64, p < 0.001), with a small‐to‐medium effect size, Cramer's V  = 0.15( df ∗ = 1).

Learning media used by students in online learning

Learning approaches

School years is also significantly associated with the different learning approaches students used to tackle difficult concepts during online learning, χ 2 (55, N  = 2,383,751) = 58,030.74, p < 0.001. The strength of this association is weak to moderate as shown by the Cramer's V (0.07, df ∗ = 5; Cohen,  1988 ). When encountering problems related to difficult concepts, students typically chose to “solve independently by searching online” or “rewatch recorded lectures” instead of consulting to their teachers or peers (Figure  3 ). This is probably because, compared to classroom‐based education, it is relatively less convenient and more challenging for students to seek help from others when performing online learning. Besides, compared to high‐school‐year students, early‐school‐year students (Year 1–6), reported much less use of “solve independently by searching online” ( χ 2 (3, N  = 1,048,575) = 48,100.15, p <.001), with a small‐to‐medium effect size, Cramer's V  = 0.21 ( df ∗ = 1). Also, among those approaches of seeking help from others, significantly more high‐school‐year students preferred “communicating with other students” than early‐school‐year students ( χ 2 (3, N  = 1,048,575) = 81,723.37, p < 0.001), with a medium effect size, Cramer's V  = 0.28 ( df ∗ = 1).

Learning approaches used by students in online learning

Perceived benefits and obstacles—RQ2

Perceived benefits.

The association between school years and perceived benefits in online learning is statistically significant, χ 2 (66, N  = 2,716,127) = 29,534.23, p  < 0.001, and the Cramer's V (0.04, df ∗ = 6) indicates a small effect (Cohen,  1988 ). Unsurprisingly, benefits brought by the convenience of online learning are widely recognised by students across all school years (Figure  4 ), that is up to 75% of students reported that it is “more convenient to review course content” and 54% said that they “can learn anytime and anywhere” . Besides, we noticed that about 50% of early‐school‐year students appreciated the “access to courses delivered by famous teachers” and 40%–47% of high‐school‐year students indicated that online learning is “helpful to develop self‐regulation and autonomy” .

Perceived benefits of online learning reported by students

Perceived obstacles

The Chi‐square test shows a significant association between school years and students’ perceived obstacles in online learning, χ 2 (77, N  = 2,699,003) = 31,987.56, p < 0.001. This association is relatively weak as shown by the Cramer's V (0.04, df ∗ = 7; Cohen,  1988 ). As shown in Figure  5 , the biggest obstacles encountered by up to 73% of students were the “eyestrain caused by long staring at screens” . Disengagement caused by nearby disturbance was reported by around 40% of students, especially those of Year 1–3 and 10–12. Technological‐wise, about 50% of students experienced poor Internet connection during their learning process, and around 20% of students reported the “confusion in setting up the platforms” across of school years.

Perceived obstacles of online learning reported by students

Expectations for future practices of online learning – RQ3

Online learning activities.

The association between school years and students’ expected online learning activities is significant, χ 2 (66, N  = 2,416,093) = 38,784.81, p < 0.001. The Cramer's V is 0.05 ( df ∗ = 6) which suggests a small effect (Cohen,  1988 ). As shown in Figure  6 , the most expected activity for future online learning is “real‐time interaction with teachers” (55%), followed by “online group discussion and collaboration” (38%). We also observed that more early‐school‐year students expect reflective activities, such as “regular online practice examinations” ( χ 2 (3, N  = 1,048,575) = 11,644.98, p < 0.001), with a small effect size, Cramer's V  = 0.11 ( df ∗ = 1). In contrast, more high‐school‐year students expect “intelligent recommendation system …” ( χ 2 (3, N  = 1,048,575) = 15,327.00, p < 0.001), with a small effect size, Cramer's V  = 0.12 ( df ∗ = 1).

Students’ expected online learning activities

Regarding students’ learning conditions, substantial differences were observed in learning media, family dependency, and learning approaches adopted in online learning between students in different school years. The finding of more computer and smartphone usage in high‐school‐year than early‐school‐year students can probably be explained by that, with the growing abilities in utilising these media as well as the educational systems and tools which run on these media, high‐school‐year students tend to make better use of these media for online learning practices. Whereas, the differences in paper‐based materials may imply that high‐school‐year students in China have to accomplish a substantial amount of exercise, assignments, and exam papers to prepare for the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), whose delivery was not entirely digitised due to the sudden transition to online learning. Meanwhile, high‐school‐year students may also have preferred using paper‐based materials for exam practice, as eventually, they would take their NCEE in the paper format. Therefore, these substantial differences in students’ usage of learning media should be addressed by customising the delivery method of online learning for different school years.

Other than these between‐age differences in learning media, the prevalence of smartphone in online learning resonates with Agung et al.’s ( 2020 ) finding on the issues surrounding the availability of compatible learning device. The prevalence of smartphone in K‐12 students is potentially problematic as the majority of the online learning platform and content is designed for computer‐based learning (Berge,  2005 ; Molnar et al.,  2019 ). Whereas learning with smartphones has its own unique challenges. For example, Gikas and Grant ( 2013 ) discovered that students who learn with smartphone experienced frustration with the small screen‐size, especially when trying to type with the tiny keypad. Another challenge relates to the distraction of various social media applications. Although similar distractions exist in computer and web‐based social media, the level of popularity, especially in the young generation, are much higher in mobile‐based social media (Montag et al.,  2018 ). In particular, the message notification function in smartphones could disengage students from learning activities and allure them to social media applications (Gikas & Grant,  2013 ). Given these challenges of learning with smartphones, more research efforts should be devoted to analysing students’ online learning behaviour in the setting of mobile learning to accommodate their needs better.

The differences in learning approaches, once again, illustrated that early‐school‐year students have different needs compared to high‐school‐year students. In particular, the low usage of the independent learning methods in early‐school‐year students may reflect their inability to engage in independent learning. Besides, the differences in help seeking behaviours demonstrated the distinctive needs for communication and interaction between different students, that is early‐school‐year students have a strong reliance on teachers and high‐school‐year students, who are equipped with stronger communication ability, are more inclined to interact with their peers. This finding implies that the design of online learning platforms should take students’ different needs into account. Thus, customisation is urgently needed for the delivery of online learning to different school years.

In terms of the perceived benefits and challenges of online learning, our results resonate with several previous findings. In particular, the benefits of convenience are in line with the flexibility advantages of online learning, which were mentioned in prior works (Appana,  2008 ; Bączek et al.,  2021 ; Barbour,  2013 ; Basuony et al.,  2020 ; Harvey et al.,  2014 ). Early‐school‐year students’ higher appreciation in having “access to courses delivered by famous teachers” and lower appreciation in the independent learning skills developed through online learning are also in line with previous literature (Barbour,  2013 ; Harvey et al.,  2014 ; Oliver et al.,  2009 ). Again, these similar findings may indicate the strong reliance that early‐school‐year students place on teachers, while high‐school‐year students are more capable of adapting to online learning by developing independent learning skills.

Technology‐wise, students’ experience of poor internet connection and confusion in setting up online learning platforms are particularly concerning. The problem of poor internet connection corroborated the findings reported in prior studies (Agung et al.,  2020 ; Barbour,  2013 ; Basuony et al.,  2020 ; Berge,  2005 ; Rice,  2006 ), that is the access issue surrounded the digital divide as one of the main challenges of online learning. In the era of 4G and 5G networks, educational authorities and institutions that deliver online education could fall into the misconception of most students have a stable internet connection at home. The internet issue we observed is particularly vital to students’ online learning experience as most students prefer real‐time communications (Figure  6 ), which rely heavily on stable internet connection. Likewise, the finding of students’ confusion in technology is also consistent with prior studies (Bączek et al.,  2021 ; Muilenburg & Berge,  2005 ; Niemi & Kousa,  2020 ; Song et al.,  2004 ). Students who were unsuccessfully in setting up the online learning platforms could potentially experience declines in confidence and enthusiasm for online learning, which would cause a subsequent unpleasant learning experience. Therefore, both the readiness of internet infrastructure and student technical skills remain as the significant challenges for the mass‐adoption of online learning.

On the other hand, students’ experience of eyestrain from extended screen time provided empirical evidence to support Spitzer’s ( 2001 ) speculation about the potential ergonomic impact of online learning. This negative effect is potentially related to the prevalence of smartphone device and the limited screen size of these devices. This finding not only demonstrates the potential ergonomic issues that would be caused by smartphone‐based online learning but also resonates with the aforementioned necessity of different platforms and content designs for different students.

A less‐mentioned problem in previous studies on online learning experiences is the disengagement caused by nearby disturbance, especially in Year 1–3 and 10–12. It is likely that early‐school‐year students suffered from this problem because of their underdeveloped metacognitive skills to concentrate on online learning without teachers’ guidance. As for high‐school‐year students, the reasons behind their disengagement require further investigation in the future. Especially it would be worthwhile to scrutinise whether this type of disengagement is caused by the substantial amount of coursework they have to undertake and the subsequent a higher level of pressure and a lower level of concentration while learning.

Across age‐level differences are also apparent in terms of students’ expectations of online learning. Although, our results demonstrated students’ needs of gaining social interaction with others during online learning, findings (Bączek et al.,  2021 ; Harvey et al.,  2014 ; Kuo et al.,  2014 ; Liu & Cavanaugh,  2012 ; Yates et al.,  2020 ). This need manifested differently across school years, with early‐school‐year students preferring more teacher interactions and learning regulation support. Once again, this finding may imply that early‐school‐year students are inadequate in engaging with online learning without proper guidance from their teachers. Whereas, high‐school‐year students prefer more peer interactions and recommendation to learning resources. This expectation can probably be explained by the large amount of coursework exposed to them. Thus, high‐school‐year students need further guidance to help them better direct their learning efforts. These differences in students’ expectations for future practices could guide the customisation of online learning delivery.

Implications

As shown in our results, improving the delivery of online learning not only requires the efforts of policymakers but also depend on the actions of teachers and parents. The following sub‐sections will provide recommendations for relevant stakeholders and discuss their essential roles in supporting online education.

Technical support

The majority of the students has experienced technical problems during online learning, including the internet lagging and confusion in setting up the learning platforms. These problems with technology could impair students’ learning experience (Kauffman,  2015 ; Muilenburg & Berge,  2005 ). Educational authorities and schools should always provide a thorough guide and assistance for students who are experiencing technical problems with online learning platforms or other related tools. Early screening and detection could also assist schools and teachers to direct their efforts more effectively in helping students with low technology skills (Wilkinson et al.,  2010 ). A potential identification method involves distributing age‐specific surveys that assess students’ Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills at the beginning of online learning. For example, there are empirical validated ICT surveys available for both primary (Aesaert et al.,  2014 ) and high school (Claro et al.,  2012 ) students.

For students who had problems with internet lagging, the delivery of online learning should provide options that require fewer data and bandwidth. Lecture recording is the existing option but fails to address students’ need for real‐time interaction (Clark et al.,  2015 ; Malik & Fatima,  2017 ). A potential alternative involves providing students with the option to learn with digital or physical textbooks and audio‐conferencing, instead of screen sharing and video‐conferencing. This approach significantly reduces the amount of data usage and lowers the requirement of bandwidth for students to engage in smooth online interactions (Cisco,  2018 ). It also requires little additional efforts from teachers as official textbooks are often available for each school year, and thus, they only need to guide students through the materials during audio‐conferencing. Educational authority can further support this approach by making digital textbooks available for teachers and students, especially those in financial hardship. However, the lack of visual and instructor presence could potentially reduce students’ attention, recall of information, and satisfaction in online learning (Wang & Antonenko,  2017 ). Therefore, further research is required to understand whether the combination of digital or physical textbooks and audio‐conferencing is appropriate for students with internet problems. Alternatively, suppose the local technological infrastructure is well developed. In that case, governments and schools can also collaborate with internet providers to issue data and bandwidth vouchers for students who are experiencing internet problems due to financial hardship.

For future adoption of online learning, policymakers should consider the readiness of the local internet infrastructure. This recommendation is particularly important for developing countries, like Bangladesh, where the majority of the students reported the lack of internet infrastructure (Ramij & Sultana,  2020 ). In such environments, online education may become infeasible, and alternative delivery method could be more appropriate, for example, the Telesecundaria program provides TV education for rural areas of Mexico (Calderoni,  1998 ).

Other than technical problems, choosing a suitable online learning platform is also vital for providing students with a better learning experience. Governments and schools should choose an online learning platform that is customised for smartphone‐based learning, as the majority of students could be using smartphones for online learning. This recommendation is highly relevant for situations where students are forced or involuntarily engaged in online learning, like during the COVID‐19 pandemic, as they might not have access to a personal computer (Molnar et al.,  2019 ).

Customisation of delivery methods

Customising the delivery of online learning for students in different school years is the theme that appeared consistently across our findings. This customisation process is vital for making online learning an opportunity for students to develop independent learning skills, which could help prepare them for tertiary education and lifelong learning. However, the pedagogical design of K‐12 online learning programs should be differentiated from adult‐orientated programs as these programs are designed for independent learners, which is rarely the case for students in K‐12 education (Barbour & Reeves,  2009 ).

For early‐school‐year students, especially Year 1–3 students, providing them with sufficient guidance from both teachers and parents should be the priority as these students often lack the ability to monitor and reflect on learning progress. In particular, these students would prefer more real‐time interaction with teachers, tutoring from parents, and regular online practice examinations. These forms of guidance could help early‐school‐year students to cope with involuntary online learning, and potentially enhance their experience in future online learning. It should be noted that, early‐school‐year students demonstrated interest in intelligent monitoring and feedback systems for learning. Additional research is required to understand whether these young children are capable of understanding and using learning analytics that relay information on their learning progress. Similarly, future research should also investigate whether young children can communicate effectively through digital tools as potential inability could hinder student learning in online group activities. Therefore, the design of online learning for early‐school‐year students should focus less on independent learning but ensuring that students are learning effective under the guidance of teachers and parents.

In contrast, group learning and peer interaction are essential for older children and adolescents. The delivery of online learning for these students should focus on providing them with more opportunities to communicate with each other and engage in collaborative learning. Potential methods to achieve this goal involve assigning or encouraging students to form study groups (Lee et al.,  2011 ), directing students to use social media for peer communication (Dabbagh & Kitsantas,  2012 ), and providing students with online group assignments (Bickle & Rucker,  2018 ).

Special attention should be paid to students enrolled in high schools. For high‐school‐year students, in particular, students in Year 10–12, we also recommend to provide them with sufficient access to paper‐based learning materials, such as revision booklet and practice exam papers, so they remain familiar with paper‐based examinations. This recommendation applies to any students who engage in online learning but has to take their final examination in paper format. It is also imperative to assist high‐school‐year students who are facing examinations to direct their learning efforts better. Teachers can fulfil this need by sharing useful learning resources on the learning management system, if it is available, or through social media groups. Alternatively, students are interested in intelligent recommendation systems for learning resources, which are emerging in the literature (Corbi & Solans,  2014 ; Shishehchi et al.,  2010 ). These systems could provide personalised recommendations based on a series of evaluation on learners’ knowledge. Although it is infeasible for situations where the transformation to online learning happened rapidly (i.e., during the COVID‐19 pandemic), policymakers can consider embedding such systems in future online education.

Limitations

The current findings are limited to primary and secondary Chinese students who were involuntarily engaged in online learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Despite the large sample size, the population may not be representative as participants are all from a single province. Also, information about the quality of online learning platforms, teaching contents, and pedagogy approaches were missing because of the large scale of our study. It is likely that the infrastructures of online learning in China, such as learning platforms, instructional designs, and teachers’ knowledge about online pedagogy, were underprepared for the sudden transition. Thus, our findings may not represent the experience of students who voluntarily participated in well‐prepared online learning programs, in particular, the virtual school programs in America and Canada (Barbour & LaBonte,  2017 ; Molnar et al.,  2019 ). Lastly, the survey was only evaluated and validated by teachers but not students. Therefore, students with the lowest reading comprehension levels might have a different understanding of the items’ meaning, especially terminologies that involve abstract contracts like self‐regulation and autonomy in item Q17.

In conclusion, we identified across‐year differences between primary and secondary school students’ online learning experience during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Several recommendations were made for the future practice and research of online learning in the K‐12 student population. First, educational authorities and schools should provide sufficient technical support to help students to overcome potential internet and technical problems, as well as choosing online learning platforms that have been customised for smartphones. Second, customising the online pedagogy design for students in different school years, in particular, focusing on providing sufficient guidance for young children, more online collaborative opportunity for older children and adolescent, and additional learning resource for senior students who are facing final examinations.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

There is no potential conflict of interest in this study.

ETHICS STATEMENT

The data are collected by the Department of Education of the Guangdong Province who also has the authority to approve research studies in K12 education in the province.

Supporting information

Supplementary Material

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62077028, 61877029), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong (2020B0909030005, 2020B1212030003, 2020ZDZX3013, 2019B1515120010, 2018KTSCX016, 2019A050510024), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou (201902010041), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (21617408, 21619404).

SURVEY ITEMS

Yan, L , Whitelock‐Wainwright, A , Guan, Q , Wen, G , Gašević, D , & Chen, G . Students’ experience of online learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A province‐wide survey study . Br J Educ Technol . 2021; 52 :2038–2057. 10.1111/bjet.13102 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

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Home > Books > E-Learning and Digital Education in the Twenty-First Century

The Impact of Online Learning Strategies on Students’ Academic Performance

Submitted: 01 September 2020 Reviewed: 11 October 2020 Published: 18 May 2022

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.94425

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Higher education institutions have shifted from traditional face to face to online teaching due to Corona virus pandemic which has forced both teachers and students to be put in a compulsory lockdown. However the online teaching/learning constitutes a serious challenge that both university teachers and students have to face, as it necessarily requires the adoption of different new teaching/learning strategies to attain effective academic outcomes, imposing a virtual learning world which involves from the students’ part an online access to lectures and information, and on the teacher’s side the adoption of a new teaching approach to deliver the curriculum content, new means of evaluation of students’ personal skills and learning experience. This chapter explores and assesses the online teaching and learning impact on students’ academic achievement, encompassing the passing in review the adoption of students’ research strategies, the focus of the students’ main source of information viz. library online consultation and the collaboration with their peers. To reach this end, descriptive and parametric analyses are conducted in order to identify the impact of these new factors on students’ academic performance. The findings of the study shows that to what extent the students’ online learning has or has not led to any remarkable improvements in the students’ academic achievements and, whether or not, to any substantial changes in their e-learning competence. This study was carried out on a sample of University College (UAEU) students selected in Spring 2019 and Fall 2020.

• online learning environment
• content-based research
• process-based research
• success factors assessment

Author Information

Khaled hamdan *.

• UAEU-University College, UAE

Abid Amorri

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

With the advent of COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown of universities worldwide for fear of contamination due to the spread of the coronavirus, higher educational institutions have deemed necessary to adopt new teaching strategies, exclusively online, to deliver their curriculum content and keep from the Corona virus widespread at bay [ 1 ]. Technology was called upon to play this pivotal teaching/learning online role, as it has influenced people’s task accomplishment in various ways. It has become a part of our ever changing lives. It is an important part of e-learning to create relationship-involving technology, course content and pedagogy in learning/teaching environment. Therefore, e-learning is becoming unavoidable in a virtual teaching environment where students can take control of their learning and optimize it in a virtual classroom and elsewhere. So, learning today has shifted from the conventional face to face learning to online learning and to a direct access to information through technologies available as e-learning has proven to be more beneficial to students in terms of knowledge or information acquisition. Online teaching promotes learning by encouraging the students’ use of various learning strategies at hand and increases the level of their commitment to studying their majors. Virtual world represents an effective learning environment, providing users with an experience-based information acquisition. Instructors set up the course outcomes by creating tasks involving problem or challenge-based learning situations and offering the learner a full control of exploratory learning experiences. However, there are some challenges for instructors such as the selection of the most appropriate educational strategies and how best to design learning tasks and activities to meet learners’ needs and expectations. Various approaches can lead towards strong students’ behavioral changes especially when combined with ethical principles. However, with careful selection of the learning environment, pedagogical strategies lining up with the concrete specifics of the educational context, the building of learners’ self-confidence and their empowerment during the learning process becomes within reach. Another benefit of using online teaching/learning is that here is a need to explore new teaching strategies and principles that positively influence distance education, as traditional teaching/learning methods are becoming less effective at engaging students in the learning process. Finally, e-learning can solve many of the students’ learning issues in a conventional learning environment, as it helps them to attend classes for various reasons, as it has made the communication/interaction between them and their instructors much easier and the access to lectures much more at hand. Students can attend online university courses and at the same time meet other social obligations. Therefore, the circumstances in a learner’s life, and whatever problems or distraction he/she may have such as family problems or illnesses, may no longer be an impediment to his education. Learners can practice in virtual situations and face challenges in a safe environment, which leads to a more engaged learning experience that facilitates better knowledge acquisition.

The work presents the educational processes as a modern strategy for teaching/learning. e-learning tends to persuade the users to be virtually available to act naturally. There are a few factors affecting the outcomes such as learning aims and objectives, and different pedagogical choices. Instructors use various factors to measure the learning quality like Competence, Attitude, Content Delivery, Reliability, and Globalization [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. In this work, we are going to pass in review positive and negative impacts of online learning followed by recommendations to increase awareness regarding online learning and the use of this new strategic technology. Modern teaching methods like brainstorming, problem solving, indirect-consultancy, and inquiry-based method have a significant effect in the educational progress [ 5 ].

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of using modern teaching methods, such as teacher-student interactive and student-centered methods, on students’ academic performance. Factors that may affect students’ performance and success- the technology used, students’ collaboration/teamwork, time management and communication skills are taken into consideration [ 6 ]. It also attempts to identify and to show to what extent online learning environment, when well integrated and adapted in course planning and objectives, can cater for students’ needs and wants. Does online teaching make a significant improvement in students’ academic performance and their personal skills such as organizations, communications, responsibilities, problem-solving tasks, engagement, learning interest, self-evolution, and abilities to reach their potential? Is students’ struggle is not purely academic, but rather related to the lack of personal skills?

2. Online learning experience

There are many motives behind the implementation of the online learning experience. The online learning is mandatory nowadays to all audience due to COVID −19 pandemic, which forced the higher educational authorities to start the online teaching [ 1 ]. We believe that we reached a tipping point where making changes to the current learning process is inevitable for many reasons. Today learners have instant access to information through technology and the web, can manage their own acquisition of knowledge through online learning. As a result, traditional teaching and learning methods are becoming less effective at engaging students, who no longer rely exclusively on the teacher as the only source of knowledge. Indeed, 90% of the respondents use internet as their major source of information. So the teacher is new role is to be a learning facilitator, a guide for his students. He should not only help his students locate information, but more importantly question it and reflect upon it and formulate an opinion about it. Another reason for the adoption of the online learning is that higher institution did not hesitate one moment to integrate it as a primary tool of education. So, it transformed the conventional course and current learning process into e-learning concept. The integration of the online teaching into the curriculum resulted in several issues to instructors, curriculum designer and administrators, starting from the infrastructure to online teaching and assessment. Does the current IT infrastructure support this integration? What course content should the instructor teach and how it should be delivered? What effective pedagogy needs to be adopted? How learning should be assessed? What is the direct effect of the online learning on students’ performance? [ 7 ].

With reference to the survey findings, the majority of students were among the staunch supporters of online learning taking into consideration the imposed COVID-19 lockdown circumstances, as they expressed their full support and confidence in computer skills to share digital content, using online learning and collaboration platforms with their peers, and expressed their satisfaction with the support of the online teaching and learning [ 8 ].

However, a small percentage of the survey respondents, expressed their below average satisfaction when higher educational institutions have invested in digital literacy and infrastructure, as they believe they should provide more flexible delivery methods, digital platforms and modernized user-friendly curricula to both students and teachers [ 9 ]. On the same lines, the higher education authorities regard the quick and unexpected development of the UAE’s higher education landscape, ICT infrastructure, and advanced online learning/teaching methods, imposed by COVID-19, have had a tremendous adverse impact on the students’ culture, thus leading to students’ social seclusion from their peers, imposing new social norms and behavior regarding plagiarism, affecting students’ cultural ethics and learning and collaboration with their peers, when adopting the digital culture [ 10 ].

A current study emphasized the need for adoption of technology in education as a way to lessen the effects of Coronavirus pandemic lockdown in education to palliate the loss of face- to- face teaching/learning which has more beneficial aspects of learning for students than online learning as it offers more interactive learning opportunities.

We recommend that all these questions should be taken into consideration when designing a new course i.e. the e-learning strategies, the learners’ and instructor’s new roles, course content and pedagogy and students’ performance/achievement assessment ( Figure 1 ). In this experience, we focus only on the implementation of new learning academic objectives- how they are infused into the curriculum and how they are assessed. The ultimate objective of implementing a new learning process is to design a curriculum conveyed by a creative pedagogy and oriented towards the cultivation of a creative person yearning for the exploration of new ideas [ 11 ]. The afore-mentioned objectives lead to design a comprehensive learning experience with new learning outcomes where instructors infuse new practical skills - Critical thinking and Problem-Solving Tasks, Creativity and Innovation, Communication and Collaboration. Other skills are implicitly infused into the curriculum such as, self-independent learning, interdependence, lifelong learning, flexibility, adaptability, and assuming academic learning responsibilities. Online learning is defined as virtual learning using mobile and wireless computing technologies in a way to promote learners’ learning abilities [ 12 ]. In ( Figure 2 ), each component of the e-learning process is defined clearly below [ 13 ].

E-learning approach.

E-learning process.

2.1 Active instructor

His role is to facilitate learning process in the virtual classroom, to engage students in the learning process, to allow them to participate in designing their own course content and to contribute to design learning assessment parameters.

2.2 Active learner

He can access course content anytime and from anywhere, engage with his peers in a collaborative environment, formulate his opinions continuously, interact with other learning communities, communicate effectively, share and publish their findings with others in online environment.

2.3 Creative pedagogy

Both instructors and learners decide on what to learn online and how it should be learned. This experience is designed to promote an inquiry and challenge-based learning models where teachers and students work together to learn about compelling issues, propose solutions to real problems and take actions [ 11 ]. The approach involves students to reflect on their learning, on the impact of their actions and to publish their solutions to a worldwide audience [ 14 ].

2.4 Flexible curriculum

A core curriculum is designed, but the facilitator has the freedom to innovate and customize course content accordingly up to the aspiration of the learners; this means that the learner’s knowledge of the material will mainly come from his own online research (formal and informal content), and from his own creativity and collaboration with his peers (teamwork).

2.5 Communities outreach

This allows a group of students to formulate real-world context research question, connect with local learning and global communities to find creative solutions to their problems, create opportunities to connect themselves with international communities. These opportunities will foster students’ social and leadership skills [ 15 ].

According to students’ observation, more than 70% of instructors found that the online learning using Blackboard ultra-collaboration boosts students’ learning interest, engagement and motivation. 84% of teachers use required to use interactive tools in order to engage students in presenting and sharing a five minutes presentation to their classmates, write a reflective essay on their experience, be involved in a collaborative project (interest- based learning project). 97% of students contributed to self and peer assessments, and 97% interacted using online management systems. Students were also encouraged to interact with their peers using blackboard group collaborate. Thanks to the online teaching strategy, 70% of students were able to deliver on time their work.

For the study purpose, several assessments components incorporate both individual and group work. For the individual work, each student was required to make an individual presentation on any subject of his own interest, write a reflective essay, self -assessment, class peer assessment, midterm and final exams. For the collaborative work, students were assigned teams and each student should contribute to the project delivered every two weeks in the form of a final presentation and a final project. Rubrics were designed and all students were well instructed to use them. Teachers were trained to monitor and facilitate the experience and the internal learning management systems such as Blackboard.

The subsequent ( Figure 3 ) shows the feedback loop of content mapping of factors and their relationships in relation to students’ performance and intake. The first feedback loop begins at the node called “Students”. The second one begins at the node entitled “Teacher”. There are two major positive feedback loops. For instance, a good team improves co-operation and creativity which increase the team’s learning experience. Setting clear goals and interactive strategies will enhance online learning and performance results. The E-learning process and the project outcomes are influenced by technology use [ 13 ].

Conceptual model of students’ E-learning environment parameters.

3. Research methodology

We studied the impact of online learning using technology in virtual classrooms and the effect of performance factors on students’ learning behavior and achievement. The study focused on a sample of 6045 students, collected from the enrolment of University College students in spring 2020, at United Arab Emirates University has used online teaching strategy in comparison to fall 2019 teaching/learning experience, which used conventional teaching strategy involving 7369 students (See Table 1 ). The study shows the learning outcomes are similar for both virtual and conventional learning, although the assessment methods are different. They include students’ learning outcomes assessment, testing (assessing prior and post knowledge acquisition) and quantitative versus conventional research. The findings of the survey are discussed below. Descriptive statistics were obtained to summarize the sample characteristics and performance variables. Pearson Correlation was used to evaluate the association between the learning outcomes dimensions. Independent Samples t-test was used to compare the mean overall performance of the online learning. Linear Regression was used to determine the impact of the learning characteristics (Critical thinking, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration) on the overall performance score. Factor Analysis was used to study the inter-relationships among the learning characteristics and compare the online methods.

Students’ population.

The objectives of the learning process consist of providing a diversified learning environment. The positive impact of this diversity is reflected in the students’ performance. Students in various represented colleges have similar passing grades as high (80–98%) for both Online Approach (OLA) and Conventional learning -Face-to-Face (FoF). The University College is the largest college in the University with more than 4000 students. Most of UAEU students start their study in UC; they take English, Arabic, IT and Math ( Figure 4 ).

University college percentage passing rate.

This study was limited to GEIL101 foundation students. Surveys were sent out to all information literacy sections at the end of the first semester 2019/2020, but there were only 87 respondents. The survey had 2 parts, one part is about students’ achievement/performance, and the second part use is about online learning in a virtual classroom. All sessions were conducted online by trained instructors in tandem with the University library delivered by professional librarians. In this report, fall 2019 students’ data are used as the sample for the study ( Table 2 ).

GEIL students.

Overall, the results indicate the online learning was beneficial for students as it shown in their academic achievements and in tables below. A significant number of students reported high comfort levels of attending online courses in virtual classroom instead of conventional learning. Results indicated students have a positive reception to online approach rather than traditional classrooms. Additionally, qualitative data identified a clearconsiderations for the integration of new technology into the new teaching and learning experience.

4. E-learning results and analyses

Table 3 shows the IL students’ pre and post tests performance. The analysis on the pre and post-tests, using the means comparison and one sample test, shows an increase of students’ performance by 84%, the mean of the pre-test is around 7.5 and the post test is 13.85, a significant difference of 6.35. 65% of students score above 60% (passing rate for the course) in the post-test, only 2.4% of students scored above 60% in the pre-test. This means that 97.6% of students did not have basic information literacy knowledge, but after going through intensive 12 week learning under e-learning conditions, 65% achieved the course outcomes with higher scores.

Students’ academic performance.

The following tables ( Tables 3 and 4 ) shows the students’ performance by each learning activity:

Students’ learning activity.

The scores in the post-test ranged between 11 and 20, whereas it ranged between 6 to 9 in the pre-test ( Figure 5 ).

Pre and post-tests comparison distribution.

The above results show that OLA students scored higher than the FoF in the majority of the learning activities. There is an important performance of online students in the midterm and final exams though both approaches where offered the similar assessments criteria under the same test conditions. In the next section, the online learning process validity, the learning activities, and the learning outcome achievements, will be discussed in greater details. Several statistical models, qualitative and quantitative analysis have been applied for this purpose.

5. Impact analysis of the learning activities

It is important for an educator to evaluate which type of learning activity that has an important impact on students’ performance. It will help the curriculum designers to adjust and improve the syllabus content accordingly. Two types of analyses are conducted quantitatively and qualitatively; the first analysis relies on the learning activities grades and course final scores. The second one relies on students’ feedback through reflective essays and teachers’ perception towards their students’ learning progress.

5.1 Quantitative analysis

5.1.1 impact of the learning activities on students’ performance.

To analyze the significance of each learning activity on students’ performance, a regression linear model was used to analyze the impact of each learning skill on students’ performance. According to the output report, the model is significant at 95% (p < 0.000), and there is a strong correlation between 95.8% of the learning skills and students’ performance (r2 = 0.919).

Overall, all learning skills strategies have a significant impact on students’ performance. Each student’s learning skills and their impact will be analyzed. The following graph shows that individual contribution has less impact on the student’s performance, but the course component is very important where students demonstrate their interaction with the course content. The quality of the students’ online participation, their assiduity and interaction with others and their contribution in the projects are different from class participation. Therefore, statistically speaking, it has a lower impact. So, it is highly recommended to review how this component is graded.

5.1.2 Impact of each learning skill on students’ achievement

The following table describes the impact of each individual learning skill on students’ performance. To do this analysis, we used Pearson Correlation Coefficient to measure the strength of the linear relationship between the learning skills. The following figure shows the relationship between the learning skills.

From the table below, the test 1 (Midterm Exam) and test 2 (Final Exam) have the strongest impact (754 and 758) respectively on the final grades, even though students scored lower in these activities compared to other assessed learning activities. They are still the most efficient assessment methods to evaluate students’ achievement. The projects, individual presentation and reflective essays have also a significant impact on students’ performance. The only learning activity with the lowest impact is the individual participation and engagement in the class, which is an important learning activity, and it needs a review on how to assess it in an effective way.

6. Teachers’ observations

Students’ e-learning performance data is processed and presented. The six characteristic attributes are identified. Each characteristic is divided into further sub-items that are rated from 1 to 5 by the respondents. Then, for each of the six main characteristics, the average of the sub-items rating is calculated. The box plot (see Figure 6 ) shows a detailed distribution of each response. This is made up of the results, comparing the responses given to the different factors affecting learning. The result shows that the teachers rating of the effect of online learning in the following table. Example: 50% of teachers think that 70% of students improved their creativity skills.

Using e-learning in the virtual classroom.

Descriptive statistics for the learning variables are shown below in Table 5 . In general, the mean and median of all the characteristics are quite high-around 3.5 ( Table 6 ). Regarding correlations between learning parameters, the results show that almost all characteristics are highly inter-correlated (p < 0.001) (See Table 7 ).

Regression model on learning skill of students’ performance.

Dependent Variable: FinalGrades.

Correlation between the learning skills on students’ academic performance.

. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

E-learning characteristics.

Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

7. Students’ results and analysis

The survey was to collect feedback from students after they started using online learning courses. The effects of this methods on students’ learning and understanding A scale of 1–5 range from strongly agree (5) to strongly disagree (1). Different dimensions of online approach are analyzed and Eighty-seven UAE College Students coming from different Universities were asked to give their perception on different aspects of online learning methods.

For the question (1), “Do you like online learning technology?” 84 respondents representing 97.6% of the students said they do. As for the question (2), “Do you feel ready to use online environment?”, 61 students representing 71.2% said they do.

While 7 students or 8% said, they do not. Only 19 student or 21.8% were neutral (see Table 8 ).

Ready for online transformation.

As for question (3), “whether students have all the required technology tools for online learning”, 71 of the respondents representing 83.53% agreed but only 4 students disagreed (See Table 9 ).

Do students have the required tools for online learning?

Regarding the question (4), as to “whether students have reliable internet connection for online learning, 56 of the respondents representing 64% said that they agreed, while 7 students said that they disagree (See Table 10 ).

Do students have the reliable internet connection for online learning?

For question (5), “Did Online learning help your study when you have flexible schedule?” 53 students representing 63% of the respondents said it helped them because of time restriction. On the other hand, 31 students representing 37% said that time was not visible (See Table 11 ).

Did you have a flexible schedule when online learning was used?

For question (6), “Did online learning help you to be more productive?” 38 students representing 45% of the respondents said that online class helped them to be more organized and productive. On the other hand, 19 students representing 23% said that it was not productive for them (See Table 12 ).

Did online learning help you be more productive?

For question (7), “How do rate your experience with your team online” 58 students representing 60% of the respondents said that online learning class is like normal class. On the other hand, 9 students representing 10% said that they were not satisfied with online learning (See Table 13 ).

How do you rate your online experience with your team?

For question (7), “How do rate your internet connectivity and how often problems occurred?” 37 students representing 43% of the respondents said that online class runs into technical issues which lead to reduce their productivity and confidence. On the other hand, 42 students representing 48% said that there were no issues with their internet connections (See Table 14 ).

How often do you face technical problems?

For question (8), “Did you develop any health issues since the start of online learning? 41 students representing 48% of the respondents said that online class causes health issues which lead to reduce their productivity and confidence. On the other hand, 25 students representing 29% said that there were no health issues using online learning (See Table 15 ).

Did you develop any health issues since the start of online learning?

For question (9), “Rate the distractions you have had online”, 31 students representing 37% of the respondents said that online class did not face distractions. On the other hand, 23 students representing 27% said that there were not issues concerning online distraction (See Table 16 ).

Rate the distractions you have had at home.

8. Conclusion

The ultimate purpose of this investigation was to explore the impact of online learning on students’ academic achievement as the demand has increased in recent times for online courses among institutions and college students who solely rely on flexible and comfortable education. We tried to measure in quantifiable terms the students’ final academic performance after their exposure to online learning during this pandemic lockdown. The final results obtained in this study were quite self-eloquent, as they unequivocally show the tremendous impact of e- learning on students’ academic performance and achievements, as it can benefit students in many ways, including enhancing and maximizing their learning independence and classroom participation. It is a good experience for students’ transitional preparation to pursue college education and seek employment. Students were more engaged in the learning process than in conventional teaching, and online learning experience has revealed that didactic teaching style is no longer effective. They no longer regard teachers as the only source of information, but as learning facilitator and online learning from different internet sources as their main source of information. They have proved that they can assume their responsibilities, contribute to course design assessment and learning process personalization. Online learning also helped overcome time and space constraints imposed by the convention learning process and helped students to effectively communicate their findings and share their ideas with their peers locally and globally. The introduction of a new technology such as the online learning will undoubtedly have more impact on the learning outcomes only if we reconsider the delivery mode, content redesign, new assessment system. A suitable pedagogy and an appropriate content are the most important sources of students’ learning motivation. Finally, e-learning has a bright future, tremendous learning potentialities and excellent organizational culture. Universities will incontrovertibly use many of the lessons learned during this pandemic lockdown period of this forced online teaching to adjust curriculum contents, teaching methods/lesson delivery, and assessment tools.

E-learning is here to stay and can make a much stronger contribution to higher education in the years to come. However, there are some negative effects of online class as it does not offer real a face to face contact and interaction with instructors and imposes time commitment and less accountability on students. There are also many online struggles that students face such as the impossibility to stay motivated all the time, as they sometimes feel that they are completely isolated. In addition, instructors feel impotent to control students’ cheating, impose classroom discipline. In addition to that, poor students struggle to get the necessary electronic equipment to access this new mode of learning to interact in due time with their instructor, make necessary comments and raise questions to clear ambiguities and any equivocal statements and get appropriate feedback from their instructor.

There are other academic issues that need to be investigated deeply such as the perspectives of higher education quality focusing on the study of cultural, emotional, technological, ethical, health, financial or academic achievements. Furthermore, more academic research should be done about e-learning theories/distance learning to truly improvise a new and adequate teaching/learning approach.

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Education, Business, & Law

Online learning’s impact on student performance

Alex rees-jones of the wharton school co-authored a study that found that online learning during the pandemic had a negative impact on student learning..

A study published in Economics Letters co-authored by Alex Rees-Jones , an associate professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School, and led by Douglas M. McKee and George Orlov of Cornell University, found that online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic hurt student learning, but did not hurt particular demographic groups more than others. However, they did find that if the instructor used active learning techniques, students were more engaged and thus learning outcomes improved.

In this project, the researchers were studying the impact of the switch to online teaching on student performance during the beginning of the pandemic in spring 2020.

“I was one of a group of professors who were part of a multi-year program meant to assess and improve active learning techniques in the classroom,” says Rees-Jones. “We were running standardized tests at the end of each semester so we could see the effect of changes. By chance, COVID happened during all of this, so the cross-semester system we built to measure changes in student learning could be used to assess what happened from COVID.”

The bottom line to the study, according to Rees-Jones, is that the pandemic hurt student learning quite a bit.

“We studied if it hurt particular demographic groups more than others, but found no evidence that this mattered in our context,” he says. “One thing that did matter, though, was the instructor’s use of active learning techniques. Using approaches built to improve student engagement mitigated a lot of the negative effects, and not using any of those techniques was associated with quite bad outcomes.”

The researchers compared student performance on standard assessments in spring 2020 to student performance in the same courses in either fall or spring 2019 to estimate the impact of the emergency switch to remote instruction induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Using these data, they addressed three questions:

First, they examined how end-of-semester knowledge was influenced by the measures taken in spring 2020.

The typical difficulty in assessing a question like this is finding measures of learning that are comparable over time, according to Rees-Jones.

“For example, if the average grade on the final exam in one semester is an A and the average another semester is a B, you don’t actually know if the amount learned across semesters was different,” he says. “One final could simply have harder questions.”

To get around this issue, professors teaching these classes all made clear lists of topics that should be learned in their class, and designed a standardized assessment of knowledge of those topics that could be given at the end of the semester year after year.

“Comparing performance on this test across semesters then allows you to infer differences in how well the students came to master the key topic areas laid out for the course,” says Rees-Jones. “Using this measure, we found that end-of-the-semester test scores declined by .2 standard deviations during spring 2019, which quantitatively is a pretty substantial decline.”

Second, they assessed whether certain groups of students were more affected by the pandemic.

“Specifically, we predicted student’s end-of-semester performance using information on whether they identified as an underrepresented minority, a female, a first-generation college attendee, or someone speaking English as a second language,” says Orlov. “While we did find evidence of some differences in performance across these groups, we did not find evidence that these differences changed during spring 2020.”

This suggests that, at least in the classes that were studied, according to Orlov, the negative effects of the pandemic were not particularly concentrated in one of these demographic groups.

“It would of course have very worrying equity implications if such differences were found,” he says.

And third, the study looked at whether the use of specific teaching methods resulted in a more successful transition to remote teaching. Earlier research has shown repeatedly that students learn more when they actively work on problems either individually or together in the classroom relative to students who sit passively listening to a lecture and taking notes, according to McKee.

“We thought going into this project that these teaching methods could work especially well in this online-during-a-pandemic setting where students are more easily distracted and are hungry for social interaction,” he says. “So we were not surprised to find that students in classes with planned peer interaction scored significantly higher on our assessments.”

The study’s findings make the authors optimistic about future student learning outcomes even though many students and teachers remain in a period of substantial online instruction for three reasons, according to the authors of the study.

“First, online teaching experience seems to matter, and during 2020, many college faculty accumulated some experience,” says Rees-Jones. “Second, we expected that disadvantaged groups would be further disadvantaged during the pandemic, but we found no statistical evidence of this concern,” says Orlov.

“Third, we have shown that it is possible to incorporate peer interaction or small group activities into synchronous online courses, and that it was significantly associated with improved learning, especially during the remotely taught portion of the semester,” says McKee.

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The Impact of Online Learning on College Students

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Published: Mar 6, 2024

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Advantages of online learning, long-term effects of online learning.

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Students’ online learning challenges during the pandemic and how they cope with them: The case of the Philippines

• Published: 28 May 2021
• Volume 26 , pages 7321–7338, ( 2021 )

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Recently, the education system has faced an unprecedented health crisis that has shaken up its foundation. Given today’s uncertainties, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students’ online learning experience in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although many studies have investigated this area, limited information is available regarding the challenges and the specific strategies that students employ to overcome them. Thus, this study attempts to fill in the void. Using a mixed-methods approach, the findings revealed that the online learning challenges of college students varied in terms of type and extent. Their greatest challenge was linked to their learning environment at home, while their least challenge was technological literacy and competency. The findings further revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had the greatest impact on the quality of the learning experience and students’ mental health. In terms of strategies employed by students, the most frequently used were resource management and utilization, help-seeking, technical aptitude enhancement, time management, and learning environment control. Implications for classroom practice, policy-making, and future research are discussed.

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1 Introduction

Since the 1990s, the world has seen significant changes in the landscape of education as a result of the ever-expanding influence of technology. One such development is the adoption of online learning across different learning contexts, whether formal or informal, academic and non-academic, and residential or remotely. We began to witness schools, teachers, and students increasingly adopt e-learning technologies that allow teachers to deliver instruction interactively, share resources seamlessly, and facilitate student collaboration and interaction (Elaish et al., 2019 ; Garcia et al., 2018 ). Although the efficacy of online learning has long been acknowledged by the education community (Barrot, 2020 , 2021 ; Cavanaugh et al., 2009 ; Kebritchi et al., 2017 ; Tallent-Runnels et al., 2006 ; Wallace, 2003 ), evidence on the challenges in its implementation continues to build up (e.g., Boelens et al., 2017 ; Rasheed et al., 2020 ).

Recently, the education system has faced an unprecedented health crisis (i.e., COVID-19 pandemic) that has shaken up its foundation. Thus, various governments across the globe have launched a crisis response to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic on education. This response includes, but is not limited to, curriculum revisions, provision for technological resources and infrastructure, shifts in the academic calendar, and policies on instructional delivery and assessment. Inevitably, these developments compelled educational institutions to migrate to full online learning until face-to-face instruction is allowed. The current circumstance is unique as it could aggravate the challenges experienced during online learning due to restrictions in movement and health protocols (Gonzales et al., 2020 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ). Given today’s uncertainties, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students’ online learning experience in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, many studies have investigated this area with a focus on students’ mental health (Copeland et al., 2021 ; Fawaz et al., 2021 ), home learning (Suryaman et al., 2020 ), self-regulation (Carter et al., 2020 ), virtual learning environment (Almaiah et al., 2020 ; Hew et al., 2020 ; Tang et al., 2020 ), and students’ overall learning experience (e.g., Adarkwah, 2021 ; Day et al., 2021 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Singh et al., 2020 ). There are two key differences that set the current study apart from the previous studies. First, it sheds light on the direct impact of the pandemic on the challenges that students experience in an online learning space. Second, the current study explores students’ coping strategies in this new learning setup. Addressing these areas would shed light on the extent of challenges that students experience in a full online learning space, particularly within the context of the pandemic. Meanwhile, our nuanced understanding of the strategies that students use to overcome their challenges would provide relevant information to school administrators and teachers to better support the online learning needs of students. This information would also be critical in revisiting the typology of strategies in an online learning environment.

2 Literature review

2.1 education and the covid-19 pandemic.

In December 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, occurred in China and has spread rapidly across the globe within a few months. COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus that attacks the respiratory system (World Health Organization, 2020 ). As of January 2021, COVID-19 has infected 94 million people and has caused 2 million deaths in 191 countries and territories (John Hopkins University, 2021 ). This pandemic has created a massive disruption of the educational systems, affecting over 1.5 billion students. It has forced the government to cancel national examinations and the schools to temporarily close, cease face-to-face instruction, and strictly observe physical distancing. These events have sparked the digital transformation of higher education and challenged its ability to respond promptly and effectively. Schools adopted relevant technologies, prepared learning and staff resources, set systems and infrastructure, established new teaching protocols, and adjusted their curricula. However, the transition was smooth for some schools but rough for others, particularly those from developing countries with limited infrastructure (Pham & Nguyen, 2020 ; Simbulan, 2020 ).

Inevitably, schools and other learning spaces were forced to migrate to full online learning as the world continues the battle to control the vicious spread of the virus. Online learning refers to a learning environment that uses the Internet and other technological devices and tools for synchronous and asynchronous instructional delivery and management of academic programs (Usher & Barak, 2020 ; Huang, 2019 ). Synchronous online learning involves real-time interactions between the teacher and the students, while asynchronous online learning occurs without a strict schedule for different students (Singh & Thurman, 2019 ). Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has taken the status of interim remote teaching that serves as a response to an exigency. However, the migration to a new learning space has faced several major concerns relating to policy, pedagogy, logistics, socioeconomic factors, technology, and psychosocial factors (Donitsa-Schmidt & Ramot, 2020 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Varea & González-Calvo, 2020 ). With reference to policies, government education agencies and schools scrambled to create fool-proof policies on governance structure, teacher management, and student management. Teachers, who were used to conventional teaching delivery, were also obliged to embrace technology despite their lack of technological literacy. To address this problem, online learning webinars and peer support systems were launched. On the part of the students, dropout rates increased due to economic, psychological, and academic reasons. Academically, although it is virtually possible for students to learn anything online, learning may perhaps be less than optimal, especially in courses that require face-to-face contact and direct interactions (Franchi, 2020 ).

2.2 Related studies

Recently, there has been an explosion of studies relating to the new normal in education. While many focused on national policies, professional development, and curriculum, others zeroed in on the specific learning experience of students during the pandemic. Among these are Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) and Fawaz et al. ( 2021 ) who examined the impact of COVID-19 on college students’ mental health and their coping mechanisms. Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) reported that the pandemic adversely affected students’ behavioral and emotional functioning, particularly attention and externalizing problems (i.e., mood and wellness behavior), which were caused by isolation, economic/health effects, and uncertainties. In Fawaz et al.’s ( 2021 ) study, students raised their concerns on learning and evaluation methods, overwhelming task load, technical difficulties, and confinement. To cope with these problems, students actively dealt with the situation by seeking help from their teachers and relatives and engaging in recreational activities. These active-oriented coping mechanisms of students were aligned with Carter et al.’s ( 2020 ), who explored students’ self-regulation strategies.

In another study, Tang et al. ( 2020 ) examined the efficacy of different online teaching modes among engineering students. Using a questionnaire, the results revealed that students were dissatisfied with online learning in general, particularly in the aspect of communication and question-and-answer modes. Nonetheless, the combined model of online teaching with flipped classrooms improved students’ attention, academic performance, and course evaluation. A parallel study was undertaken by Hew et al. ( 2020 ), who transformed conventional flipped classrooms into fully online flipped classes through a cloud-based video conferencing app. Their findings suggested that these two types of learning environments were equally effective. They also offered ways on how to effectively adopt videoconferencing-assisted online flipped classrooms. Unlike the two studies, Suryaman et al. ( 2020 ) looked into how learning occurred at home during the pandemic. Their findings showed that students faced many obstacles in a home learning environment, such as lack of mastery of technology, high Internet cost, and limited interaction/socialization between and among students. In a related study, Kapasia et al. ( 2020 ) investigated how lockdown impacts students’ learning performance. Their findings revealed that the lockdown made significant disruptions in students’ learning experience. The students also reported some challenges that they faced during their online classes. These include anxiety, depression, poor Internet service, and unfavorable home learning environment, which were aggravated when students are marginalized and from remote areas. Contrary to Kapasia et al.’s ( 2020 ) findings, Gonzales et al. ( 2020 ) found that confinement of students during the pandemic had significant positive effects on their performance. They attributed these results to students’ continuous use of learning strategies which, in turn, improved their learning efficiency.

Finally, there are those that focused on students’ overall online learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. One such study was that of Singh et al. ( 2020 ), who examined students’ experience during the COVID-19 pandemic using a quantitative descriptive approach. Their findings indicated that students appreciated the use of online learning during the pandemic. However, half of them believed that the traditional classroom setting was more effective than the online learning platform. Methodologically, the researchers acknowledge that the quantitative nature of their study restricts a deeper interpretation of the findings. Unlike the above study, Khalil et al. ( 2020 ) qualitatively explored the efficacy of synchronized online learning in a medical school in Saudi Arabia. The results indicated that students generally perceive synchronous online learning positively, particularly in terms of time management and efficacy. However, they also reported technical (internet connectivity and poor utility of tools), methodological (content delivery), and behavioral (individual personality) challenges. Their findings also highlighted the failure of the online learning environment to address the needs of courses that require hands-on practice despite efforts to adopt virtual laboratories. In a parallel study, Adarkwah ( 2021 ) examined students’ online learning experience during the pandemic using a narrative inquiry approach. The findings indicated that Ghanaian students considered online learning as ineffective due to several challenges that they encountered. Among these were lack of social interaction among students, poor communication, lack of ICT resources, and poor learning outcomes. More recently, Day et al. ( 2021 ) examined the immediate impact of COVID-19 on students’ learning experience. Evidence from six institutions across three countries revealed some positive experiences and pre-existing inequities. Among the reported challenges are lack of appropriate devices, poor learning space at home, stress among students, and lack of fieldwork and access to laboratories.

Although there are few studies that report the online learning challenges that higher education students experience during the pandemic, limited information is available regarding the specific strategies that they use to overcome them. It is in this context that the current study was undertaken. This mixed-methods study investigates students’ online learning experience in higher education. Specifically, the following research questions are addressed: (1) What is the extent of challenges that students experience in an online learning environment? (2) How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the online learning challenges that students experience? (3) What strategies did students use to overcome the challenges?

2.3 Conceptual framework

The typology of challenges examined in this study is largely based on Rasheed et al.’s ( 2020 ) review of students’ experience in an online learning environment. These challenges are grouped into five general clusters, namely self-regulation (SRC), technological literacy and competency (TLCC), student isolation (SIC), technological sufficiency (TSC), and technological complexity (TCC) challenges (Rasheed et al., 2020 , p. 5). SRC refers to a set of behavior by which students exercise control over their emotions, actions, and thoughts to achieve learning objectives. TLCC relates to a set of challenges about students’ ability to effectively use technology for learning purposes. SIC relates to the emotional discomfort that students experience as a result of being lonely and secluded from their peers. TSC refers to a set of challenges that students experience when accessing available online technologies for learning. Finally, there is TCC which involves challenges that students experience when exposed to complex and over-sufficient technologies for online learning.

To extend Rasheed et al. ( 2020 ) categories and to cover other potential challenges during online classes, two more clusters were added, namely learning resource challenges (LRC) and learning environment challenges (LEC) (Buehler, 2004 ; Recker et al., 2004 ; Seplaki et al., 2014 ; Xue et al., 2020 ). LRC refers to a set of challenges that students face relating to their use of library resources and instructional materials, whereas LEC is a set of challenges that students experience related to the condition of their learning space that shapes their learning experiences, beliefs, and attitudes. Since learning environment at home and learning resources available to students has been reported to significantly impact the quality of learning and their achievement of learning outcomes (Drane et al., 2020 ; Suryaman et al., 2020 ), the inclusion of LRC and LEC would allow us to capture other important challenges that students experience during the pandemic, particularly those from developing regions. This comprehensive list would provide us a clearer and detailed picture of students’ experiences when engaged in online learning in an emergency. Given the restrictions in mobility at macro and micro levels during the pandemic, it is also expected that such conditions would aggravate these challenges. Therefore, this paper intends to understand these challenges from students’ perspectives since they are the ones that are ultimately impacted when the issue is about the learning experience. We also seek to explore areas that provide inconclusive findings, thereby setting the path for future research.

3 Material and methods

The present study adopted a descriptive, mixed-methods approach to address the research questions. This approach allowed the researchers to collect complex data about students’ experience in an online learning environment and to clearly understand the phenomena from their perspective.

3.1 Participants

This study involved 200 (66 male and 134 female) students from a private higher education institution in the Philippines. These participants were Psychology, Physical Education, and Sports Management majors whose ages ranged from 17 to 25 ( x̅  = 19.81; SD  = 1.80). The students have been engaged in online learning for at least two terms in both synchronous and asynchronous modes. The students belonged to low- and middle-income groups but were equipped with the basic online learning equipment (e.g., computer, headset, speakers) and computer skills necessary for their participation in online classes. Table 1 shows the primary and secondary platforms that students used during their online classes. The primary platforms are those that are formally adopted by teachers and students in a structured academic context, whereas the secondary platforms are those that are informally and spontaneously used by students and teachers for informal learning and to supplement instructional delivery. Note that almost all students identified MS Teams as their primary platform because it is the official learning management system of the university.

Informed consent was sought from the participants prior to their involvement. Before students signed the informed consent form, they were oriented about the objectives of the study and the extent of their involvement. They were also briefed about the confidentiality of information, their anonymity, and their right to refuse to participate in the investigation. Finally, the participants were informed that they would incur no additional cost from their participation.

3.2 Instrument and data collection

The data were collected using a retrospective self-report questionnaire and a focused group discussion (FGD). A self-report questionnaire was considered appropriate because the indicators relate to affective responses and attitude (Araujo et al., 2017 ; Barrot, 2016 ; Spector, 1994 ). Although the participants may tell more than what they know or do in a self-report survey (Matsumoto, 1994 ), this challenge was addressed by explaining to them in detail each of the indicators and using methodological triangulation through FGD. The questionnaire was divided into four sections: (1) participant’s personal information section, (2) the background information on the online learning environment, (3) the rating scale section for the online learning challenges, (4) the open-ended section. The personal information section asked about the students’ personal information (name, school, course, age, and sex), while the background information section explored the online learning mode and platforms (primary and secondary) used in class, and students’ length of engagement in online classes. The rating scale section contained 37 items that relate to SRC (6 items), TLCC (10 items), SIC (4 items), TSC (6 items), TCC (3 items), LRC (4 items), and LEC (4 items). The Likert scale uses six scores (i.e., 5– to a very great extent , 4– to a great extent , 3– to a moderate extent , 2– to some extent , 1– to a small extent , and 0 –not at all/negligible ) assigned to each of the 37 items. Finally, the open-ended questions asked about other challenges that students experienced, the impact of the pandemic on the intensity or extent of the challenges they experienced, and the strategies that the participants employed to overcome the eight different types of challenges during online learning. Two experienced educators and researchers reviewed the questionnaire for clarity, accuracy, and content and face validity. The piloting of the instrument revealed that the tool had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.96).

The FGD protocol contains two major sections: the participants’ background information and the main questions. The background information section asked about the students’ names, age, courses being taken, online learning mode used in class. The items in the main questions section covered questions relating to the students’ overall attitude toward online learning during the pandemic, the reasons for the scores they assigned to each of the challenges they experienced, the impact of the pandemic on students’ challenges, and the strategies they employed to address the challenges. The same experts identified above validated the FGD protocol.

Both the questionnaire and the FGD were conducted online via Google survey and MS Teams, respectively. It took approximately 20 min to complete the questionnaire, while the FGD lasted for about 90 min. Students were allowed to ask for clarification and additional explanations relating to the questionnaire content, FGD, and procedure. Online surveys and interview were used because of the ongoing lockdown in the city. For the purpose of triangulation, 20 (10 from Psychology and 10 from Physical Education and Sports Management) randomly selected students were invited to participate in the FGD. Two separate FGDs were scheduled for each group and were facilitated by researcher 2 and researcher 3, respectively. The interviewers ensured that the participants were comfortable and open to talk freely during the FGD to avoid social desirability biases (Bergen & Labonté, 2020 ). These were done by informing the participants that there are no wrong responses and that their identity and responses would be handled with the utmost confidentiality. With the permission of the participants, the FGD was recorded to ensure that all relevant information was accurately captured for transcription and analysis.

3.3 Data analysis

To address the research questions, we used both quantitative and qualitative analyses. For the quantitative analysis, we entered all the data into an excel spreadsheet. Then, we computed the mean scores ( M ) and standard deviations ( SD ) to determine the level of challenges experienced by students during online learning. The mean score for each descriptor was interpreted using the following scheme: 4.18 to 5.00 ( to a very great extent ), 3.34 to 4.17 ( to a great extent ), 2.51 to 3.33 ( to a moderate extent ), 1.68 to 2.50 ( to some extent ), 0.84 to 1.67 ( to a small extent ), and 0 to 0.83 ( not at all/negligible ). The equal interval was adopted because it produces more reliable and valid information than other types of scales (Cicchetti et al., 2006 ).

For the qualitative data, we analyzed the students’ responses in the open-ended questions and the transcribed FGD using the predetermined categories in the conceptual framework. Specifically, we used multilevel coding in classifying the codes from the transcripts (Birks & Mills, 2011 ). To do this, we identified the relevant codes from the responses of the participants and categorized these codes based on the similarities or relatedness of their properties and dimensions. Then, we performed a constant comparative and progressive analysis of cases to allow the initially identified subcategories to emerge and take shape. To ensure the reliability of the analysis, two coders independently analyzed the qualitative data. Both coders familiarize themselves with the purpose, research questions, research method, and codes and coding scheme of the study. They also had a calibration session and discussed ways on how they could consistently analyze the qualitative data. Percent of agreement between the two coders was 86 percent. Any disagreements in the analysis were discussed by the coders until an agreement was achieved.

This study investigated students’ online learning experience in higher education within the context of the pandemic. Specifically, we identified the extent of challenges that students experienced, how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their online learning experience, and the strategies that they used to confront these challenges.

4.1 The extent of students’ online learning challenges

Table 2 presents the mean scores and SD for the extent of challenges that students’ experienced during online learning. Overall, the students experienced the identified challenges to a moderate extent ( x̅  = 2.62, SD  = 1.03) with scores ranging from x̅  = 1.72 ( to some extent ) to x̅  = 3.58 ( to a great extent ). More specifically, the greatest challenge that students experienced was related to the learning environment ( x̅  = 3.49, SD  = 1.27), particularly on distractions at home, limitations in completing the requirements for certain subjects, and difficulties in selecting the learning areas and study schedule. It is, however, found that the least challenge was on technological literacy and competency ( x̅  = 2.10, SD  = 1.13), particularly on knowledge and training in the use of technology, technological intimidation, and resistance to learning technologies. Other areas that students experienced the least challenge are Internet access under TSC and procrastination under SRC. Nonetheless, nearly half of the students’ responses per indicator rated the challenges they experienced as moderate (14 of the 37 indicators), particularly in TCC ( x̅  = 2.51, SD  = 1.31), SIC ( x̅  = 2.77, SD  = 1.34), and LRC ( x̅  = 2.93, SD  = 1.31).

Out of 200 students, 181 responded to the question about other challenges that they experienced. Most of their responses were already covered by the seven predetermined categories, except for 18 responses related to physical discomfort ( N  = 5) and financial challenges ( N  = 13). For instance, S108 commented that “when it comes to eyes and head, my eyes and head get ache if the session of class was 3 h straight in front of my gadget.” In the same vein, S194 reported that “the long exposure to gadgets especially laptop, resulting in body pain & headaches.” With reference to physical financial challenges, S66 noted that “not all the time I have money to load”, while S121 claimed that “I don't know until when are we going to afford budgeting our money instead of buying essentials.”

4.2 Impact of the pandemic on students’ online learning challenges

Another objective of this study was to identify how COVID-19 influenced the online learning challenges that students experienced. As shown in Table 3 , most of the students’ responses were related to teaching and learning quality ( N  = 86) and anxiety and other mental health issues ( N  = 52). Regarding the adverse impact on teaching and learning quality, most of the comments relate to the lack of preparation for the transition to online platforms (e.g., S23, S64), limited infrastructure (e.g., S13, S65, S99, S117), and poor Internet service (e.g., S3, S9, S17, S41, S65, S99). For the anxiety and mental health issues, most students reported that the anxiety, boredom, sadness, and isolation they experienced had adversely impacted the way they learn (e.g., S11, S130), completing their tasks/activities (e.g., S56, S156), and their motivation to continue studying (e.g., S122, S192). The data also reveal that COVID-19 aggravated the financial difficulties experienced by some students ( N  = 16), consequently affecting their online learning experience. This financial impact mainly revolved around the lack of funding for their online classes as a result of their parents’ unemployment and the high cost of Internet data (e.g., S18, S113, S167). Meanwhile, few concerns were raised in relation to COVID-19’s impact on mobility ( N  = 7) and face-to-face interactions ( N  = 7). For instance, some commented that the lack of face-to-face interaction with her classmates had a detrimental effect on her learning (S46) and socialization skills (S36), while others reported that restrictions in mobility limited their learning experience (S78, S110). Very few comments were related to no effect ( N  = 4) and positive effect ( N  = 2). The above findings suggest the pandemic had additive adverse effects on students’ online learning experience.

4.3 Students’ strategies to overcome challenges in an online learning environment

The third objective of this study is to identify the strategies that students employed to overcome the different online learning challenges they experienced. Table 4 presents that the most commonly used strategies used by students were resource management and utilization ( N  = 181), help-seeking ( N  = 155), technical aptitude enhancement ( N  = 122), time management ( N  = 98), and learning environment control ( N  = 73). Not surprisingly, the top two strategies were also the most consistently used across different challenges. However, looking closely at each of the seven challenges, the frequency of using a particular strategy varies. For TSC and LRC, the most frequently used strategy was resource management and utilization ( N  = 52, N  = 89, respectively), whereas technical aptitude enhancement was the students’ most preferred strategy to address TLCC ( N  = 77) and TCC ( N  = 38). In the case of SRC, SIC, and LEC, the most frequently employed strategies were time management ( N  = 71), psychological support ( N  = 53), and learning environment control ( N  = 60). In terms of consistency, help-seeking appears to be the most consistent across the different challenges in an online learning environment. Table 4 further reveals that strategies used by students within a specific type of challenge vary.

5 Discussion and conclusions

The current study explores the challenges that students experienced in an online learning environment and how the pandemic impacted their online learning experience. The findings revealed that the online learning challenges of students varied in terms of type and extent. Their greatest challenge was linked to their learning environment at home, while their least challenge was technological literacy and competency. Based on the students’ responses, their challenges were also found to be aggravated by the pandemic, especially in terms of quality of learning experience, mental health, finances, interaction, and mobility. With reference to previous studies (i.e., Adarkwah, 2021 ; Copeland et al., 2021 ; Day et al., 2021 ; Fawaz et al., 2021 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ; Khalil et al., 2020 ; Singh et al., 2020 ), the current study has complemented their findings on the pedagogical, logistical, socioeconomic, technological, and psychosocial online learning challenges that students experience within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, this study extended previous studies and our understanding of students’ online learning experience by identifying both the presence and extent of online learning challenges and by shedding light on the specific strategies they employed to overcome them.

Overall findings indicate that the extent of challenges and strategies varied from one student to another. Hence, they should be viewed as a consequence of interaction several many factors. Students’ responses suggest that their online learning challenges and strategies were mediated by the resources available to them, their interaction with their teachers and peers, and the school’s existing policies and guidelines for online learning. In the context of the pandemic, the imposed lockdowns and students’ socioeconomic condition aggravated the challenges that students experience.

While most studies revealed that technology use and competency were the most common challenges that students face during the online classes (see Rasheed et al., 2020 ), the case is a bit different in developing countries in times of pandemic. As the findings have shown, the learning environment is the greatest challenge that students needed to hurdle, particularly distractions at home (e.g., noise) and limitations in learning space and facilities. This data suggests that online learning challenges during the pandemic somehow vary from the typical challenges that students experience in a pre-pandemic online learning environment. One possible explanation for this result is that restriction in mobility may have aggravated this challenge since they could not go to the school or other learning spaces beyond the vicinity of their respective houses. As shown in the data, the imposition of lockdown restricted students’ learning experience (e.g., internship and laboratory experiments), limited their interaction with peers and teachers, caused depression, stress, and anxiety among students, and depleted the financial resources of those who belong to lower-income group. All of these adversely impacted students’ learning experience. This finding complemented earlier reports on the adverse impact of lockdown on students’ learning experience and the challenges posed by the home learning environment (e.g., Day et al., 2021 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ). Nonetheless, further studies are required to validate the impact of restrictions on mobility on students’ online learning experience. The second reason that may explain the findings relates to students’ socioeconomic profile. Consistent with the findings of Adarkwah ( 2021 ) and Day et al. ( 2021 ), the current study reveals that the pandemic somehow exposed the many inequities in the educational systems within and across countries. In the case of a developing country, families from lower socioeconomic strata (as in the case of the students in this study) have limited learning space at home, access to quality Internet service, and online learning resources. This is the reason the learning environment and learning resources recorded the highest level of challenges. The socioeconomic profile of the students (i.e., low and middle-income group) is the same reason financial problems frequently surfaced from their responses. These students frequently linked the lack of financial resources to their access to the Internet, educational materials, and equipment necessary for online learning. Therefore, caution should be made when interpreting and extending the findings of this study to other contexts, particularly those from higher socioeconomic strata.

Among all the different online learning challenges, the students experienced the least challenge on technological literacy and competency. This is not surprising considering a plethora of research confirming Gen Z students’ (born since 1996) high technological and digital literacy (Barrot, 2018 ; Ng, 2012 ; Roblek et al., 2019 ). Regarding the impact of COVID-19 on students’ online learning experience, the findings reveal that teaching and learning quality and students’ mental health were the most affected. The anxiety that students experienced does not only come from the threats of COVID-19 itself but also from social and physical restrictions, unfamiliarity with new learning platforms, technical issues, and concerns about financial resources. These findings are consistent with that of Copeland et al. ( 2021 ) and Fawaz et al. ( 2021 ), who reported the adverse effects of the pandemic on students’ mental and emotional well-being. This data highlights the need to provide serious attention to the mediating effects of mental health, restrictions in mobility, and preparedness in delivering online learning.

Nonetheless, students employed a variety of strategies to overcome the challenges they faced during online learning. For instance, to address the home learning environment problems, students talked to their family (e.g., S12, S24), transferred to a quieter place (e.g., S7, S 26), studied at late night where all family members are sleeping already (e.g., S51), and consulted with their classmates and teachers (e.g., S3, S9, S156, S193). To overcome the challenges in learning resources, students used the Internet (e.g., S20, S27, S54, S91), joined Facebook groups that share free resources (e.g., S5), asked help from family members (e.g., S16), used resources available at home (e.g., S32), and consulted with the teachers (e.g., S124). The varying strategies of students confirmed earlier reports on the active orientation that students take when faced with academic- and non-academic-related issues in an online learning space (see Fawaz et al., 2021 ). The specific strategies that each student adopted may have been shaped by different factors surrounding him/her, such as available resources, student personality, family structure, relationship with peers and teacher, and aptitude. To expand this study, researchers may further investigate this area and explore how and why different factors shape their use of certain strategies.

Several implications can be drawn from the findings of this study. First, this study highlighted the importance of emergency response capability and readiness of higher education institutions in case another crisis strikes again. Critical areas that need utmost attention include (but not limited to) national and institutional policies, protocol and guidelines, technological infrastructure and resources, instructional delivery, staff development, potential inequalities, and collaboration among key stakeholders (i.e., parents, students, teachers, school leaders, industry, government education agencies, and community). Second, the findings have expanded our understanding of the different challenges that students might confront when we abruptly shift to full online learning, particularly those from countries with limited resources, poor Internet infrastructure, and poor home learning environment. Schools with a similar learning context could use the findings of this study in developing and enhancing their respective learning continuity plans to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic. This study would also provide students relevant information needed to reflect on the possible strategies that they may employ to overcome the challenges. These are critical information necessary for effective policymaking, decision-making, and future implementation of online learning. Third, teachers may find the results useful in providing proper interventions to address the reported challenges, particularly in the most critical areas. Finally, the findings provided us a nuanced understanding of the interdependence of learning tools, learners, and learning outcomes within an online learning environment; thus, giving us a multiperspective of hows and whys of a successful migration to full online learning.

Some limitations in this study need to be acknowledged and addressed in future studies. One limitation of this study is that it exclusively focused on students’ perspectives. Future studies may widen the sample by including all other actors taking part in the teaching–learning process. Researchers may go deeper by investigating teachers’ views and experience to have a complete view of the situation and how different elements interact between them or affect the others. Future studies may also identify some teacher-related factors that could influence students’ online learning experience. In the case of students, their age, sex, and degree programs may be examined in relation to the specific challenges and strategies they experience. Although the study involved a relatively large sample size, the participants were limited to college students from a Philippine university. To increase the robustness of the findings, future studies may expand the learning context to K-12 and several higher education institutions from different geographical regions. As a final note, this pandemic has undoubtedly reshaped and pushed the education system to its limits. However, this unprecedented event is the same thing that will make the education system stronger and survive future threats.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Jessie S. Barrot, Ian I. Llenares & Leo S. del Rosario

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Barrot, J.S., Llenares, I.I. & del Rosario, L.S. Students’ online learning challenges during the pandemic and how they cope with them: The case of the Philippines. Educ Inf Technol 26 , 7321–7338 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10589-x

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Effects of online education on mental and physical health

Online education has drastically changed the way we study but the year and half of attending online classes from home have led to a string of mental and physical health issues for both students and teachers..

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Covid-19 has caused destruction and devastation worldwide in ways nobody could anticipate. The world in one way or another came to a standstill. Life as we knew it changed. And this change became the new constant.

Educational institutions took to online teaching. The start of this change felt rather very enticing for the students with not having to rush and get ready to reach the institutions, and being in the comfort of their homes.

How online education affected mental health

1. Lack of interest

Humans are social animals, and the most introverted ones also need to see faces and have human interactions once in a while. The children have grown to lose interest in their classes.

Most of them switch off the camera and go about their other activities. The lethargy has inculcated the loss of interest in not only the studies but everything overall.

The pressure of after-school homework and assignments has triggered a great toll on the mental health and mood.

2. Stress and anxiety

The concentration levels of students dropped in online learning as the eye meanders elsewhere on the screen. This in response made it difficult for most students to keep up with the teachings.

The pressure to concentrate and produce the required results has resulted in a great amount of stress and anxiety. Tasks, assignments, and homework slacked.

Most children were seen lagging behind and succumbing to the pressure. The mental state of the children was fragile and tampered with.

3. Zoom fatigue

Zoom fatigue refers to the exhaustion after having attended zoom classes, or video conferences. With the screen time increasing drastically, the mind is overwhelmed with information and the brain finds it rather difficult to register all the information.

It may seem like there’s nothing you can do about stress—no way to avoid it and no way to de-stress completely when it hits. The bills won’t stop coming, there will never be more hours in the day, and your work and family responsibilities will always be demanding. But the truth is, you have a lot more control over stress than you may think. In fact, the simple realization that you’re in control of your life is the foundation of stress management.

Managing stress is all about taking charge: of your thoughts, emotions, schedule, environment, and the way you deal with problems. The ultimate goal is a balanced life, with time for work, relationships, relaxation, and fun—plus the ability to hold up under pressure and meet challenges head on.

Stress management involves using various techniques and coping strategies to improve the way you react to stressful things in your life and build resilience . But it’s not one-size-fits-all. That’s why it’s important to experiment and find out what works best for you. Whether you’re looking to reduce your overall stress levels, avoid unnecessary stressors in your life, or deal with stress in the moment, the following stress management techniques and strategies can help.

Why does stress management matter?

If you’re living with high levels of stress, you’re putting your entire well-being at risk. Stress wreaks havoc on your emotional equilibrium, as well as your overall physical and mental health. It narrows your ability to think clearly, function effectively, and enjoy life.

Identify the causes of stress in your life

Stress management starts with identifying the sources of stress in your life. This isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. While it’s easy to identify major stressors such as changing jobs, moving, or going through a divorce, pinpointing the sources of chronic stress can be more complicated.

It’s all too easy to overlook how your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors contribute to your everyday stress levels. Sure, you may know that you’re constantly worried about work deadlines, but maybe it’s your procrastination, rather than the actual job demands, that is causing the stress.

To identify what’s really stressing you out, look closely at your habits, attitude, and excuses:

• Do you explain away stress as temporary (“I just have a million things going on right now”) even though you can’t remember the last time you took a breather?
• Do you define stress as an integral part of your work or home life (“Things are always crazy around here”) or as a part of your personality (“I have a lot of nervous energy, that’s all”)?
• Do you blame your stress on other people or outside events, or view it as entirely normal and unexceptional?

Until you accept responsibility for the role you play in creating or maintaining it, your stress level will remain outside your control.

Keep a stress journal

A stress journal can help you identify the regular stressors in your life and the way you deal with them. Each time you feel stressed, make a note of it in your journal or use a stress tracker on your phone. As you keep a daily log, you will begin to see patterns and common themes. Write down:

• What caused your stress (make a guess if you’re unsure).
• How you felt, both physically and emotionally.
• How you acted in response.
• What you did to make yourself feel better.

Replace unhealthy coping strategies with healthy ones

Think about the ways you currently manage and cope with stress in your life. Your stress journal can help you identify them. Are your coping strategies healthy or unhealthy? Many of us cope with stress in ways that make us feel better temporarily—but compound the problem in the long run.

Unhealthy ways of dealing with stress

• Using alcohol or drugs to relax .
• Bingeing on junk or comfort food.
• Zoning out for hours on your phone or TV.
• Withdrawing from friends, family, and social activities.
• Sleeping too much.
• Filling up every minute of the day to avoid facing problems.
• Taking out your stress on others
• Procrastinating.

If your methods of coping with stress aren’t contributing to your greater emotional and physical health, it’s time to find healthier ones. No single method works for everyone or in every situation, so experiment with different stress management techniques and strategies. Focus on what makes you feel calm and in control.

Practice the 4 As of stress management

There are many healthy ways to reduce stress or cope with its effects, but they all require change. You can either change the situation or change your reaction. When deciding which option to choose, it’s helpful to think of the four As: avoid , alter , accept , or adapt .

Not all stress can be avoided, and it’s not healthy to avoid a situation that needs to be addressed. But you may be surprised by the number of stressors in your life that you can eliminate.

Learn how to say “no.” Know your limits and stick to them. Whether in your personal or professional life, taking on more than you can handle is a surefire recipe for stress.

Avoid people who stress you out. If someone consistently causes stress in your life, limit the amount of time you spend with that person, or end the relationship.

Take control of your environment. If the evening news makes you anxious, turn off the TV. If traffic makes you tense, take a longer but less-traveled route. If going to the market is an unpleasant chore, do your grocery shopping online.

Avoid hot-button topics . If you get upset over religion or politics, cross them off your conversation list. If you repeatedly argue about the same subject with the same people, stop bringing it up or excuse yourself when it’s the topic of discussion.

Pare down your to-do list. Analyze your schedule, responsibilities, and daily tasks. If you’ve got too much on your plate, distinguish between the “shoulds” and the “musts.” Drop tasks that aren’t truly necessary to the bottom of the list or eliminate them entirely.

If you can’t avoid a stressful situation, try to alter it. Often, this involves changing the way you communicate and operate in your daily life.

Express your feelings instead of bottling them up. If something or someone is bothering you, communicate your concerns in an open and respectful way. If you don’t voice your feelings, resentment will build and the stress will increase.

Be willing to compromise. When you ask someone to change their behavior, be willing to do the same. If you both are willing to bend at least a little, you’ll have a good chance of finding a happy middle ground.

Be more assertive.  Don’t take a backseat in your own life. Deal with problems head on, doing your best to anticipate and prevent them. If you’ve got an exam to study for and your chatty roommate just got home, say up front that you only have five minutes to talk.

Find balance. All work and no play is a recipe for burnout. Try to find a balance between work and family life, social activities and solitary pursuits, daily responsibilities and downtime.

If you can’t change the stressor, change yourself. You can adapt to stressful situations and regain your sense of control by changing your expectations and attitude.

Reframe problems. Try to view stressful situations from a more positive perspective. Rather than fuming about a traffic jam, look at it as an opportunity to pause and regroup, listen to your favorite radio station, or enjoy some alone time.

Look at the big picture. Take perspective of the stressful situation. Ask yourself how important it will be in the long run. Will it matter in a month? A year? Is it really worth getting upset over? If the answer is no, focus your time and energy elsewhere.

Adjust your standards. Perfectionism is a major source of avoidable stress. Stop setting yourself up for failure by demanding perfection. Set reasonable standards for yourself and others, and learn to be okay with “good enough.”

Practice gratitude. When stress is getting you down, take a moment to reflect on all the things you appreciate in your life , including your own positive qualities and gifts. This simple strategy can help you keep things in perspective.

Accept the things you can’t change

Some sources of stress are unavoidable. You can’t prevent or change stressors such as the death of a loved one, a serious illness, or a national recession. In such cases, the best way to cope with stress is to accept things as they are. Acceptance may be difficult, but in the long run, it’s easier than railing against a situation you can’t change.

Don’t try to control the uncontrollable. Many things in life are beyond our control, particularly the behavior of other people. Rather than stressing out over them, focus on the things you can control such as the way you choose to react to problems.

Look for the upside. When facing major challenges, try to look at them as opportunities for personal growth. If your own poor choices contributed to a stressful situation, reflect on them and learn from your mistakes.

Learn to forgive. Accept the fact that we live in an imperfect world and that people make mistakes. Let go of anger and resentments. Free yourself from negative energy by forgiving and moving on.

Share your feelings. Expressing what you’re going through can be very cathartic, even if there’s nothing you can do to alter the stressful situation. Talk to a trusted friend or make an appointment with a therapist.

Speak to a Licensed Therapist

BetterHelp is an online therapy service that matches you to licensed, accredited therapists who can help with depression, anxiety, relationships, and more. Take the assessment and get matched with a therapist in as little as 48 hours.

When you’re stressed, the last thing you probably feel like doing is getting up and exercising. But physical activity is a huge stress reliever—and you don’t have to be an athlete or spend hours in a gym to experience the benefits. Exercise releases endorphins that make you feel good, and it can also serve as a valuable distraction from your daily worries.

While you’ll get the most benefit from regularly exercising for 30 minutes or more, it’s okay to build up your fitness level gradually. Even very small activities can add up over the course of a day. The first step is to get yourself up and moving. Here are some easy ways to incorporate exercise into your daily schedule:

• Put on some music and dance around.
• Take your dog for a walk .
• Walk or cycle to the grocery store.
• Use the stairs at home or work rather than an elevator.
• Park your car in the farthest spot in the lot and walk the rest of the way.
• Pair up with an exercise partner and encourage each other as you work out.
• Play ping-pong or an activity-based video game with your kids.

Using mindful rhythmic exercise to manage stress

While just about any form of physical activity can help burn away tension and stress, rhythmic activities are especially effective. Good choices include walking, running, swimming, dancing, cycling, tai chi, and aerobics. But whatever you choose, make sure it’s something you enjoy so you’re more likely to stick with it.

While you’re exercising, make a conscious effort to pay attention to your body and the physical (and sometimes emotional) sensations you experience as you’re moving. Focus on coordinating your breathing with your movements, for example, or notice how the air or sunlight feels on your skin. Adding this mindfulness element will help you break out of the cycle of negative thoughts that often accompanies overwhelming stress.

Learn to manage your time better

Poor time management can cause a lot of stress. When you’re stretched too thin and running behind, it’s hard to stay calm and focused. Plus, you’ll be tempted to avoid or cut back on all the healthy things you should be doing to keep stress in check, like socializing and getting enough sleep. The good news: there are things you can do to achieve a healthier work-life balance.

Don’t over-commit yourself. Avoid scheduling things back-to-back or trying to fit too much into one day. All too often, we underestimate how long things will take.

Prioritize tasks. Make a list of tasks you have to do, and tackle them in order of importance. Do the high-priority items first. If you have something particularly unpleasant or stressful to do, get it over with early. The rest of your day will be more pleasant as a result.

Break projects into small steps. If a large project seems overwhelming, make a step-by-step plan. Focus on one manageable step at a time, rather than taking on everything at once.

Delegate responsibility. You don’t have to do it all yourself, whether at home, school, or on the job. If other people can take care of the task, why not let them? Let go of the desire to control or oversee every little step. You’ll be letting go of unnecessary stress in the process.

Reach out and connect to people who make you feel good

There is nothing more calming than spending quality time with another human being who makes you feel safe and understood. In fact, face-to-face interaction triggers a cascade of hormones that counteracts the body’s defensive “fight-or-flight” response. It’s nature’s natural stress reliever (as an added bonus, it also helps stave off depression and anxiety). So make it a point to connect regularly—and in person—with family and friends.

[Read: Social Support for Stress Relief]

Keep in mind that the people you talk to don’t have to be able to fix your stress. They simply need to be good listeners. And try not to let worries about looking weak or being a burden keep you from opening up. The people who care about you will be flattered by your trust. It will only strengthen your bond.

Of course, you may not always have someone close by to lean on when you feel overwhelmed by stress, but by building and maintaining a network of close friends you can improve your resiliency to life’s stressors.

Tips for building relationships

• Reach out to a colleague at work.
• Help someone else by volunteering .
• Have lunch or coffee with a friend.
• Ask a loved one to check in with you regularly.
• Call or email an old friend.
• Go for a walk with a workout buddy.
• Schedule a weekly dinner date.
• Meet new people by taking a class or joining a club.
• Confide in a clergy member, teacher, or sports coach.
• Join a support group—either in-person or via on online therapy platform .

Beyond a take-charge approach and a positive attitude, you can reduce stress in your life by carving out “me” time. Don’t get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of life that you forget to take care of your own needs. Nurturing yourself is a necessity, not a luxury. If you regularly make time for fun and relaxation, you’ll be in a better place to handle life’s stressors.

Set aside leisure time. Include rest and relaxation in your daily schedule. Don’t allow other obligations to encroach. This is your time to take a break from all responsibilities and recharge your batteries.

Do something you enjoy every day. Make time for leisure activities that bring you joy, whether it be stargazing, playing the piano, or working on your bike.

Keep your sense of humor. This includes the ability to laugh at yourself. The act of laughing helps your body fight stress in a number of ways.

Take up a relaxation practice. Relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and deep breathing activate the body’s relaxation response , a state of restfulness that is the opposite of the fight or flight or mobilization stress response. As you learn and practice these techniques, your stress levels will decrease and your mind and body will become calm and centered.

In addition to regular exercise, there are other healthy lifestyle choices that can increase your resistance to stress.

Eat a healthy diet . Well-nourished bodies are better prepared to cope with stress, so be mindful of what you eat. Start your day right with breakfast, and keep your energy up and your mind clear with balanced, nutritious meals throughout the day.

Reduce caffeine and sugar. The temporary “highs” caffeine and sugar provide often end with a crash in mood and energy. By reducing the amount of coffee, soft drinks, chocolate, and sugar snacks in your diet , you’ll feel more relaxed and you’ll sleep better.

Avoid alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. Self-medicating with alcohol or drugs may provide an easy escape from stress, but the relief is only temporary. Don’t avoid or mask the issue at hand; deal with problems head on and with a clear mind.

Get enough sleep. Adequate sleep fuels your mind, as well as your body. Feeling tired will increase your stress because it may cause you to think irrationally.

Tips for reducing stress in the moment

When you’re frazzled by your morning commute, stuck in a stressful meeting at work, or fried from another argument with your spouse, you need a way to manage your stress levels right now . That’s where quick stress relief comes in.

The fastest way to reduce stress is by taking a deep breath and using your senses—what you see, hear, taste, and touch—or through a soothing movement. By viewing a favorite photo, smelling a specific scent, listening to a favorite piece of music, tasting a piece of gum, or hugging a pet, for example, you can quickly relax and focus yourself.

[Read: Quick Stress Relief]

Of course, not everyone responds to each sensory experience in the same way. The key to quick stress relief is to experiment and discover the unique sensory experiences that work best for you.

More Information

• Special Health Report - Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School on Stress. (Harvard Health)
• Tolerating Distress - Workbook and information sheets to help you manage feelings of distress. (Centre for Clinical Interventions)
• How To Relax (Video) - Video to help you ease stress. (Mind)
• Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders. (2013). In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . American Psychiatric Association. Link
• Can, Yekta Said, Heather Iles-Smith, Niaz Chalabianloo, Deniz Ekiz, Javier Fernández-Álvarez, Claudia Repetto, Giuseppe Riva, and Cem Ersoy. “How to Relax in Stressful Situations: A Smart Stress Reduction System.” Healthcare 8, no. 2 (April 16, 2020): 100. Link
• Norelli, Samantha K., Ashley Long, and Jeffrey M. Krepps. “Relaxation Techniques.” In StatPearls . Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing, 2021. Link
• Toussaint, Loren, Quang Anh Nguyen, Claire Roettger, Kiara Dixon, Martin Offenbächer, Niko Kohls, Jameson Hirsch, and Fuschia Sirois. “Effectiveness of Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Deep Breathing, and Guided Imagery in Promoting Psychological and Physiological States of Relaxation.” Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2021 (July 3, 2021): e5924040. Link
• Unger, Cynthia A, David Busse, and Ilona S Yim. “The Effect of Guided Relaxation on Cortisol and Affect: Stress Reactivity as a Moderator.” Journal of Health Psychology 22, no. 1 (January 1, 2017): 29–38. Link
• Singh, Karuna. “Nutrient and Stress Management.” Journal of Nutrition & Food Sciences 6, no. 4 (2016). Link
• Katsarou, Alexia L., Marios M. Vryonis, Athanassios D. Protogerou, Evangelos C. Alexopoulos, Apostolos Achimastos, Dimitrios Papadogiannis, George P. Chrousos, and Christina Darviri. “Stress Management and Dietary Counseling in Hypertensive Patients: A Pilot Study of Additional Effect.” Primary Health Care Research & Development 15, no. 1 (January 2014): 38–45. Link
• Errisuriz, Vanessa L., Keryn E. Pasch, and Cheryl L. Perry. “Perceived Stress and Dietary Choices: The Moderating Role of Stress Management.” Eating Behaviors 22 (August 1, 2016): 211–16. Link
• Choi, Dong-Woo, Sung-Youn Chun, Sang Ah Lee, Kyu-Tae Han, and Eun-Cheol Park. “Association between Sleep Duration and Perceived Stress: Salaried Worker in Circumstances of High Workload.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15, no. 4 (April 2018): 796. Link
• Blaxton, Jessica M., Cindy S. Bergeman, Brenda R. Whitehead, Marcia E. Braun, and Jessic D. Payne. “Relationships Among Nightly Sleep Quality, Daily Stress, and Daily Affect.” The Journals of Gerontology: Series B 72, no. 3 (May 1, 2017): 363–72. Link
• Saleh, Dalia, Nathalie Camart, Fouad Sbeira, and Lucia Romo. “Can We Learn to Manage Stress? A Randomized Controlled Trial Carried out on University Students.” PLOS ONE 13, no. 9 (September 5, 2018): e0200997. Link
• Loprinzi, Paul D., and Emily Frith. “Protective and Therapeutic Effects of Exercise on Stress-Induced Memory Impairment.” The Journal of Physiological Sciences: JPS 69, no. 1 (January 2019): 1–12. Link
• Salmon, P. “Effects of Physical Exercise on Anxiety, Depression, and Sensitivity to Stress: A Unifying Theory.” Clinical Psychology Review 21, no. 1 (February 2001): 33–61. Link

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