Abstract
AbstractThe rapid developments and consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for university students’ well-being are presently being studied across the world. This study contributes to the growing discourse on university students’ well-being by exploring changes in international Master’s degree students’ well-being in relation to the move to online teaching and learning at a Finnish university during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study draws on 37 answers to an open-ended question about remote teaching and learning at the end of a survey on university students’ stress. The text data were analysed conducting a preliminary quantitative content analysis and a more detailed thematic analysis, from which two themes were developed. The first theme concerned respondents’ well-being with regard to their friends and family, including the desire for human connection, ways of coping and health concerns. The second theme concerned respondents’ well-being with regard to their studies, including the importance of social life on campus, affected concentration and motivation, degree-related complications, and online teaching and supervision. The findings suggest that sociocultural well-being may extend beyond acculturation and that decreased psychological well-being has repercussions for international students’ studies. The study concludes with a discussion of the study’s limitations and practical implications.
Highlights
The rapid developments and consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for university students’ wellbeing are presently being studied across the world
3 Research task This study reports on the opinions and experiences respondents volunteered in response to an open-ended question and answers the following research question: What changes in well-being did international Master’s degree students describe in relation to the move to online teaching and learning at a Finnish university during the COVID-19 pandemic?
IMDS21 explains how “[a]nxiety and stress levels have increased because of the fear for the health of the loved ones”, while IMDS25 poignantly describes his helplessness in the face of possible threat to their family’s health: I was specially worried about family, because they are living in a country with a lot of cases of Coronavirus, where some relatives and friends of mine have passed away due to the virus
Summary
Abstract: The rapid developments and consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for university students’ wellbeing are presently being studied across the world. This study contributes to the growing discourse on university students’ well-being by exploring changes in international Master’s degree students’ well-being in relation to the move to online teaching and learning at a Finnish university during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study draws on 37 answers to an open-ended question about remote teaching and learning at the end of a survey on university students’ stress. The first theme concerned respondents’ well-being with regard to their friends and family, including the desire for human connection, ways of coping and health concerns. The second theme concerned respondents’ well-being with regard to their studies, including the importance of social life on campus, affected concentration and motivation, degree-related complications, and online teaching and supervision. The study concludes with a discussion of the study’s limitations and practical implications
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