“It has worked well despite the circumstances” – a study on student social relations and well-being during the pandemic

Torgny Roxå,Per Warfvinge,Annika Fjelkner

doi:10.23865/hu.v11.3183

Torgny Roxå, Per Warfvinge + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.23865/hu.v11.3183

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Journal: Högre utbildning	Publication Date: Jan 1, 2021
Citations: 2	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Lund University, Kristianstad University

Abstract

Students’ possibilities to interact with peers have reduced drastically during the emergency transition to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Students report on decreased motivation and other study related issues; hence, there is a need to better understand the effects of decreased interaction. The aim of the present exploratory study was to document changes in student networks, in relation to perceptions of connectedness, study outcome and well-being in two different settings. An ad hoc online survey (n = 97) was distributed among students from one research-intensive and one teaching-intensive university where many students commute. Results showed that student social networks defoliated from the outside-in and left students with an inner circle of students they shared multiplex relations with. Students who had lost more working and multiplex relations also reported a decline in well-being. The main contribution of this study is the visualization of how networks became fragmented, and how the experience of this differed depending on type of study context. These findings may have implications for a post-Covid organisation of higher education.

Highlights

In this article we focus on how the pandemic has affected students’ opportunities to interact with other students and combine graphical representations of students’ networks on cohort level with individual students’ descriptions of how they perceived the situation during and before the pandemic
Further analyses indicated significant differences in the number of relations students maintained between LTH and HKR, and between non-commuter and commuter students, both prior to the outbreak of Covid-19 and after the transition to online teaching (Table 4)
There was no significant difference in the mean change in the friendship networks between the two groups, which seems to indicate a relative importance of the work and multiplex relations for well-being

Summary

Introduction

In this article we focus on how the pandemic has affected students’ opportunities to interact with other students and combine graphical representations of students’ networks on cohort level with individual students’ descriptions of how they perceived the situation during and before the pandemic. Students report on decreased motivation, and problems related to structuring information about courses and dealing with feedback (Warfvinge et al, 2021) It is against the backdrop of such findings, that this study investigates effects on students’ study related networks. The present explorative study contributes with an exploration of how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected student study related networks in two different types of universities, in relation to the students’ perception of connectedness and study outcome. The present study explores student study related relations within a given cohort, a so-called closed network, that is the relations that are formed and maintained in and around the classroom and thereby arguably closer to study-tasks The result of such a study may contribute with insights important for teachers, the organization, and the execution of future post-pandemic higher education. (2) How do students describe the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on their social network in relations to study outcome and cooperation with other students?

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