Psychosocial factors of first year students’ adaptability in the higher educational establishment in the situation of the forced transition to online learning

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Alongside the usual difficulties first-year students face in adapting to university, in the situation of the forced transition to remote or online learning, they have to cope with additional challenges. The psychosocial factors (family status, current conflicts, emotional support, computer skills, subjective assessment of health and satisfaction with learning, etc.) facilitating or hindering their adaptation to this situation are therefore of particular interest. The purpose of the study was to reveal such factors among medical (N = 93) and economics (N = 111) students with different levels of adaptability in the higher educational establishment (using the 2019 coronavirus pandemic as an example). The results showed that successfully adapted students of both majors, in contrast to students with low levels of adaptability, noted the presence of emotional support and minor conflicts (or lack of them). In addition, highly adapted economics students indicated professional computer skills; medical students indicated good technical equipment for mastering the curriculum, greater satisfaction with learning, and agreed that their field of study permits partial online learning. Both universal psychosocial factors of adaptation of students in higher education, i.e. those noted by previous researchers as necessary conditions for successful adaptation of first-year students, and, in our opinion, specific ones, which are conditioned by the forced transition to online learning, were identified. The results may be useful for educational psychologists when working with poorly adapted students in the situation of the forced transition to online learning.