Abstract
The sudden move to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has created an influx of epistemological, psycho-social, emotional and financial challenges for first year students. Lecturers and academics had to find creative and sustainable ways of ensuring that all students were epistemologically included. New policies and practices were introduced rapidly at universities to facilitate the unavoidable move to online learning. As initial teacher educators at a public University in South Africa we noted that the sudden move to working online has presented various challenges to first year students’ overall well-being which has further exacerbated issues of exclusion and marginalization for many. We argue that it is against this backdrop that this paper explores how the move to online learning has affected first year students’ overall well-being, at one teacher education institution. The Index for Inclusive Education was used as a theoretical lens to explore student’s perceptions of the institution’s policy, teaching and learning practices, and the institutional culture during this period. One hundred and eighty-seven purposively selected first year students participated in this qualitative, phenomenological research study. Data were collected by means of open-ended questionnaires. Responses were categorized by means of an emergent thematic analysis. The findings indicated that online learning compromised various aspects of well-being including physical, emotional, psycho-social and financial well-being for many students. The experiences of online learning and impact on well-being did, however, differ across students depending on their individual contexts and circumstances indicating that considerations of well-being need to take contextual realities into account to support the well-being and learning of all. We recommend that higher education institutions prioritize the psycho-social, emotional, and financial well-being of students during the period of online learning and not just the pedagogic needs of the qualification.
Highlights
2020 marked a year of intense upheaval for the education sector and society at large with the advent of the global COVID-19 pandemic
Across all three dimensions of policy, practice and culture it was found that students reported both positive and negative experiences that contributed to their feeling more or less included as first year university students and that either supported or compromised their learning during online learning
The students reported feelings of having lost out on the first-year university experience by not being able to be on campus. We argue that these findings suggest that while the university made strong efforts to support learning during online learning through policy, practice and culture, this was not experienced by all students in the same way
Summary
2020 marked a year of intense upheaval for the education sector and society at large with the advent of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Countries around the world were forced into lockdown in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus. This resulted in societal and education sector upheavals. Working Online During COVID-19 and move rapidly to online platforms (Ali, 2020) to continue with some form of teaching and learning. This required learning institutions to reconceptualize all teaching and learning activities for 2020. Most higher education institutions managed to continue with at least some form of teaching and learning online, the resulting learning experience and outcomes were not necessarily the same for all students. We are interested in exploring how these changes have affected students’ wellness
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
