Educational institutions are going through unprecedented changes due to the ongoing pandemic. With new variants arising every couple of months, university students have been struggling to adapt to the constant changes and shifting happening around them. Many universities have now adopted a form of hybrid teaching in which students learn online and onsite; however, this has caused major problems to some students, and others began suffering from extreme mental health issues.
Many studies were done to study how students have been coping with these changes and it was proved that the percentages of university students suffering from mental health is on a rise due to the following reasons:
Internet Connection
One of the major reasons students have had symptoms of mental health was due to issues of connectivity. Everyone in the world began using the internet connection strongly at the same time which caused many countries to suffer from cuts in connectivity which in turn, led to an unstable connection that causes many students to miss part of/the full lesson, and they have to find a way to get the notes in addition to figuring out this shift to online learning.
Time Management
Many students expressed their struggle with managing their time between lectures, studies, family matters, and activities while at home. A lot of students were unable to self-manage their time in a way that was organized to give precedence to what is necessary. Remote learning, in a way, shuffled up the lives of students and caused them to be at a loss of how to fit everything in one day while online.
Environment
It is undeniable that many students do not live alone, many still live with their families, and some students are part of a big family in which basically everyone at home is in need of having a quite space to go online. But that is not always simply obtained. Students have to fight through distractions around them, family matters making studying harder and more challenging, and even dealing with small space and bad connectivity.
Interactions
Another major reason for students suffering from mental illness is the loss of interactions with not only the lectures but also with the peers and friends. Students were subjected to living in a closed space with minimal encounters with the outside world due to the pandemic. Aside from lack of social interactions, not being able to discuss and clarify matters with teachers added pressure and challenges to students’ learning outcomes.
As a whole, these 4 major challenges caused many students to begin suffering from mental health problems and were unable to give optimal results in school or cope with the changing world around them. It is crucial for universities to shed light on these matters and work hand in hand with the students to overcome them.
