Online or Remote Learning and Mental Health

Abstract

While there has been a great deal of debate over the impact of online and remote learning on mental health and well-being, there has been no systematic syntheses or reviews of the research on this particular issue. In this session, we will present a review of research on mental health / well-being and online or remote learning. Our preliminary analyses suggest that little scholarship existed prior to 2020 and that most of these studies have been conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We report three findings: (a) it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to control for pandemic effects in the data, (b) studies present a very mixed picture, with variability around how mental health and well-being are measured and how / whether any causal inferences are made in relation to online and remote learning, and (c) results across these studies are extremely mixed. Based on this study, we suggest that researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and administrators exercise extreme caution around making generalizable assertions with respect to the impacts of online/remote learning and mental health.