Abstract
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and within a very short period of time, teaching in the 2020 summer term changed from predominantly on-site to online instruction. Students suddenly faced having to adapt their learning process to new demands for which they may have had both insufficient digital skills and a lack of learning resources. Such a situation carries the risk that a substantial number of students become helpless. The aim of our empirical study was to test a hybrid framework of helplessness that includes both objective causes of helplessness and students’ subjective interpretations of them. Before lectures or courses began, students of a full-scale university were invited to participate in an online survey. The final sample consists of 1690 students. Results indicate that objective factors as well as their subjective interpretations contributed to the formation of helplessness.
Highlights
Within the first months of 2020, governments around the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with a variety of different measures, including travel restrictions, curfews, and the closing of educational institutions [1,2]
Results indicate that objective factors as well as their subjective interpretations contributed to the formation of helplessness
During the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and just before the beginning of the 2020 summer semester, we conducted a study with students enrolled in a German university
Summary
Within the first months of 2020, governments around the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with a variety of different measures, including travel restrictions, curfews, and the closing of educational institutions [1,2]. We will focus on the role of individual skills, learning resources, and implicit personality theories in the modifiability and stability of abilities. Our focus on these three factors is both theoretically grounded and based on pedagogical considerations. Scholars sometimes make reference to the phenomenon of helplessness itself, to the theory of helplessness, or to both constructs [27] There is another notable discrepancy in the use of the term, which is expressed, for example, in the definition of helplessness: “Helplessness is a state in which nothing a person opts to do affects what is happening. From an educational point of view, we consider both aspects as important, as we will explain below
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