covid 19 assignments for students

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Six Online Activities to Help Students Cope With COVID-19

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO estimates that 91.3% of the world’s students were learning remotely, with 194 governments ordering country-wide closures of their schools and more than 1.3 billion students learning in online classrooms.

Now that the building blocks of remote education have been put into place and classroom learning is underway, more and more teachers are turning their attention to the mental health of their students. Youth anxiety about the coronavirus is rising , and our young people are feeling isolated, disconnected, and confused. While social-emotional education has typically taken place in the bricks and mortar of schools, we must now adapt these curriculums for an online setting.

I have created six well-being activities for teachers to deliver online using the research-based SEARCH framework , which stands for Strengths, Emotional management, Attention and awareness, Relationships, Coping, and Habits and goals. Research suggests that students who cultivate these skills have stronger coping capacity , are more adaptable and receptive to change , and are more satisfied with their lives .

The virtual activities can be used for specific well-being lessons or advisory classes , or can be woven into other curricula you are teaching, such as English, Art, Humanities, and Physical Education. You might consider using the activities in three ways:

• Positive primer: to energize your students at the start of class to kickstart learning, prompt them to think about their well-being in that moment, get them socially connected online, and get their brain focused for learning.
• Positive pause: to re-energize students at a time when you see class dynamics shifting, energy levels dropping, or students being distracted away from the screen.
• Positive post-script: to reward students and finish off the class in a positive way before they log off.

Rather than viewing these activities as another thing you have to fit in, use them as a learning tool that helps your students stay focused, connected, and energized.

1. Strengths

Activity: Staying Strong During COVID-19 Learning goal: To help students learn about their own strengths Time: 50 minutes Age: 10+

Prior to the lesson, have students complete the VIA strengths questionnaire to identify their strengths.

Step 1: In the virtual class, explain the VIA strengths framework to students. The VIA framework is a research-based model that outlines 24 universal character strengths (such as kindness, courage, humor, love of learning, and perseverance) that are reflected in a student’s pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can learn more about the framework and find a description of each character strength from the VIA Institute on Character .

Step 2: Place students in groups of four into chat rooms on your online learning platform and ask them to discuss these reflection questions:

• What are your top five strengths?
• How can you use your strengths to stay engaged during remote learning?
• How can you use your strengths during home lockdown or family quarantine?
• How do you use your strengths to help your friends during COVID-19?

Step 3: As a whole class, discuss the range of different strengths that can be used to help during COVID times.

Research shows that using a strength-based approach at school can improve student engagement and grades , as well as create more positive social dynamics among students. Strengths also help people to overcome adversity .

2. Emotional management

Activity: Managing Emotions During the Coronavirus Pandemic Learning goal: To normalize negative emotions and to generate ways to promote more positive emotions Time: 50 minutes Age: 8+

Step 1: Show students an “emotion wheel” and lead a discussion with them about the emotions they might be feeling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. You can use this wheel for elementary school and this wheel for high school.

Step 2: Create an anonymous online poll (with a service like SurveyMonkey ) listing the following 10 emotions: stressed, curious, frustrated, happy, angry, playful, sad, calm, helpless, hopeful.

Step 3: In the survey, ask students to enter the five emotions they are feeling most frequently.

Step 4: Tally the results and show them on your screen for each of the 10 emotions. Discuss the survey results. What emotions are students most often feeling? Talk about the range of emotions experienced. For example, some people will feel sad when others might feel curious; students can feel frustrated but hopeful at the same time.

Step 5: Select the top two positive emotions and the top two negative emotions from the survey. Put students into groups of four in virtual breakout rooms to brainstorm three things they can do to cope with their negative emotions, and three action steps they can take to have more positive emotions.

Supporting Learning and Well-Being During the Coronavirus Crisis

Activities, articles, videos, and other resources to address student and adult anxiety and cultivate connection

Research shows that emotional management activities help to boost self-esteem and reduce distress in students. Additionally, students with higher emotional intelligence also have higher academic performance .

3. Attention and awareness

Activity: Finding Calm During Coronavirus Times Learning goal: To use a mindful breathing practice to calm our heart and clear our mind Time: 10 minutes Age: All

Step 1: Have students rate their levels of stress on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being very calm and 10 being highly stressed. 

Step 2: Do three minutes of square breathing, which goes like this:

• Image a square in front of you at chest height.
• Point your index finger away from you and use it to trace the four sides of the imaginary square.
• As you trace the first side of the square, breathe in for four seconds.
• As you trace the next side of the square, breathe out for four seconds.
• Continue this process to complete the next two sides of the square.
• Repeat the drawing of the square four times.

Step 3: Have students rate their levels of stress on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being very calm and 10 being highly stressed. Discuss if this short breathing activity made a difference to their stress.

Step 4: Debrief on how sometimes we can’t control the big events in life, but we can use small strategies like square breathing to calm us down.

Students who have learned mindfulness skills at school report that it helps to reduce their stress and anxiety .

4. Relationships

Activity: Color conversations Purpose: To get to know each other; to deepen class relationships during remote learning Time: 20 minutes Age: 10+

Step 1: Randomly assign students to one of the following four colors: red, orange, yellow, and purple.

Step 2: Put students into a chat room based on their color group and provide the following instructions to each group:

• Red group: Share a happy memory.
• Orange group: Share something new that you have learned recently.
• Yellow group: Share something unique about you.
• Purple group: Share what your favorite food is and why.

Step 3: Come back to the main screen and ask three students to share something new they learned about a fellow student as a result of this fun activity.

Three Good Things for Students

Help students tune in to the positive events in their lives

This is an exercise you can use repeatedly, as long as you ensure that students get mixed up into different groups each time. You can also create new prompts to go with the colors (for example, dream holiday destination, favorite ice cream flavor, best compliment you ever received).

By building up student connections, you are supporting their well-being, as research suggests that a student’s sense of belonging impacts both their grades and their self-esteem .

Activity: Real-Time Resilience During Coronavirus Times Learning goal: To identify opportunities for resilience and promote positive action Time: 30 minutes Age: 10+

Step 1: Have students brainstorm a list of all the changes that have occurred as a result of the coronavirus. As the students are brainstorming, type up their list of responses on your screen.

Step 2: Go through each thing that has changed, and have the students decide if it is something that is within their control (like their study habits at home) or something they cannot control (like not attending school on campus).

Step 3: Choose two things that the students have identified as within their control, and ask students to brainstorm a list of ways to cope with those changes.

You can repeat this exercise multiple times to go through the other points on the list that are within the students’ control.

Developing coping skills during childhood and adolescence has been show to boost students’ hope and stress management skills —both of which are needed at this time.

6. Habits and goals

Activity: Hope Hearts for the Coronavirus Pandemic Learning goal: To help students see the role that hope plays in setting goals during hard times Time: 50 minutes Age: 10+

Step 1: Find a heart image for students to use (with a program like Canva ).

Step 2: Set up an online whiteboard to post the hearts on (with a program like Miro ).

Step 3: Ask students to reflect on what hope means to them.

Step 4: Ask students to write statements on their hearts about what they hope for the world during coronavirus times, and then stick these on the whiteboard. Discuss common themes with the class. Finally, discuss one small action each student can take to create hope for others during this distressing time.

Step 5: Ask students to write statements on their hearts about what they hope for themselves, and then stick these on the whiteboard. Discuss common themes with the class. Finally, discuss one small action each student can take to work toward the goal they’re hoping for.

Helping students to set goals and have hope at this time can support their well-being. Research suggests that goals help to combat student boredom and anxiety , while having hope builds self-worth and life satisfaction .

The six activities above have been designed to help you stay connected with your students during this time of uncertainty—connected beyond the academic content that you are teaching. The intense change we are all facing has triggered heightened levels of stress and anxiety for students and teachers alike. Weaving well-being into online classrooms gives us the opportunity to provide a place of calm and show students they can use adversity to build up their emotional toolkit. In this way, you are giving them a skill set that has the potential to endure beyond the pandemic and lessons that may stay with them for many years to come.

About the Author

Lea Waters , A.M., Ph.D. , is an academic researcher, psychologist, author, and speaker who specializes in positive education, parenting, and organizations. Professor Waters is the author of the Visible Wellbeing elearning program that is being used by schools across the globe to foster social and emotional elearning. Professor Waters is the founding director and inaugural Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology at the Centre for Positive Psychology , University of Melbourne, where she has held an academic position for 24 years. Her acclaimed book The Strength Switch: How The New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Can Help Your Child and Your Teen to Flourish was listed as a top read by the Greater Good Science Center in 2017.

You May Also Enjoy

How Teachers Can Navigate Difficult Emotions During School Closures

How to Reduce the Stress of Homeschooling on Everyone

How to Help Students with Learning Disabilities Focus on Their Strengths

Can the Lockdown Push Schools in a Positive Direction?

How to Support Teachers’ Emotional Needs Right Now

How to Teach Online So All Students Feel Like They Belong

• Our Mission

Covid-19’s Impact on Students’ Academic and Mental Well-Being

The pandemic has revealed—and exacerbated—inequities that hold many students back. Here’s how teachers can help.

The pandemic has shone a spotlight on inequality in America: School closures and social isolation have affected all students, but particularly those living in poverty. Adding to the damage to their learning, a mental health crisis is emerging as many students have lost access to services that were offered by schools.

No matter what form school takes when the new year begins—whether students and teachers are back in the school building together or still at home—teachers will face a pressing issue: How can they help students recover and stay on track throughout the year even as their lives are likely to continue to be disrupted by the pandemic?

New research provides insights about the scope of the problem—as well as potential solutions.

The Achievement Gap Is Likely to Widen

A new study suggests that the coronavirus will undo months of academic gains, leaving many students behind. The study authors project that students will start the new school year with an average of 66 percent of the learning gains in reading and 44 percent of the learning gains in math, relative to the gains for a typical school year. But the situation is worse on the reading front, as the researchers also predict that the top third of students will make gains, possibly because they’re likely to continue reading with their families while schools are closed, thus widening the achievement gap.

To make matters worse, “few school systems provide plans to support students who need accommodations or other special populations,” the researchers point out in the study, potentially impacting students with special needs and English language learners.

Of course, the idea that over the summer students forget some of what they learned in school isn’t new. But there’s a big difference between summer learning loss and pandemic-related learning loss: During the summer, formal schooling stops, and learning loss happens at roughly the same rate for all students, the researchers point out. But instruction has been uneven during the pandemic, as some students have been able to participate fully in online learning while others have faced obstacles—such as lack of internet access—that have hindered their progress.

In the study, researchers analyzed a national sample of 5 million students in grades 3–8 who took the MAP Growth test, a tool schools use to assess students’ reading and math growth throughout the school year. The researchers compared typical growth in a standard-length school year to projections based on students being out of school from mid-March on. To make those projections, they looked at research on the summer slide, weather- and disaster-related closures (such as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina), and absenteeism.

The researchers predict that, on average, students will experience substantial drops in reading and math, losing roughly three months’ worth of gains in reading and five months’ worth of gains in math. For Megan Kuhfeld, the lead author of the study, the biggest takeaway isn’t that learning loss will happen—that’s a given by this point—but that students will come back to school having declined at vastly different rates.

“We might be facing unprecedented levels of variability come fall,” Kuhfeld told me. “Especially in school districts that serve families with lots of different needs and resources. Instead of having students reading at a grade level above or below in their classroom, teachers might have kids who slipped back a lot versus kids who have moved forward.” 

Disproportionate Impact on Students Living in Poverty and Students of Color

Horace Mann once referred to schools as the “great equalizers,” yet the pandemic threatens to expose the underlying inequities of remote learning. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center analysis , 17 percent of teenagers have difficulty completing homework assignments because they do not have reliable access to a computer or internet connection. For Black students, the number spikes to 25 percent.

“There are many reasons to believe the Covid-19 impacts might be larger for children in poverty and children of color,” Kuhfeld wrote in the study. Their families suffer higher rates of infection, and the economic burden disproportionately falls on Black and Hispanic parents, who are less likely to be able to work from home during the pandemic.

Although children are less likely to become infected with Covid-19, the adult mortality rates, coupled with the devastating economic consequences of the pandemic, will likely have an indelible impact on their well-being.

Impacts on Students’ Mental Health

That impact on well-being may be magnified by another effect of school closures: Schools are “the de facto mental health system for many children and adolescents,” providing mental health services to 57 percent of adolescents who need care, according to the authors of a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics . School closures may be especially disruptive for children from lower-income families, who are disproportionately likely to receive mental health services exclusively from schools.

“The Covid-19 pandemic may worsen existing mental health problems and lead to more cases among children and adolescents because of the unique combination of the public health crisis, social isolation, and economic recession,” write the authors of that study.

A major concern the researchers point to: Since most mental health disorders begin in childhood, it is essential that any mental health issues be identified early and treated. Left untreated, they can lead to serious health and emotional problems. In the short term, video conferencing may be an effective way to deliver mental health services to children.

Mental health and academic achievement are linked, research shows. Chronic stress changes the chemical and physical structure of the brain, impairing cognitive skills like attention, concentration, memory, and creativity. “You see deficits in your ability to regulate emotions in adaptive ways as a result of stress,” said Cara Wellman, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University in a 2014 interview . In her research, Wellman discovered that chronic stress causes the connections between brain cells to shrink in mice, leading to cognitive deficiencies in the prefrontal cortex. 

While trauma-informed practices were widely used before the pandemic, they’re likely to be even more integral as students experience economic hardships and grieve the loss of family and friends. Teachers can look to schools like Fall-Hamilton Elementary in Nashville, Tennessee, as a model for trauma-informed practices . 

3 Ways Teachers Can Prepare

When schools reopen, many students may be behind, compared to a typical school year, so teachers will need to be very methodical about checking in on their students—not just academically but also emotionally. Some may feel prepared to tackle the new school year head-on, but others will still be recovering from the pandemic and may still be reeling from trauma, grief, and anxiety. 

Here are a few strategies teachers can prioritize when the new school year begins:

• Focus on relationships first. Fear and anxiety about the pandemic—coupled with uncertainty about the future—can be disruptive to a student’s ability to come to school ready to learn. Teachers can act as a powerful buffer against the adverse effects of trauma by helping to establish a safe and supportive environment for learning. From morning meetings to regular check-ins with students, strategies that center around relationship-building will be needed in the fall.
• Strengthen diagnostic testing. Educators should prepare for a greater range of variability in student learning than they would expect in a typical school year. Low-stakes assessments such as exit tickets and quizzes can help teachers gauge how much extra support students will need, how much time should be spent reviewing last year’s material, and what new topics can be covered.
• Differentiate instruction—particularly for vulnerable students. For the vast majority of schools, the abrupt transition to online learning left little time to plan a strategy that could adequately meet every student’s needs—in a recent survey by the Education Trust, only 24 percent of parents said that their child’s school was providing materials and other resources to support students with disabilities, and a quarter of non-English-speaking students were unable to obtain materials in their own language. Teachers can work to ensure that the students on the margins get the support they need by taking stock of students’ knowledge and skills, and differentiating instruction by giving them choices, connecting the curriculum to their interests, and providing them multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning.

Resource Pack (3)

Resource Pack: Thematic (3)

Teaching Pack (3)

Teaching Pack: Lessons (3)

Publication (4)

Web Portal (2)

Middle-School Teachers (1)

High-School Teachers (3)

Digital/Media Literacy (2)

Data/Visualization (3)

Critical Thinking (6)

Leadership (3)

Global Learning (3)

Classroom (4)

Blended (4)

This " Teaching Toolkit " includes 6 individually curated collections to support teaching and learning about the COVID-19 pandemic. These include: Teaching Pack: COVID-19 Relevant Teaching Cases Resource Pack: COVID-19 in U.S: State Variation & Disparities Resource Pack: COVID-19 and Racism Resource Pack: Ethics, Human Rights, Pandemics Teaching Pack: COVID-19 Middle/High-School Resources Teaching Pack: COVID-19 College/Graduate Resources This toolkit is intended to be "educator-facing" and has been assembled by the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator at…

Teaching Toolkit

This Teaching Toolkit includes 6 individual collections curated to support teaching and learning about the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides educators with accessible, evidence-based information for curricula, teaching materials, student assignments and learning experiences.

How can educators leverage the COVID-19 pandemic to engage students in active learning? This collection …

How can educators leverage the COVID-19 pandemic to engage students in active learning? This collection of resources was curated to support high-school and middle-school teachers in bringing timely, high-quality material on the current COVID-19 pandemic into the "classroom" whether it be online, hybrid or physical. Each tile within the collection brings together a key resource on the topic and some sample activities, discussion prompts, or tools to generate ideas for teaching and learning. This teaching pack is…

This curated collection includes teaching cases that could serve as useful resources for educators teaching …

This curated collection includes teaching cases that could serve as useful resources for educators teaching about topics that are relevant to COVID-19, including but not limited to: pandemic risk preparedness, mitigation and response; policy coordination between federal, state and local government; drugs, vaccines and supply chains; international collective action and global governance. Cases include both domestic and international experiences with SARS, H1N1, H5N1, Ebola and COVID-19. While some cases are older, they represent the challenges,…

This set of resources provide insight into the trajectory and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic …

This set of resources provide insight into the trajectory and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Selected publications, data portals, interactives, and graphics depict the national experience over time, and allow users to explore the variation in epidemiology and outcomes by state and population subgroup. Resources were selected to also reflect particular attributes of the U.S. experience, such as the increasing evidence for racial disparities in terms of the most severe outcomes,…

This curated resource portal highlights racial injustice in the United States, spanning from racial disparities …

This curated resource portal highlights racial injustice in the United States, spanning from racial disparities in Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) to the continued police violence experienced by persons of color. This sampling of resources provides an overview of the relationship between COVID-19 and the disproportionate number of cases and deaths experienced by Black Americans, broader health trends that result from racial inequities, and injury and mortality trends tied to police violence. The resource collection incorporates…

This curated resource collection includes reports, articles and guidelines that consider both ethics and human …

This curated resource collection includes reports, articles and guidelines that consider both ethics and human rights, as they relate to public health practice and clinical research in the setting of national and international emergencies, particularly epidemics and pandemics. In addition to ethical frameworks developed specifically for pandemic preparedness, the collection also includes insights from prior guidelines focusing on research, compassionate use therapeutics and vaccine trials for Ebola. Others resources outline how to conduct research effectively…

How can educators make course content relevant to learners? The current COVID-19 pandemic offers a …

How can educators make course content relevant to learners? The current COVID-19 pandemic offers a wealth of opportunities for college and graduate educators to integrate real-world events, salient to their students' everyday lives, into existing or new courses. This collection brings together timely, high-quality material that explores global and local patterns of disease, transmission and epidemiology, social determinants of health, health sector and non-health sector responses, and the variation in policies and their impact. Each…

Welcome to the Incubator's Digital Repository

Our digital repository is a searchable library of selected resources that support learning and teaching about interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary population health challenges across the globe. It includes general resources (e.g., reports, articles, country profiles, data, etc.) and teaching resources (e.g., teaching cases, curated resource packs, and lesson-based teaching packs). Open-access sources are prioritized, and include peer-reviewed journals, global reports from multilateral institutions and alliances, and knowledge-related public goods from reputable research and policy organizations.

Take a Video Tour

Download a 2-Page Explainer (PDF)

Download Self-Guided Tour (PDF)

How is COVID-19 affecting student learning?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, initial findings from fall 2020, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld senior research scientist - nwea @megankuhfeld jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea @jsoland beth tarasawa , bt beth tarasawa executive vice president of research - nwea @bethtarasawa angela johnson , aj angela johnson research scientist - nwea erik ruzek , and er erik ruzek research assistant professor, curry school of education - university of virginia karyn lewis karyn lewis director, center for school and student progress - nwea @karynlew.

December 3, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced uncertainty into major aspects of national and global society, including for schools. For example, there is uncertainty about how school closures last spring impacted student achievement, as well as how the rapid conversion of most instruction to an online platform this academic year will continue to affect achievement. Without data on how the virus impacts student learning, making informed decisions about whether and when to return to in-person instruction remains difficult. Even now, education leaders must grapple with seemingly impossible choices that balance health risks associated with in-person learning against the educational needs of children, which may be better served when kids are in their physical schools.

Amidst all this uncertainty, there is growing consensus that school closures in spring 2020 likely had negative effects on student learning. For example, in an earlier post for this blog , we presented our research forecasting the possible impact of school closures on achievement. Based on historical learning trends and prior research on how out-of-school-time affects learning, we estimated that students would potentially begin fall 2020 with roughly 70% of the learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year. In mathematics, students were predicted to show even smaller learning gains from the previous year, returning with less than 50% of typical gains. While these and other similar forecasts presented a grim portrait of the challenges facing students and educators this fall, they were nonetheless projections. The question remained: What would learning trends in actual data from the 2020-21 school year really look like?

With fall 2020 data now in hand , we can move beyond forecasting and begin to describe what did happen. While the closures last spring left most schools without assessment data from that time, thousands of schools began testing this fall, making it possible to compare learning gains in a typical, pre-COVID-19 year to those same gains during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from nearly 4.4 million students in grades 3-8 who took MAP ® Growth™ reading and math assessments in fall 2020, we examined two primary research questions:

• How did students perform in fall 2020 relative to a typical school year (specifically, fall 2019)?
• Have students made learning gains since schools physically closed in March 2020?

To answer these questions, we compared students’ academic achievement and growth during the COVID-19 pandemic to the achievement and growth patterns observed in 2019. We report student achievement as a percentile rank, which is a normative measure of a student’s achievement in a given grade/subject relative to the MAP Growth national norms (reflecting pre-COVID-19 achievement levels).

To make sure the students who took the tests before and after COVID-19 school closures were demographically similar, all analyses were limited to a sample of 8,000 schools that tested students in both fall 2019 and fall 2020. Compared to all public schools in the nation, schools in the sample had slightly larger total enrollment, a lower percentage of low-income students, and a higher percentage of white students. Since our sample includes both in-person and remote testers in fall 2020, we conducted an initial comparability study of remote and in-person testing in fall 2020. We found consistent psychometric characteristics and trends in test scores for remote and in-person tests for students in grades 3-8, but caution that remote testing conditions may be qualitatively different for K-2 students. For more details on the sample and methodology, please see the technical report accompanying this study.

In some cases, our results tell a more optimistic story than what we feared. In others, the results are as deeply concerning as we expected based on our projections.

Question 1: How did students perform in fall 2020 relative to a typical school year?

When comparing students’ median percentile rank for fall 2020 to those for fall 2019, there is good news to share: Students in grades 3-8 performed similarly in reading to same-grade students in fall 2019. While the reason for the stability of these achievement results cannot be easily pinned down, possible explanations are that students read more on their own, and parents are better equipped to support learning in reading compared to other subjects that require more formal instruction.

The news in math, however, is more worrying. The figure below shows the median percentile rank in math by grade level in fall 2019 and fall 2020. As the figure indicates, the math achievement of students in 2020 was about 5 to 10 percentile points lower compared to same-grade students the prior year.

Figure 1: MAP Growth Percentiles in Math by Grade Level in Fall 2019 and Fall 2020

Source: Author calculations with MAP Growth data. Notes: Each bar represents the median percentile rank in a given grade/term.

Question 2: Have students made learning gains since schools physically closed, and how do these gains compare to gains in a more typical year?

To answer this question, we examined learning gains/losses between winter 2020 (January through early March) and fall 2020 relative to those same gains in a pre-COVID-19 period (between winter 2019 and fall 2019). We did not examine spring-to-fall changes because so few students tested in spring 2020 (after the pandemic began). In almost all grades, the majority of students made some learning gains in both reading and math since the COVID-19 pandemic started, though gains were smaller in math in 2020 relative to the gains students in the same grades made in the winter 2019-fall 2019 period.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of change in reading scores by grade for the winter 2020 to fall 2020 period (light blue) as compared to same-grade students in the pre-pandemic span of winter 2019 to fall 2019 (dark blue). The 2019 and 2020 distributions largely overlapped, suggesting similar amounts of within-student change from one grade to the next.

Figure 2: Distribution of Within-student Change from Winter 2019-Fall 2019 vs Winter 2020-Fall 2020 in Reading

Source: Author calculations with MAP Growth data. Notes: The dashed line represents zero growth (e.g., winter and fall test scores were equivalent). A positive value indicates that a student scored higher in the fall than their prior winter score; a negative value indicates a student scored lower in the fall than their prior winter score.

Meanwhile, Figure 3 shows the distribution of change for students in different grade levels for the winter 2020 to fall 2020 period in math. In contrast to reading, these results show a downward shift: A smaller proportion of students demonstrated positive math growth in the 2020 period than in the 2019 period for all grades. For example, 79% of students switching from 3 rd to 4 th grade made academic gains between winter 2019 and fall 2019, relative to 57% of students in the same grade range in 2020.

Figure 3: Distribution of Within-student Change from Winter 2019-Fall 2019 vs. Winter 2020-Fall 2020 in Math

It was widely speculated that the COVID-19 pandemic would lead to very unequal opportunities for learning depending on whether students had access to technology and parental support during the school closures, which would result in greater heterogeneity in terms of learning gains/losses in 2020. Notably, however, we do not see evidence that within-student change is more spread out this year relative to the pre-pandemic 2019 distribution.

The long-term effects of COVID-19 are still unknown

In some ways, our findings show an optimistic picture: In reading, on average, the achievement percentiles of students in fall 2020 were similar to those of same-grade students in fall 2019, and in almost all grades, most students made some learning gains since the COVID-19 pandemic started. In math, however, the results tell a less rosy story: Student achievement was lower than the pre-COVID-19 performance by same-grade students in fall 2019, and students showed lower growth in math across grades 3 to 8 relative to peers in the previous, more typical year. Schools will need clear local data to understand if these national trends are reflective of their students. Additional resources and supports should be deployed in math specifically to get students back on track.

In this study, we limited our analyses to a consistent set of schools between fall 2019 and fall 2020. However, approximately one in four students who tested within these schools in fall 2019 are no longer in our sample in fall 2020. This is a sizeable increase from the 15% attrition from fall 2018 to fall 2019. One possible explanation is that some students lacked reliable technology. A second is that they disengaged from school due to economic, health, or other factors. More coordinated efforts are required to establish communication with students who are not attending school or disengaging from instruction to get them back on track, especially our most vulnerable students.

Finally, we are only scratching the surface in quantifying the short-term and long-term academic and non-academic impacts of COVID-19. While more students are back in schools now and educators have more experience with remote instruction than when the pandemic forced schools to close in spring 2020, the collective shock we are experiencing is ongoing. We will continue to examine students’ academic progress throughout the 2020-21 school year to understand how recovery and growth unfold amid an ongoing pandemic.

Thankfully, we know much more about the impact the pandemic has had on student learning than we did even a few months ago. However, that knowledge makes clear that there is work to be done to help many students get back on track in math, and that the long-term ramifications of COVID-19 for student learning—especially among underserved communities—remain unknown.

Related Content

Jim Soland, Megan Kuhfeld, Beth Tarasawa, Angela Johnson, Erik Ruzek, Jing Liu

May 27, 2020

Amie Rapaport, Anna Saavedra, Dan Silver, Morgan Polikoff

November 18, 2020

Education Access & Equity K-12 Education

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Sofoklis Goulas, Isabelle Pula

May 16, 2024

Melissa Kay Diliberti, Elizabeth D. Steiner, Ashley Woo

Dr. Neil A. Lewis, Jr.

May 14, 2024

How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Getty Images

Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

10 Ways to Discover College Essay Ideas

Tags: students , colleges , college admissions , college applications , college search , Coronavirus

2024 Best Colleges

Search for your perfect fit with the U.S. News rankings of colleges and universities.

College Admissions: Get a Step Ahead!

Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S. News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy .

Ask an Alum: Making the Most Out of College

You May Also Like

Nonacademic factors in college searches.

Sarah Wood May 28, 2024

Takeaways From the NCAA’s Settlement

Laura Mannweiler May 24, 2024

New Best Engineering Rankings June 18

Robert Morse and Eric Brooks May 24, 2024

Premedical Programs: What to Know

Sarah Wood May 21, 2024

How Geography Affects College Admissions

Cole Claybourn May 21, 2024

Q&A: College Alumni Engagement

LaMont Jones, Jr. May 20, 2024

10 Destination West Coast College Towns

Cole Claybourn May 16, 2024

Scholarships for Lesser-Known Sports

Sarah Wood May 15, 2024

Should Students Submit Test Scores?

Sarah Wood May 13, 2024

Poll: Antisemitism a Problem on Campus

Lauren Camera May 13, 2024

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• My Account Login
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 25 March 2023

The impact of the first wave of COVID-19 on students’ attainment, analysed by IRT modelling method

• Rita Takács   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0314-4179 1 ,
• Szabolcs Takács   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9128-9019 2 , 3 ,
• Judit T. Kárász   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6198-482X 4 , 5 ,
• Attila Oláh 6 , 7 &
• Zoltán Horváth 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  127 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

3219 Accesses

4 Citations

1 Altmetric

Metrics details

Universities around the world were closed for several months to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this crisis, a tremendous amount of effort was made to use online education to support the teaching and learning process. The COVID-19 pandemic gave us a profound insight into how online education can radically affect students and how students adapt to new challenges. The question is how switching to online education affected dropout? This study shows the results of a research project clarifying the impact of the transition to online courses on dropouts. The data analysed are from a large public university in Europe where online education was introduced in March 2020. This study compares the academic progress of students newly enroled in 2018 and 2019 using IRT modelling. The results show that (1) this period did not contribute significantly to the increase in dropout, and we managed to retain our students.(2) Subjects became more achievable during online education, and students with less ability were also able to pass their exams. (3) Students who participated in online education reported lower average grade points than those who participated in on-campus education. Consequently, on-campus students could win better scholarships because of better grades than students who participated in online education. Analysing students’ results could help (1) resolve management issues regarding scholarship problems and (2) administrators develop programmes to increase retention in online education.

Similar content being viewed by others

Determinants of behaviour and their efficacy as targets of behavioural change interventions

Impact of artificial intelligence on human loss in decision making, laziness and safety in education

Interviews in the social sciences

Introduction.

During the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries closed their university buildings and switched to online education. Some opinions suggest that online education had a negative effect on dropouts because of several factors, e.g., lack of social connections, poor contact with teachers. In bachelor’s programmes—like university courses in computer science—where dropout rates were high prior to the pandemic, many questions were raised about the impact of the transition to online education.

This study focuses on the effects of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ dropouts and performance in Hungary. Although the manuscript addresses academic dropout, other issues such as inequality or accessibility were also covered in the research.

Theoretical background

Educational theory about student dropout in higher education.

Tinto ( 1975 ) was the first researcher who analysed the dropout phenomenon and invented the interactional theory of student persistence in higher education. He ( 2012 ) highlighted the interactions between the student and the institution regarding how well they fit in academically and socially. Interactional theories suggest that students’ personal characteristics, traits, experience, and commitment can have an effect on students’ persistence (Pascarella and Terenzini, 1983 ; Terenzini and Reason, 2005 ; Reason, 2009 ). Braxton and Hirschy ( 2004 ) also emphasized the need for community on campus as a help of social integration to develop relationships between peers because interactions with other students and faculty members crucially determine whether students persist and continue their studies or leave.

The student dropout rate has been a crucial issue in higher education in the last two decades. Attrition has serious consequences on the individual (e.g., Nagrecha et al., 2017 ) at both economic (Di Pietro, 2006 ; Belloc et al., 2011 ) and educational (Cabrera et al., 2006 ) levels. As a worldwide phenomenon, it draws the attention of policy-makers, stake-holders and academics to the necessity of seeking solutions. The dropout crisis requires complex intervention programmes for encouraging students in order to complete their studies. Addressing such a dropout crisis requires an actionable interdisciplinary movement based on partnerships among stake-holders and academics.

According to Vision 2030 studies published by the European Union, education is vital for economic development because it has a direct influence on entrepreneurship and productivity growth; at the same time, it increases employment opportunities and women empowerment. Education helps to reduce unemployment and enhance students’ abilities and skills that will be needed in the labour market. Due to students’ high attrition, the economy also suffers because experts with a degree usually contribute more to the GDP than people without (Whittle and Rampton, 2020 ).

A comparative analysis of past studies has been conducted in order to identify various causes of students’ dropout. Students’ performance after the first academic year is a topic of significant interest: the lack of students' engagement in academic life and their unpreparedness are mainly responsible for dropout after the first highly crucial period. However, further studies are necessary to better understand this phenomenon.

The characteristics of online education and its effect on dropout

Online education had already existed before the COVID-19 pandemic and had had a vast literature because online courses had been playing an important role in higher education. Online education has its own benefits, e.g., it enables students to work from the comfort of their homes with more convenient, accessible materials. In recent years, numerous investigations have been performed on how to increase the motivation of students by making them feel engaged during the learning processes (Molins-Ruano et al., 2014 ; Jovanovic et al., 2019 ). The other benefit is “humanizing”, which is an academic strategy that looks for solutions to improve equity gaps by recognizing the fact that learning situations are not the same for everyone. The aim of humanizing education is to remove the affective and cognitive barriers which appear during online learning and to provide a technique in higher education towards a more equitable future in which the success of all students is supported (Pacansky-Brock and Vincent-Layton, 2020 ). Humanizing online STEM courses has specific significance because creating such academic pathways can especially help the graduation of vulnerable, for example, non-traditional students. The definition of a non-traditional student belongs to Bean and Metzner ( 1985 ), who distinguished students by different characteristics. Non-traditional students are not on-campus students (but they can participate in online education), who are usually aged 24 years or older, and dominantly have a job and/or a family. Non-traditional students have less interaction with other participants in education, and they are much more influenced by other factors, e.g., family or other external responsibilities. Financial factors, family attitudes and external incentives can also influence dropout. The dropout model for non-traditional university students highlights that underperforming students are likely to leave the institution. Carr ( 2000 ) (in Rovai, 2003 ) noticed that persistence in online courses is regularly 10–20% lower than in on-campus courses. The dropout rate differs from institution to institution: some reports claim that 80% of students graduated, whereas other findings show that less than 50% of students completed their courses. Humanizing recognizes that engagement and accomplishment are the key factors in students’ success. Engagement and achievement are social constructs created through students’ experience. Teachers can help students to socialize and adapt to the academic environment by using humanizing practices like a liquid syllabus. Stommel ( 2013 ) also considers that hybrid pedagogy is a useful tool in order to support students’ learning because it helps teachers to implement new learning activities and facilitate collaboration among students.

Despite the various benefits that online education has, the success of students depends on the student’s capacity to independently and effectively engage in the learning process (Wang et al., 2013 ). Online learners are required to be more autonomous, as the exceptional nature of online settings relies on self-directed learning (Serdyukov and Hill, 2013 ). It is therefore especially critical that online learners, compared to their conventional classroom peers, have the self-generated capacity to control and manage their learning activities.

Online education also needs extra attention because the dropout rate is high in online university programmes. Students in online courses are more likely to drop out (Patterson and McFadden, 2009 ; in Nistor and Neubauer, 2010 ). Numerous studies reported much higher dropout rates than in the case of on-campus courses (Willging and Johnson, 2019 ; Levy, 2007 ; Morris et al., 2005 ; Patterson and McFadden, 2009 ; in Nistor and Neubauer, 2010 ). Many factors that lead to dropout were examined in the past. During online courses, students are less likely to form communities or study groups and the lack of learning support can lead to isolation. Consequently, demotivated students who were dedicated to their chosen major, in the beginning, may decide to drop out. Fortunately, there are different ways to support students who study in an online setting depending on their various psychological attributes. These psychological attributes that are connected to dropout have already been examined. One of the most noticeable hypothetical models of university persistence in online education was proposed by Rovai ( 2003 ). He claims that dropout depends on students’ characteristics e.g., learning style, socioeconomic status, studying skills, etc. Besides these factors, the method of education also has an impact on students’ decisions on whether they complete the course or drop out.

It is vital to distinguish the online education that was introduced as a consequence of the COVID-19 lockdown, when universities were forced to move their education to fully online platforms because online education had already existed in some educational institutions.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on education: Inequalities in home learning and colleges’ provision of distance teaching during school closure of the COVID-19 lockdown

The lives of millions of college students were affected not only by the health and economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic but also by the closure of educational institutions. Home and academic environments were interlaced, and most institutions were caught unprepared. In this article, we examine the effects of the transition to online learning in areas such as academic attainment.

There are several debates on the effectiveness of moving to online education. Since currently there is little literature about the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to how it affects dropouts at universities, it is worth discussing it in order to have an overview of recent studies on students’ performance. The learning environment changed radically during the first wave of the pandemic in the spring semester of 2020. The transition to home learning and teaching in such a short time without any warning or preparation raised concerns and became the focus of attention for researchers, teachers, policymakers, and all those interested in the educational welfare of students.

A potential learning loss was anticipated, possibly affecting students’ cognitive gains in the long term (Andrew et al., 2020 ; Bayrakdar and Guveli, 2020 ; Brown et al., 2020 ); in fact, an increasing number of studies suggested that the lockdown might have far-reaching academic consequences (Bol, 2020 ). In general, results suggest that students’ motivation was substantially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and that academic and relational changes were the most notable sources of stress on both the students’ side (e.g., Rahiem, 2021 ) and the teachers’ side (e.g., Abilleira et al., 2021 ; Daumiller et al., 2021 ). Engzell et al. ( 2021 ) examined nearly 350,000 students’ academic performance before and after the first wave of the pandemic in the Netherlands. Their results suggest that students made very little development while learning from home. Closures also had a substantial effect on students’ sense of belonging and self-efficacy. Academic knowledge loss could be even more severe in countries with less advanced infrastructure or a longer period of college closures (OECD, 2020 ).

Many researchers started to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on university students’ mental health and academic performance. Clark et al. ( 2021 ) claim that university students are increasingly considered a vulnerable population, as they experience extremely high levels of stress. They draw attention to the fact that students might suffer more from learning difficulties. Daniels et al. ( 2021 ) used a single survey to collect retrospective self-report data from Canadian undergraduate students ( n  = 98) about their motivation, engagement and perceptions of success and cheating before COVID-19, which shows that students’ achievements, goals, engagement and perception of success all significantly decreased, while their perception of cheating increased (Daniels et al., 2021 ). Other studies claim that during the COVID-19 pandemic, students were more engaged in studying and had higher perceptions of success. Studies also show that teachers’ strategies changed as well because of the lack of interaction between teachers and students, which led to the fact that students experienced more stress and were more likely to have difficulties in following the material presented and it could be one of the reasons for poor academic performance. Mendoza et al. ( 2021 ) investigated the relationships between anxiety and students’ performance during the first wave of the pandemic among college students. Anxiety regarding learning mathematics was measured among mathematics students studying at the Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo (UNACH) during the autumn semester of the academic year 2020. The total sample contained 120 students, who were studying the subject of mathematics at different levels. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences in the understanding of the contents presented by the teachers in a virtual way. During the COVID-19 pandemic the levels of mathematical anxiety increased. Teaching mathematics at university in an online format requires good quality digital connection and time-limited submission of assignments. This study draws attention to the negative result of the pandemic, i.e. the levels of anxiety might be greater during online education and not only in mathematics education but also in other subjects. Thus it could have an effect on students’ academic performance. However, the results are contradictory to what Said ( 2021 ) found, i.e. there was no difference in students’ performance before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In their empirical study, they investigated the effect of the shift from face-to-face to online distance learning at one of the universities in Egypt. They compared the grades of 376 business students who participated in a face-to-face course in spring 2019 and those of 372 students who participated in the same course fully online in spring 2020 during the lockdown. A T -test was conducted to compare the grades of quizzes, coursework, and final exams of the two groups. The results suggested that there was no statistically significant difference. Another interesting result was that in some cases students had a better performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. At a large public university in Spain, Iglesias-Pradas et al. ( 2021 ) analysed the following instruction-related variables: class size, synchronous/asynchronous delivery of classes, and the use of digital supporting technologies on students’ academic performance. The research compared the academic results of the students during the COVID-19 pandemic with those of previous years. Using quantitative data from academic records across all ( n  = 43) courses of a bachelor’s degree programme, the study showed an increase in students’ academic performance during the sudden shift to online education. Gonzalez et al. ( 2020 ) had similar results. Their research group analysed the effects of COVID-19 on the autonomous learning performance of students. 458 students participated in their studies. In the control group, students started their studies in 2017 and 2018, while in the experimental group, students started in 2019. The results showed that there was a significant positive effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on students’ performance: students had changed their learning strategies and improved their efficiency by studying more continuously. Yu et al. ( 2021 ) found similar results. They used administrative data from students’ grade tracking systems and found that the causal effects of online education on students’ exam performance were positive in a Chinese middle school. Taking a difference-in-differences approach, they found that receiving online education during the COVID-19 lockdown improved students’ academic results by 0.22 of a standard deviation (Yu et al., 2021 ).

Currently, there is little literature about COVID-19 in relation to how it affects students’ performance at universities, so it is worth discussing this aspect as well.

Teachers’ approach to their grading strategies and shift to online education during the COVID-19 lockdown

There is a vast literature on the limits of the capacities and challenges of online education (Davis et al., 2019 ; Dumford and Miller, 2018 ; Palvia et al., 2018 ). The lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic created new challenges for teachers all over the world and called for innovative teaching techniques (Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020 ; Gamage et al., 2020 ; Paudel, 2020 ; Peimani and Kamalipour, 2021 ; Rapanta et al., 2020 ; Watermeyer et al., 2021 ). These changes had undoubtedly profound impacts on the academic discourse and everyday practices of teaching. Teachers’ motivations for maintaining effective online teaching during the lockdown were diverse and complex, and therefore, learning outcomes were difficult to be guaranteed. Yu et al. ( 2021 ) examined how innovative teaching could be continued during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly by learning domain-specific knowledge and skills. The results confirmed that during the lockdown teachers who had studied online teaching methods improved their teaching skills and ICT (information and communication technology) efficacy.

Burgess and Sievertsen ( 2020 ) claim that due to the COVID-19 lockdown, educational institutions might cause major interruptions in students’ learning process. Disruption appeared not only in elaborating new knowledge but also in assessment. Given the proof of the significance of exams and tests for learning, educators had to consider postponing rather than renounce assessments. Akar and Coskun ( 2020 ) found that innovative teaching had a slight but positive relationship with creativity. From their point of view, it was not necessarily a consequence of shifting offline teaching to online platforms. Innovative teaching and digital technology were not granted and their impact on student’s performance or teachers’ grading practices is still unclear. The present research aimed to analyse students’ attainment during the COVID-19 pandemic by using student performance data. We focused on the relationship between participation in online courses and dropout decisions, which is connected to teachers’ grading. Examining how grades changed during the lockdown could give us an interesting insight into the educational inequality caused by online education regarding the scholarship system based on student’s grades.

Research questions

We know very little about the effects of transitioning to online education on student dropout and teachers’ grading practices. Even less information is available on the relationship between COVID-19 and dropout, so it is worth a discussion due to the existing controversial and interesting studies on students’ performance. This article gives a suggestion on how the scholarship system could be changed and how we could avoid inequality caused by online education. There is a scholarship system in Hungary that provides financial support to full-time programme students, based on their academic achievement.

Another issue we discuss in this article is dropping out from university programmes, which is a crucial issue worldwide. Between 2010 and 2016 at a large public university in Europe (over 30,000 students) the overall attrition rate is 30%, with the Faculty of Informatics having the worst results (60%) but nowadays these figures are more promising (30|40%). These days at least 800,000 computer scientists may be needed in Europe (Europa.eu, 2015 ), but it seems to be a worldwide issue (Borzovs et al., 2015 ; Ohland et al., 2008 ) to retain students.

This study focuses on the effects of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ dropout and performance in Hungary. Although the manuscript addresses academic dropout, other issues such as inequality or accessibility are also covered in the research. The aim of the paper is therefore to investigate the following questions:

It is inconclusive whether the COVID-19 pandemic had negative effects on students’ performance, which is why we claim that

Hypothesis 1: There is a significant difference in grade point averages between students who participated in online education and those in on-campus education in the second semester of their studies.

Academic achievement (in both traditional and online learning settings) can be measured by accomplishing a specific result in an online assignment and is commonly expressed in terms of a grade point average (GPA; Lounsbury et al., 2005 ; Richardson et al., 2012 ; Wang, 2010 ). According to meta-analyses, GPA is one of the best predictors of dropout (Richardson et al., 2012 ; Broadbent and Poon, 2015 ).

Hypothesis 2: In some subjects (Basic Mathematics practice, Programming, Imperative Programming lecture + practice, Functional Programming, Object-oriented Programming practice + lecture, Algorithms and Data Structures lecture + practice, Discrete Mathematics practice and Analysis practice), it was easier to obtain a passing grade in online education.

Hypothesis 3: More of the students who participated in online education dropped out than those who received on-campus education.

Difficulty and differential analysis of subjects

In the examined higher education system, a BSc programme has six semesters and every subject is graded on a five-point scale, where 1 means fail, and grades from 2 to 5 mean pass, with 5 being the best grade. In the analysis only the final grades were counted in each subject. It is important to see that in order to achieve better grades (or obtain sufficient knowledge), a subject really needs differentiation. It is worth examining the subjects of the various courses because—although there are grades—there is some kind of expected knowledge or skill that the subject should measure. Students are expected to develop these competencies or at least reach an expected level by the end of the semester. To find out whether this kind of competency actually exists (and was developed during online education) and whether the subjects measure this kind of competency, Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis was used to examine the subjects included in the computer science BSc programme. The aim of IRT analysis modelling is to bring the difficulty of the subjects and the ability of the students to the same scale (GRM, Forero and Maydeu-Olivares, 2009 ; Rasch, 1960 ). We had already successfully applied a special IRT model in order to analyse the effects of a student retention programme. In order to prevent student dropout, in a large public university in Europe, a prevention and promotion programme was added to the bachelor’s programme and an education reform was also implemented. In most education systems students have to collect 30 credits per semester by successfully completing 8|10 subjects. We conducted an analysis using data science techniques and the most difficult subjects were identified. As a result, harder subjects were removed, and more introductory courses were built into the curriculum of the first year. A further action—as an intervention—was added to a computer science degree programme: all theoretical lectures became compulsory to attend. According to the results, the dropout level decreased by 28%. The most important benefit of the education reform was that most subjects had become accomplishable (Takács et al., 2021 ). Footnote 1

Hypothesis 1 claims that the online transition due to COVID-19 during the second semester of the 2019 academic year did not result in a change in the requirement system of the subjects. Hypothesis 2 claims that essentially the same expectations were formulated by teachers. In contrast, the way teachers evaluate students necessarily changed. A subject with a given difficulty could be passed by a student with the same ability level with a given probability. Obviously, all subjects that had been less difficult were more likely to be correctly passed than more difficult subjects. The analysis was performed using the IRT, based on the STATA15 software package.

In the study, 862 students were involved in the bachelor’s computer science programme. There were 438 (415) students who started on-campus education in 2018 and 447 students who started on-campus education in 2019, but from March 2020 they participated in online education (Table 1 ). Table 1 shows the result of Hypothesis 1: The grade point average of students who participated in online education (2.5) was lower than that of students who participated in on-campus education (3.3). Table 1 also shows that 447 students participated in online education and only 19 dropped out; 438 students started on-campus education and 50 dropped out. We can conclude that there was no significant difference between students’ dropping out who participated in online education and those who received on-campus education (Hypothesis 3). Note: We can conclude that the grade point average of students who participated in online education (2.5) was lower than that of students who participated in on-campus education (3.3) (Hypothesis 1). On the other hand, there was no significant difference between the drop-out rate of students’ who participated in online education and that of those who received on-campus education (Hypothesis 3). These case numbers make it unnecessary to apply any statistical evidence because the result is obvious.

The subjects were examined by fitting a 2-parameter IRT model to them (scale 1–5 with grades, assuming an ordinal model using the STATA15 programme). ‘Grades’ mean the final grade of the subjects. The STATA15.0 software package was used for the analysis, and the Graded Response Model version of the Ordered item models was chosen from the IRT procedures (GRM; Forero and Maydeu-Olivares, 2009 ).

During the procedure, we examined two parameters: the difficulty of the items and the slope. We took into account those subjects for which the subject matter of the subject remained the same over the years, or the exams did not change substantially (exam grade, according to the same assessment criteria). However, it is important to note that obviously, not the same students completed the assignments each year.

The study involved the following subjects (only professional subjects were considered):

Mathematical Foundations

Programming

Computer Systems lecture+practice

Imperative Programming

Functional Programming

Object-oriented Programming lecture + practice

Algorithms and Data Structures I. lecture

Algorithms and Data Structures I. practice

Discrete Mathematics I. lecture

Discrete Mathematics I. practice

Analysis I. L

Analysis I. P

Examination of slope and difficulty coefficients

In this section, we examine Table 2 . As a first step, it is crucial to understand the slope indices of the given objects in different years, whether they change from one year to another. Table 2 shows the result of Hypothesis 2: In most subjects (Basic Mathematics practice, Programming, Imperative Programming lecture + practice, Functional Programming, Object-oriented Programming practice+lecture, Algorithms and Data Structures lecture + practice, Discrete Mathematics practice, and Analysis practice), it was easier to obtain a passing grade in online education.

Two parametric procedures were applied: each subject has a difficulty index and a slope.

While if the student’s ability falls short of the difficulty, the denominator of the fraction will increase, so the probability that the student will be able to pass the exam will increase—they will earn a good grade (Fig. 1 ).

Difficulty levels of the subjects in 2018 and 2019 academic year.

Instead of introducing the whole subject network, we introduce a typical subject that was analysed using the IRT. The analyses of the subject of Discrete Mathematics enable us to adequately illustrate the classic phenomenon that arose. The complete analysis of the subjects can be found in Table 2 .

The period before 2019 and after 2019 are shown separately in the table, as at the beginning of 2020 the lockdown took place when online education was introduced to all students so it had an impact on academic achievement. We presupposed that it had manifested itself in the subjects’ completing difficulty and in their ability to differentiate.

Discrete mathematics I. practice

As far as the Discrete Mathematics subject is regarded, we can observe a slope of high value above 3 (sometimes 4) before and after 2019, which means that the subject had strong differentiating abilities both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is a debate in the literature on how the performance of students changed during online education. Whereas Said ( 2021 ) found no difference in students’ performance before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the study by Iglesias-Pradas et al. ( 2021 ) showed an increase in students’ academic performance in distance education. Gonzalez et al. ( 2020 ) predicted better results during online education than in the case of on-campus education. This study partly confirmed their result because more students tried taking the exams. However, they could not perform better as predicted by Gonzalez et al. ( 2020 ) because among computer science students those who participated in online education obtained lower grade point averages than those who participated in on-campus education. According to our results, grade point averages differed substantially between the two examined groups (Hypothesis 1). It can be seen that there are no significant differences in the study groups in terms of dropout after the first year of studies, and the number of students affected was not substantially higher/lower. There are no significant differences in dropout rates between students participating in on-campus or online education (Hypothesis 3).

The result above is crucial; however, the implications and prospective steps based on this result are even more important.

It can be seen that with the introduction of online education, more teaching and learning strategies became available for certain subjects. Teachers’ grading strategies as well as their intentions when giving grades can be assumed as the possible reasons behind the grades. These strategies on both sides (teachers’ and students’) may have appeared during online education.

There were basically two types of changes regarding the grades for the different subjects:

The difficulty associated with the particular grade of the subject in online education decreased for each value on a scale of 1–5 for a given subject (Hypothesis 2). This means that even failing (grade 1) was easier (students preferred to try the exam even if they were unprepared), or even obtaining other passing grades was easier, too. It should be noted that the examined phenomenon cannot have a negative slope (typically not 0), because a slope of 0 means that there is ½ of a probability (regardless of ability) that a student passes a given exam. Fortunately, this is not the case, so we can assume that all slopes are positive.

(a) Behind this strategy, in the case of grade 1, it can be assumed that in online education students’ general strategy was to register for the exam and try it even if unprepared in contrast to the on-campus student who would not take the exam if s/he was unprepared.

(b) It seems that it became easier to obtain a passing grade. Behind this phenomenon, strategies can be assumed from both faculty members' and students’ sides. In case of failing the exam, it makes no sense to talk about the strategy of the teacher, because the teacher was more likely to give a passing grade or even a better grade for less knowledge. In general, the thresholds for obtaining the grade were lower in all cases. This could have been illustrated by the following subjects: Basic Mathematics practice, Programming, Imperative Programming lecture + practice, Functional Programming, Object-oriented Programming practice + lecture, Algorithms and Data Structures lecture + practice, Discrete Mathematics practice and Analysis practice.

Analysing further the subjects by IRT modelling, we saw that it was easier to obtain lower grades (grades 1, 2 and 3). However, in the case grade 4 or 5, it appears that it was more difficult to obtain them due to the prevalence of the higher requirements of the subjects.

(a) The insufficient grades’ (i.e. grade 1) lower level of difficulty (shown by the IRT model) clearly showed that there was no substantial difference in this respect compared to obtaining insufficient grades during the on-campus or online education period.

(b) The results showed that obtaining good grades (4 or 5) became more difficult during online education. It can be assumed that students participating in online education require some kind of help from education management in order to compensate for the disadvantages posed by distance learning because they got worse grades and worse average grade points as compared to on-campus students.

In the following, we examine what strategies faculty members and students may apply considering the difficulty of each grade of the subjects (left column of Table 2 ) showed a decreasing trend.

From the students’ point of view, isolation could result in students being involved in studying more effectively. Consequently, the time spent on the elaboration of the subjects may increase (Wang et al., 2013 ) compared to in-class education and by using available materials, textbooks, practice assignments, students could devote extra energy to subjects, which may result in better exam grades.

From the teachers’ point of view, teachers might want to offer some ‘compensation’ at exams due to non-traditional teaching. In light of this, they are likely to ask a ‘slightly easier’ question, adapt them to the practice tasks, or even lower the exam requirements, e.g., lowering the score limits by 1-2 points more favourable, or accepting answers that would not be accepted in other circumstances.

Note that these two strategies may have been present at the same time: the teacher perceived increased student contribution during the semester, for example, greater activity in online classes, and therefore, provided them with some reward by giving better final grades after taking into consideration their overall performance during the semester.

Please note that both narratives could appear at the same time.

It is also important to see that although grade point averages shifted, the shift was not necessarily drastic, and dropout rates did not improve. It may also be legitimate that there were individual characteristics that caused the difference in the grade point average.

From the student’s point of view, it could also mean that they were prepared in the same way in online education as in in-class education for exams. However, the same strategy did not necessarily result in better grades in the upper segment (obtaining 4 or 5).

The teacher determined the minimum level of requirements, either for mid-term achievements or final assignments and communicated it clearly to the students. How to obtain a passing grade was clear to the students. However, how to obtain good and excellent grades would have required more serious preparation and self-directed learning in online settings.

It is important to see that subjects, where it was more difficult to obtain better grades, were mainly theoretical ones (e.g.: lectures). They were tested mostly by oral exams where it was not possible to use additional materials, they had to answer directly to the questions. In this respect, teachers’ explanations, for example, could lead to very serious shortcomings in the case of knowledge transfer as well as the transfer of the same levels of the previous examination systems. This could result in lower achievement in areas where teachers’ explanations would have been necessary. Students had a harder time bridging the online-offline gap.

Education management issues

In the higher education system analysed, students receive a scholarship according to their grade point average achievement. It is calculated based on the average of the final grades received at the end of the semester and the credits earned. It is worth considering that for online systems, credit-weighted averages will not necessarily show students’ real knowledge. This also results in serious problems when it comes to rewarding students’ performance with a scholarship, where multiple types of educational models may conflict.

This is because whether students can successfully complete a subject differs greatly in an online education system but subjects seem to have become fundamentally easier.

Thus, different education systems (in-class education and online education) can lead to different grading results, so it is not advisable to apply the same scholarship system because it can be fundamentally unfair (some fields can become easier or more difficult).

The results of this study imply that COVID-19 had various effects on the education sector. The results are discussed in connection with the introduction of online education during the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of dropouts. The teachers who were involved in this study were the same during online education and on-campus education. This is the reason why we can conclude that the results also seem to suggest that teachers tried to compensate for the negative effects of the pandemic by bringing in pedagogical strategies aimed at ensuring that students could more easily obtain passing grades in examinations. Similarly, according to Mendoza et al. ( 2021 ), the failures of online education had a direct impact on student’s performance and learning.

This study found that students achieved better results during in-class education, which offers interesting implications for teaching practice. The results suggest that organizational support and flexible structures are needed in order to adapt teaching to the new circumstances set by the crisis. Higher education institutions should pay careful attention to developing students’ skills as well as to seeking ways to quickly respond to environmental changes while sustaining the delivery of high-quality education.

In the literature review, contradictory results were found for students’ performance during online education; therefore, this result contends previous literature and should be further explored.

A substantial difference in grade point averages can be found between the two examined groups. The first hypothesis was confirmed: students who participated in on-campus education obtained better grade point averages than students of online education. The teachers declared the minimum level of requirement and communicated it to the students quite clearly. It is a thought-provoking result that for online education, credit-weighted grade point averages would not necessarily show real knowledge well.

The second hypothesis was also proved because some subjects became easier to pass in online education, at least obtaining a passing grade. Online education facilitated students’ strategies e.g., creating an agenda of studying was essential to maintain effective and continuous learning.

The third hypothesis was not confirmed because significant differences in dropout rates were not found between the students who participated in online education and on-campus education. The dropout rate remained nearly unchanged between students who participated in online education (19 students dropped out), and students who participated in on-campus education (50 students dropped out). Introducing online education was effective or at least not harmful in terms of dropout because the dropout rate remained unchanged, compared to the previous year.

The results suggest that regarding dropout rates, there was no significant difference between online and on-campus education. The result suggests several assumptions: e.g.: the teachers had been more indulgent, as they also found it more difficult to communicate effectively during the COVID-19 period and were less able to apply with traditional methods. The process of knowledge transfer moved to online platforms and a different kind of interaction could be applied to rely on the online education system.

Limitations of the study and future research

This study proposed research clarifying the impact of the transition to online courses on dropout. The results show that this period did not contribute significantly to the increase in dropouts. Subjects became more achievable during online education. Students who participated in online education reported lower average grade points than students who participated in on-campus education. Consequently, on-campus students could win better scholarships than students who participated in online education because of better grades.

Several other factors e.g., whether students have met in person in the past, could affect the dropout and grade point averages which were not taken into consideration in this research. In the future, it is recommended to measure students’ current level of knowledge, how much they can adapt to online education, and how they would react in the next similar crisis.

Even though this study presents interesting results, the authors believe that the conclusions derived from them should be interpreted carefully. It allows both researchers and teachers to develop further methods to examine students’ strategies in online education during the COVID-19 period. Future research should be extended with additional variables. Data analysis techniques should also be taken into consideration in order to evaluate the academic profile of students who dropped out in previous years. Limitations include that analysis does not entirely reflect the true engagement of students in the education system because only the first two semesters were examined.

The results of this study open new lines of similar research. It is hoped that other researchers will consider examining the potential impact of COVID-19 on educational planning and scholarship systems. The results of this study can further be validated by considering a wider study that would collect both quantitative and qualitative data to give a deeper understanding of the effects of this epidemic.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

For a detailed explanation of the method see Takács et al. ( 2021 ).

Abilleira MP, Rodicio-García M-L, Ríos-de Deus MP, Mosquera-González MJ (2021) Technostress in Spanish University teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Front Psychol 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.617650

Adedoyin OB, Soykan E (2020) Covid-19 pandemic and online learning: the challenges and opportunities. Interact Learn Environ 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2020.1813180

Akar I, Karabulut Coskun B (2020) Exploring the relationship between creativity and cyberloafing of prospective teachers. Think Skills Creativity 38:100724. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100724

Article   Google Scholar  

Andrew A, Cattan S, Costa-Dias M, Farquharson C, Kraftman L, Krutikova S, Phimister A, Sevilla A (2020) Learning during the lockdown: real-time data on children’s experiences during home learning. Institute for Fiscal Studies, London

Google Scholar  

Bean JP, Metzner BS (1985) A conceptual model of nontraditional undergraduate student attrition. Rev Educ Res 55(4):485–540. https://doi.org/10.2307/1170245 . JSTOR

Bayrakdar S, Guveli A (2020) Inequalities in home learning and schools’ provision of distance teaching during school closure of COVID-19 lockdown in the UK. ISER Working Paper Series, No. 2020-09. University of Essex, Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), Colchester

Belloc F, Maruotti A, Petrella L (2011) How individual characteristics affect university students drop-out: a semiparametric mixed-effects model for an Italian case study. J Appl Stat 38(10):2225–2239. https://doi.org/10.1080/02664763.2010.545373

Article   MathSciNet   MATH   Google Scholar  

Bol T (2020) Inequality in homeschooling during the Corona crisis in the Netherlands. First results from the LISS Panel. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hf32q . Accessed 10 Nov 2021

Borzovs J, Niedrite L, Solodovnikova D (2015) Factors affecting attrition among first year computer science students: the case of University of Latvia. In: Edmund Teirumnieks (ed) Proceedings of the international scientific and practical conference on environment, technology and resources, Rezekne Academy of Technologies, vol 3. p. 36

Braxton JM, Hirschy AS (2004) Reconceptualizing antecedents of social integration in student departure. In: Yorke M, Longden B (Eds.) Retention and student success in higher education. MPG Books, Bodmin, Great Britain, pp. 89–102

Broadbent J, Poon WL (2015) Self-regulated learning strategies & academic achievement in online higher education learning environments: a systematic review. Internet High Educ 27:1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2015.04.007

Brown N, Te Riele K, Shelley B, Woodroffe J (2020) Learning at home during COVID-19: effects on vulnerable young Australians. Independent rapid response report. University of Tasmania, Peter Underwood Centre for Educational Attainment, Hobart

Burgess S, Sievertsen HH (2020) Schools, skills, and learning: the impact of COVID-19 on education, VoxEu.org. https://voxeu.org/article/impact-covid-19-education . Accessed 11 Nov 2021

Cabrera L, Bethencourt JT, Pérez PA, Afonso MG (2006) El problema del abandono de los estudios universitarios. Rev Electrón Invest Eval Educ 12:171–203

Carr S (2000) As distance education comes of age, the challenge is keeping the students. Chron High Educ 46:23

Clark AE, Nong H, Zhu H, Zhu R (2021) Compensating for academic loss: online learning and student performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. China Econ Rev 68:101629. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chieco.2021.101629

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Daniels LM, Goegan LD, Parker PC (2021) The impact of COVID-19 triggered changes to instruction and assessment on university students’ self-reported motivation, engagement and perceptions. Soc Psychol Educ 24(1):299–318. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09612-3

Daumiller M, Rinas R, Hein J, Janke S, Dickhäuser O, Dresel M (2021) Shifting from face-to-face to online teaching during COVID-19: The role of university faculty achievement goals for attitudes towards this sudden change, and their relevance for burnout/engagement and student evaluations of teaching quality. Comput Hum Behav 118:106677. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106677

Davis NL, Gough M, Taylor LL (2019) Online teaching: advantages, obstacles and tools for getting it right. J Teach Travel Tour 19(3):256–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/15313220.2019.1612313

Di Pietro G (2006) Regional labour market conditions and university dropout rates: evidence from Italy. Reg Stud 40(6):617–630. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343400600868770

Dumford AD, Miller AL (2018) Online learning in higher education: exploring advantages and disadvantages for engagement. J Comput High Educ 30(3):452–465. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-018-9179-z

Engzell P, Frey A, Verhagen MD (2021) Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 118(17). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022376118

Europa.eu. (2015) European Commission—Press release—Commission says yes to first successful European Citizens’ Initiative. Resource document. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_14_277 . Accessed 5 Nov 2020

Forero CG, Maydeu-Olivares A (2009) Estimation of IRT graded response models: limited versus full information methods. Psychol Methods 14(3):275–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015825

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Gamage KAA, Silva EKde, Gunawardhana N (2020) Online delivery and assessment during COVID-19: safeguarding academic integrity. Educ Sci 10(11):301. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10110301

Gonzalez T, de la Rubia MA, Hincz KP, Comas-Lopez M, Subirats L, Fort S, Sacha GM (2020) Influence of COVID-19 confinement on students’ performance in higher education. PLoS ONE 15(10):e0239490. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239490

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Iglesias-Pradas S, Hernández-García Á, Chaparro-Peláez J, Prieto JL (2021) Emergency remote teaching and students’ academic performance in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study. Comput Hum Behav 119:106713. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106713

Jovanovic J, Mirriahi N, Gašević D, Dawson S, Pardo A (2019) Predictive power of regularity of pre-class activities in a flipped classroom. Comput Educ 134:156–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.02.011

Levy Y (2007) Comparing dropouts and persistence in e-learning courses. Comput Educ 48(2):185–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2004.12.004

Lounsbury JW, Huffstetler BC, Leong FT, Gibson LW (2005) Sense of identity and collegiate academic achievement. J College Student Dev 46(5):501–514. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2005.0051

Mendoza D, Cejas M, Rivas G, Varguillas C (2021) Anxiety as a prevailing factor of performance of university mathematics students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educ Sci J 23(2):94–113. https://doi.org/10.17853/1994-5639-2021-2-94-113

Molins-Ruano P, Sevilla C, Santini S, Haya PA, Rodríguez P, Sacha GM (2014) Designing videogames to improve students’ motivation. Comput Hum Behav 31:571–579. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.06.013

Morris LV, Wu S-S, Finnegan CL (2005) Predicting retention in online general education courses. Am J Distance Educ 19(1):23–36. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15389286ajde1901_3

Nagrecha S, Dillon JZ, Chawla NV (2017) MOOC dropout prediction: lessons learned from making pipelines interpretable. In: Rick Barrett, Rick Cummings (eds) Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion. International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee, Perth, WA, Republic and Canton of Genova, pp. 351–359

Nistor N, Neubauer K (2010) From participation to dropout: quantitative participation patterns in online university courses. Comput Educ 55(2):663–672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.02.026

Ohland MW, Sheppard SD, Lichtenstein G, Eris O, Chachra D, Layton RA (2008) Persistence, engagement, and migration in engineering programs. J Eng Educ 97(3):259–278. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2008.tb00978.x

OECD (2020) The impact of COVID-19 on student equity and inclusion: supporting vulnerable students during school closures and school re-openings. https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-student-equity-and-inclusion-supporting-vulnerable-students-during-school-closures-and-school-re-openings-d593b5c8/

Pacansky-Brock M, Vincent-Layton K (2020) Humanizing online teaching to equitize higher ed. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33218.94402

Pascarella ET, Terenzini PT (1983) Predicting voluntary freshman year persistence/withdrawal behavior in a residential university: a path analytic validation of Tinto’s model. J Educ Psychol 75(2):215–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.75.2.215

Palvia S, Aeron P, Gupta P, Mahapatra D, Parida R, Rosner R, Sindhi S (2018) Online education: worldwide status, challenges, trends, and implications. J Global Inf Technol Manag 21(4):233–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/1097198X.2018.1542262

Patterson B, McFadden C (2009) Attrition in online and campus degree programs. Online J Distance Learn Adm 12(2). https://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer122/patterson122.html

Paudel P (2020) Online education: benefits, challenges and strategies during and after COVID-19 in higher education. Int J Stud Educ 3(2):70–85. https://doi.org/10.46328/ijonse.32

Peimani N, Kamalipour H (2021) Online education and the COVID-19 outbreak: a case study of online teaching during lockdown. Educ Sci 11(2):72. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11020072

Rahiem MDH (2021) Remaining motivated despite the limitations: University students’ learning propensity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Children Youth Serv Rev 120:105802. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105802

Rapanta C, Botturi L, Goodyear P, Guàrdia L, Koole M (2020) Online university teaching during and after the Covid-19 Crisis: refocusing teacher presence and learning activity. Postdigit Sci Educ 2(3):923–945. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00155-y

Rasch G (1960) Probabilistic models for some intelligence and achievement tests. Danish Institute for Educational Research, Copenhagen, Denmark

Reason RD (2009) Review of the book evaluating faculty performance: a practical guide to assessing teaching, research, and service. Rev High Educ 32(2):288–289. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.0.0043

Richardson M, Abraham C, Bond R (2012) Psychological correlates of university students’ academic performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychol Bull 138(2):353–387. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026838

Rovai AP (2003) In search of higher persistence rates in distance education online programs. Internet High Educ 6(1):1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(02)00158-6

Said EGR (2021) How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect higher education learning experience? An empirical investigation of learners’ academic performance at a University in a Developing Country. Adv Hum–Comput Interact 2021:1–10. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6649524

Serdyukov P, Hill R (2013) Flying with clipped wings: are students independent in online college classes? J Res Innov Teach 6(1):54–67

Stommel J (2013) Decoding digital pedagogy, part. 2: (Un)Mapping the terrain. Hybrid Pedagog. https://hybridpedagogy.org/decoding-digital-pedagogy-pt-2-unmapping-the-terrain/

Takács R, Kárász JT, Takács S, Horváth Z, Oláh A (2021) Applying the Rasch model to analyze the effectiveness of education reform in order to decrease computer science students’ dropout. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8(1):1–8. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00725-w . Springer Nature

Terenzini PT, Reason RD (2005) Parsing the first year of college: rethinking the effects of college on students. The Association for the Study of Higher Education, Philadelphia, p. 630

Tinto V (1975) Dropout from higher education: a theoretical synthesis of recent research. Rev Educ Res 45:89–125

Tinto V (2012) Completing college: rethinking institutional action. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Book   Google Scholar  

Wang C (2010) Students’ characteristics, self-regulated learning, technology self-efficacy, and course outcomes in web-based courses. https://etd.auburn.edu//handle/10415/2256

Wang C-H, Shannon DM, Ross ME (2013) Students’ characteristics, self-regulated learning, technology self-efficacy, and course outcomes in online learning. Distance Educ 34(3):302–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2013.835779

Watermeyer R, Crick T, Knight C, Goodall J (2021) COVID-19 and digital disruption in UK universities: Afflictions and affordances of emergency online migration. High Educ 81(3):623–641. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00561-y

Whittle M, Rampton J (2020) Towards a 2030 vision on the future of universities in Europe. Publications Office of the European Union. http://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/a3cde934-12a0-11eb-9a54-01aa75ed71a1/

Willging PA, Johnson SD (2019) Factors that influence students’ decision to dropout of online courses. J Asynchronous Learn Netw 13(3):13

Yu H, Liu P, Huang X, Cao Y (2021) Teacher online informal learning as a means to innovative teaching during home quarantine in the COVID-19 pandemic. Front Psychol 12:2480. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.596582

Download references

Acknowledgements

The described article was carried out as part of the EFOP 3.4.3-16-2016-00011 project in the framework of the Széchenyi 2020 programme. The realization of these projects is supported by the European Union, co-financed by the European Social Fund.

Open access funding provided by Eötvös Loránd University.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Informatics, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Rita Takács & Zoltán Horváth

Department of General Psychology and Methodology, Institute of Psychology, Budapest, Hungary

Szabolcs Takács

Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Budapest, Hungary

Doctoral School of Education, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Judit T. Kárász

Institute of Education, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Doctoral School of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Attila Oláh

Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

TR contributed to the design of the study and data interpretation. As principal author, she coordinated the writing process of the manuscript. KJ and TS are researchers that study the dropout phenomenon across higher education, and therefore have participated on each phase of this research. OA and HZ have largely contributed to the analysis and interpretation of data, and consequently to the understanding of the phenomenon. Every author have played a remarkable role in the writing of this article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rita Takács .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval.

The Ethics Committee of the Institute of Psychology of Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary approved of the ethical permission, which was registered under the following number: 75/2020 / P / ET. The study protocol was designed and executed in compliance with the code of ethics set out by the university in which the research was conducted, as required by the Helsinki Declaration.

Consent to participate and consent for publication

Written informed consent was obtained from the participants. The data were anonymized before analysis and publication.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Takács, R., Takács, S., Kárász, J.T. et al. The impact of the first wave of COVID-19 on students’ attainment, analysed by IRT modelling method. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 127 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01613-1

Download citation

Received : 13 February 2021

Accepted : 08 March 2023

Published : 25 March 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01613-1

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

New Data Show How the Pandemic Affected Learning Across Whole Communities

• Posted May 11, 2023
• By News editor
• Disruption and Crises
• Education Policy
• Evidence-Based Intervention

Today, The Education Recovery Scorecard , a collaboration with researchers at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR) and Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project , released 12 new state reports and a research brief to provide the most comprehensive picture yet of how the pandemic affected student learning. Building on their previous work, their findings reveal how school closures and local conditions exacerbated inequality between communities — and the urgent need for school leaders to expand recovery efforts now.

The research team reviewed data from 8,000 communities in 40 states and Washington, D.C., including 2022 NAEP scores and Spring 2022 assessments, COVID death rates, voting rates, and trust in government, patterns of social activity, and survey data from Facebook/Meta on family activities and mental health during the pandemic.

>> Read an op-ed by researchers Tom Kane and Sean Reardon in the New York Times .

They found that where children lived during the pandemic mattered more to their academic progress than their family background, income, or internet speed.  Moreover, after studying instances where test scores rose or fell in the decade before the pandemic, the researchers found that the impacts lingered for years.  

“Children have resumed learning, but largely at the same pace as before the pandemic. There’s no hurrying up teaching fractions or the Pythagorean theorem,” said CEPR faculty director Thomas Kane . “The hardest hit communities — like Richmond, Virginia, St. Louis, Missouri, and New Haven, Connecticut, where students fell behind by more than 1.5 years in math — have to teach 150 percent of a typical year’s worth of material for three years in a row — just to catch up. That is simply not going to happen without a major increase in instructional time.  Any district that lost more than a year of learning should be required to revisit their recovery plans and add instructional time — summer school, extended school year, tutoring, etc. — so that students are made whole. ”

“It’s not readily visible to parents when their children have fallen behind earlier cohorts, but the data from 7,800 school districts show clearly that this is the case,” said Sean Reardon , professor of poverty and inequality, Stanford Graduate School of Education. “The educational impacts of the pandemic were not only historically large, but were disproportionately visited on communities with many low-income and minority students. Our research shows that schools were far from the only cause of decreased learning — the pandemic affected children through many ways — but they are the institution best suited to remedy the unequal impacts of the pandemic.”

The new research includes:

• A research brief that offers insights into why students in some communities fared worse than others. 
• An update to the Education Recovery Scorecard, including data from 12 additional states whose 2022 scores were not available in October. The project now includes a district-level view of the pandemic’s effects in 40 states (plus D.C.). 
• A new interactive map that highlights examples of inequity between neighboring school districts. 

Among the key findings:

• Within the typical school district, the declines in test scores were similar for all groups of students, rich and poor, white, Black, Hispanic. And the extent to which schools were closed appears to have had the same effect on all students in a community, regardless of income or race. 
• Test scores declined more in places where the COVID death rate was higher, in communities where adults reported feeling more depression and anxiety during the pandemic, and where daily routines of families were most significantly restricted. This is true even in places where schools closed only very briefly at the start of the pandemic. 
• Test score declines were smaller in communities with high voting rates and high Census response rates — indicators of what sociologists call “institutional trust.” Moreover, remote learning was less harmful in such places. Living in a community where more people trusted the government appears to have been an asset to children during the pandemic.
• The average U.S. public school student in grades 3-8 lost the equivalent of a half year of learning in math and a quarter of a year in reading.

The researchers also looked at data from the decade prior to the pandemic to see how students bounced back after significant learning loss due to disruption in their schooling. The evidence shows that schools do not naturally bounce back: Affected students recovered 20–30% of the lost ground in the first year, but then made no further recovery in the subsequent three to four years.   

“Schools were not the sole cause of achievement losses,” Kane said. “Nor will they be the sole solution. As enticing as it might be to get back to normal, doing so will just leave the devastating increase in inequality caused by the pandemic in place. We must create learning opportunities for students outside of the normal school calendar, by adding academic content to summer camps and after-school programs and adding an optional 13th year of schooling.”

The Education Recovery Scorecard is supported by funds from Citadel founder and CEO Kenneth C. Griffin, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Walton Family Foundation.

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Related Articles

New Research Provides the First Clear Picture of Learning Loss at Local Level

Despite Progress, Achievement Gaps Persist During Recovery from Pandemic

New research finds achievement gaps in math and reading, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, remain and have grown in some states, calls for action before federal relief funds run out

Road to COVID Recovery

Wake Forest News

A timely assignment: wake students complete covid-19 class project.

As the total number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. exceeds 15 million and cases surge to record levels in places around the world, understanding the pandemic and its ongoing impact remains critically important.

Students in biology professor Sarah McDonald Esstman’s virology class spent several weeks exploring COVID-related topics for a course project. Groups named the virologists, the physicians, the epidemiologists, the immunologists, the communicators and the policy makers – consisting of five or six students each – were responsible for creating 20-minute PowerPoint presentations.

Students presented their findings virtually just before the University let out for Thanksgiving.

Maddie Porter, a senior biology major, took on the policy maker perspective and studied the balance between health, economics, social and environmental impacts of COVID 19.

“We focused mainly on the U.S. but also pulled in different things we’ve been seeing globally,” Porter said. “For example, on the environmental impact we noted that there’s a large decrease in smog in some parts of the world like India, New Delhi and Los Angeles, because fewer people are driving to work. We talked about the state quarantine orders, the mask mandates and the declarations of emergency.”

Porter’s group examined non-medical impacts of the pandemic, including the Paycheck Protection Program and unemployment rates. She focused on mental health impacts and found a study released by the CDC that said in June the suicide ideation rates were disproportionate among young people aged 18-24, essential care workers and Hispanic and Black patients.

Sarah McDonald Esstman

Esstman, an expert on rotavirus, wanted her students to work on the project as a means of incorporating what they’re experiencing, because of the pandemic, with the virology concepts they discussed during the semester. She spent several years earlier in her career studying coronaviruses and the mechanisms of coronavirus replication.

“It was fun for me to sit and listen to what they put together,” Esstman said after the first day of presentations. “It was interesting to hear about the clinical management of the virus in the hospital from students in the physicians group. I felt like I was the student.”

Porter said the class has exceeded her expectations.

“Dr. Esstman is very well versed on many viruses, and her class has opened my eyes on how complex and evolutionary diverse viruses are and how they can impact our global food security, major food crops that we rely on and other things,” she said. “All of the biology behind it was eye-opening for me. This has definitely been my favorite class this semester.”

Porter acknowledges that being a college student in the midst of a global pandemic has been challenging and said working on the COVID-19 project made the virus even more real for her.

“It made me look at the pandemic in a different light because I got to understand the biology behind it and understand what was happening in people’s bodies,” she said. “Things that people were saying now have more meaning to me.”

The policy makers group also examined what the post-pandemic society will look like and concluded, among other things, that remote working will continue, travel will decrease – at least for a few years – and there will likely be major lasting impacts on poor and impoverished people.

“We were able to draw connections to one another’s subtopics which speaks to the interconnectedness of the multitude of effects COVID-19 has had on the earth and society,” said Porter, who is minoring in chemistry and environmental science. “Our group presented last and we ended with our predictions of how this virus is going to forever impact our world and society in the future.”

Members of the media that want to interview Esstman or Porter should contact [email protected] .

Categories: Faculty , Student , Top Stories

Media Contact Cheryl Walker [email protected]   |  336.758.6073   |   @CherylVWalker

RELATED STORIES

• WFU launches color-coded system for operations, COVID-19 dashboard
• Climate change: Wake Forest University experts
• WFU Expert: Containing the spread of coronavirus

336.758.5237 [email protected] Meet the News Team

School of Divinity to launch initiative on Religion, Pluralism, and American Public Life

WFU in the news: May 13-19, 2024

Class of 2024: Courageous and determined to make a difference

Wake Forest in the News

Wake Forest regularly appears in media outlets around the world.

See selected news clips »

ABOUT WAKE FOREST NEWS

We are Wake Forest University’s primary news source and first point of contact for reporters. We help media by facilitating interviews, connecting with faculty experts or providing interesting story ideas. A staff member is on call 24/7 for media requests at 336.758.5237 . Our team also offers a variety of communications resources for Wake Forest students, faculty and staff.

336.758.5237 [email protected] Meet the News Team 1834 Wake Forest Road Winston-Salem, NC 27106

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

U.S. students ended the pandemic school year 4 to 5 months behind, a new report finds.

“The pandemic hit everyone, but it hit kids who were already vulnerable hardest,” said the lead author of the report prepared by McKinsey & Co., a consulting firm, using assessment data.

By Sarah Mervosh

Elementary school students in the United States ended the 2020-21 school year four to five months behind where they normally would have been in academic achievement, according to a report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. that was released Tuesday. It found that many of the most vulnerable students experienced the steepest setbacks.

The new report — based on assessments taken by more than 1.6 million elementary school students who had returned to the classroom in the spring — is the latest indication that students who were already experiencing educational inequities were also hit hardest by the crisis.

For example, students attending schools whose student bodies were mainly Black or Hispanic ended the school year six months behind where they normally would have been in math, compared with four months behind for students in mainly white schools.

Similarly, students who attended a school where the average household income was less than $25,000 a year were seven months behind in math by the end of the term, compared with four months behind for schools where the average income was greater than $75,000.

“The pandemic hit everyone, but it hit kids who were already vulnerable hardest,” said Emma Dorn, an associate partner at McKinsey and the lead author of the report.

“That really widens some of the pre-existing opportunity and achievement gaps we were already facing in our country,” Ms. Dorn said.

Researchers used data provided by Curriculum Associates , an assessment company, and compared student performance this spring to the performance of demographically similar groups in the springs of 2017, 2018 and 2019.

The disparities probably reflect a number of factors, including less access to technology , higher rates of Covid-19 and higher unemployment in low-income communities and communities of color, and the fact that schools in major cities tended to stay longer with remote instruction. The report found that students in more urban schools experienced greater setbacks than those at rural schools, which generally returned to in-person learning sooner.

“You can’t look at the results in a vacuum,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, who called on schools to use federal funding to hire additional employees and devise individualized recovery plans for every student.

“If you have one teacher with 33 kids, that is not going to be a recipe for addressing this problem,” he said.

Sarah Mervosh is a national reporter based in New York, covering a wide variety of news and feature stories across the country. More about Sarah Mervosh

COVID-19 pandemic left its mark on academics. Are students caught up from learning loss?

T he academic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be felt on the Treasure Coast, years after students returned to the classrooms without masks or quarantines.

During the months of distance learning and continual interruptions from quarantines, educators were concerned students would fall behind academically and take years to get back on track. While some school districts say students now have caught up in math and reading, others say students continue to struggle, just as federal money targeted for tutoring and intensive summer recovering programs is set to end this fall.

"Overall, we are still seeing the lingering effects on students, especially in key grades," said St. Lucie County schools Deputy Superintendent Helen Wild.

Still, not all students are behind. In 2023, Indian River County students scored higher on state standardized tests than they did pre-pandemic in 2019, Superintendent David Moore said.

"The district has moved on from the pandemic. It's one of four in the state that is actually in a better place today than it was before the pandemic," Moore said.

"We've done a lot of work to offset the effects of the pandemic," Moore said.

Treasure Coast reading, math scores improve in areas, but educators say more work is needed

The pandemic's impact on learning continues to be a national concern, long after the pandemic has ended. A 2023 Northwest Evaluation Association study showed that while students have made learning gains, student achievement still is behind pre-pandemic performance.

Students would need an additional 4½ months of math instruction and 4.1 additional months in reading to fully recover, according to the not-for-profit organization's national study. The organization studied 6.7 million students in grades 3-8, comparing pre-pandemic national test scores between the 2016 and 2019 school years to scores during the pandemic school years of 2020-2023.

Florida scores weren't included in the study because of incompatible software.

"We're starting to see some pretty sizable gaps," said Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth marketing and analytics for the Northwest Evaluation Association. Some gaps began closing in the spring of 2023, but "for the most part, students have not caught up."

Of concern nationally were the 2023-2024 eighth graders, the study said. These students would need 9.1 additional months of learning in math and 7.4 months of additional learning in reading to get back to grade level, the study said.

"In other words, when these students enter their freshman year of high school, they will need to accomplish almost five years of learning during their four years of high school," the study said. An updated study, using 2024 test scores, is expected this summer.

St. Lucie's fourth graders — who were in first grade at the start of the pandemic — struggled in reading, Wild said. They were learning letter sounds and phonics when schools went remote, she said, and learning these skills online is difficult. When students returned, they and their teachers were wearing masks, impeding their progress further, she said.

"These are critical years when you are learning how to read," according to Wild.

Seventh graders — who were in third grade when schools shut down — also are behind in reading for the same reasons, Wild said. Then-third graders were making the transition from learning to read to learning to comprehend, something that is challenging with remote learning, she said.

Indian River County students were impacted in math, Moore said.

"You look at math as rungs on a ladder," Moore said. When students missed some of the sequential components, it impacted their skills. "It really made it challenging."

The district had to make sure students had the tools they needed to get back on track, he said.

St. Lucie schools provided students with intensive reading and phonics instruction as well as intervention after school and during the summer, Wild said. Students have the challenge of trying to keep pace with their current grade material while trying to get caught up, she said.

This year, as in previous years since the pandemic, St. Lucie schools offers free intensive summer learning programs that help students catch up while providing fun hands-on activities in science, math and technology STEM activities. Transportation and meals are provided at no cost, Wild said.

St. Lucie will put greater focus on math achievement in order to improve district's ranking

High school graduation rates here exceed Florida state average despite COVID-19 pandemic

While the summer programs have been successful, this year is the last opportunity students have to catch up on their learning loss. The federal COVID-relief money is ending, which means an end to the fully intensive summer program, she said.

"It's always tough when a major funding source sunsets. We knew this was temporary," Wild explained. The district plans to continue offering a summer program, as it did before the pandemic, but on a smaller scale, she said.

Overall, students are showing more promising recovery, said Kuhfeld.

Districts such as Indian River County dislike talking about the pandemic and focusing on learning loss. The district is moving forward, Moore said.

"We have moved beyond the pandemic," Moore stressed. "We do not use it as an excuse."

The Indian River County district had an aggressive plan to return students early, with restrictions such as mandatory mask policies and quarantines, Moore said. Teachers received training on interventions to help students improve, he said. Instruction was drastically different, as education plans were very individualized to meet the needs of the students, he said.

Intensive programs were implemented to raise the bar academically, Moore said.

"We had to make sure they were getting what they needed," he said.

This year, Indian River was the only Treasure Coast school district to receive an "A" grade from the state. Unlike prior years, learning gains were not considered in the grading formula because the state changed standardized tests and required a baseline year.

Indian River school district gets an A in state rankings; St. Lucie, Martin score B grades

In Martin County, school officials implemented proper accommodations, access and interventions to help bridge any performance gaps, Troy LaBarbara, Martin County schools' assistant superintendent of academics, said in a statement.

"The impact of the pandemic on academic performance varies widely among students. Overall, most of our students have closed the achievement gap caused by the pandemic," LaBarbara said in the statement. "Some students are still struggling with factors like access to resources, support systems and individual circumstances."

Third graders, who were in kindergarten when the pandemic struck, follow a statewide decline in math and reading, LaBarbara said.

"To continue to address this, we have infused a strong multitiered process in our core academic areas.  Summer school interventions will include personalized learning plans tailored to address individual areas of weakness, small-group instruction focusing on essential skills, targeted tutoring sessions and enrichment programs to engage students in accelerated areas," the statement said.

Beyond academics, local school districts had to reteach students the importance of attending school and, in some cases, how to behave.

"(Students) got used to doing their work online," Wild said. "They had to relearn these good-attendance habits."

Students got into the habit of staying home instead of going to school, and turning in work via the computer, she said. While students still should stay home if they are sick, they're again encouraged to come to school because that's where they learn better, she said.

When students returned full-time, some in Indian River County struggled with re-acclimating socially in an environment with behavior rules and dress codes and where they had to engage with others, Moore pointed out. The district implemented strict behavior expectations and made students adhere to a code of conduct.

Part of the district's successful recovery, he said, was getting 60% of its students to return to in-person instruction in that first year back.

"When you have more students return to brick-and-mortar, you're going to see a better result," he said. It's more than just academics, said Moore. Students need exposure to socialization skills.

Colleen Wixon is the education reporter for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers. Contact her at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: COVID-19 pandemic left its mark on academics. Are students caught up from learning loss?

University of Chicago settles class-action COVID tuition lawsuit for $4.95 million

The suit, filed in 2020, claimed students were entitled to partial tuition refunds after the school switched to online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. those who qualify will receive at least $25..

University of Chicago students walk to and from the main quadrangle.

Sun-Times file

The University of Chicago will pay $4.95 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by students and former students seeking refunds on tuition after classes went remote amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit was filed in May 2020 by former student Arica Kincheloe in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, claiming that students were entitled to partial refunds of tuition because of remote instruction instead of in-person classes beginning in the spring quarter of 2020.

The suit also claimed a breach of contract and unjust enrichment by the university.

The settlement applies to all students and former students who were enrolled in any of the university’s undergraduate and graduate programs at any time between January 1, 2020, through the end of spring quarter 2020, according to court documents. Those who qualify will receive at least $25 from the settlement.

• Illinois families need monthly cash payments to weather COVID-19 crisis
• 2 Illinois State Police officers accused of PPP loan fraud

“The university is proud of the rigorous educational experience and support it provided to students when it moved to remote learning for spring quarter 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the university said in a statement. “The university believes plaintiffs’ claims are without merit and looks forward to putting this matter behind us.”

The parties entered into a settlement agreement on Nov. 21, 2023, court documents state. The court granted preliminary approval of the settlement on Dec. 7, 2023. Final approval was granted after a hearing on May 23.

The settlement agreement “should not in any event be offered or received as evidence of, a presumption, concession or an admission of liability” on the part of the university, court documents state.

Similar lawsuits have been filed against other schools both in the city and in the rest of the country in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

A suit filed against DePaul University in 2020 was dismissed on Feb. 2, 2021, according to court records. The judge in that case ruled that the plaintiffs failed to provide evidence that the university promised its students that classes would be held on campus or in-person in its academic materials.

Earlier this year, George Washington University reached a $5.4 million settlement with former students alleging the school broke its contract with them over online-classes during the pandemic.

Cornell University reached a $3 million settlement with students in 2023 over a similar lawsuit.

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Handwashing
• Hand Hygiene as a Family Activity
• Hand Hygiene FAQs
• Handwashing Facts
• Publications, Data, & Statistics
• Health Promotion Materials
• Global Handwashing Day
• Clean Hands and Spaces: Handwashing and Cleaning in Educational Facilities
• Life is Better with Clean Hands Campaign
• Clinical Safety
• Healthcare Training
• Clean Hands Count Materials

About Handwashing

• Many diseases and conditions are spread by not washing hands with soap and clean, running water.
• Handwashing with soap is one of the best ways to stay healthy.
• If soap and water are not readily available, use a hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol to clean your hands.

Why it's important

Washing hands can keep you healthy and prevent the spread of respiratory and diarrheal infections. Germs can spread from person to person or from surfaces to people when you:

• Touch your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands
• Prepare or eat food and drinks with unwashed hands
• Touch surfaces or objects that have germs on them
• Blow your nose, cough, or sneeze into hands and then touch other people's hands or common objects

Key times to wash hands

You can help yourself and your loved ones stay healthy by washing your hands often, especially during these key times when you are likely to get and spread germs:

• Before, during, and after preparing food
• Before and after eating food
• Before and after caring for someone at home who is sick with vomiting or diarrhea
• Before and after treating a cut or wound
• After using the toilet
• After changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has used the toilet
• After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing
• After touching an animal, animal feed, or animal waste
• After handling pet food or pet treats
• After touching garbage

How it works

Washing your hands is easy, and it’s one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of germs. Follow these five steps every time.

• Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap.
• Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
• Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds . Need a timer? Hum the “Happy Birthday” song from beginning to end twice.
• Rinse your hands well under clean, running water.
• Dry your hands using a clean towel or an air dryer.

Use hand sanitizer when you can't use soap and water

Washing hands with soap and water is the best way to get rid of germs in most situations. If soap and water are not readily available, you can use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. You can tell if the sanitizer contains at least 60% alcohol by looking at the product label.

What you can do

CDC has health promotion materials to encourage kids and adults to make handwashing part of their everyday lives.

• Share social media graphics and messages.
• Print stickers and place clings on bathroom mirrors.
• Promote handwashing on or around Global Handwashing Day , celebrated each year on October 15.
• Distribute fact sheets to share information about hand hygiene for specific audiences.
• Frequent Questions About Hand Hygiene
• Hand Hygiene in Healthcare Settings
• The Life is Better with Clean Hands Campaign

Clean Hands

Having clean hands is one of the best ways to avoid getting sick and prevent the spread of germs to others.

For Everyone

Health care providers.

• MyServiceNSW
• Manage account
• Logout of MyServiceNSW

Testing and what to do if you have COVID-19

How to get a test if you think you might have COVID-19, and what to do if you test positive.

COVID-19 update – 23 May 2024

COVID-19 remains at moderate levels.

Read the latest  data from NSW Health .

Continue to protect other people. Please stay home if you have any cold or flu symptoms. Wear a mask if you need to leave home.

Learn how to  keep yourself and others COVID-safe . 

Getting a test for COVID-19 

Which covid test should i do.

Guidance on which test is best for you.

Information for people exposed to COVID-19

Understand your risk and what you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones. 

Symptoms and how it spreads

Learn about the symptoms of COVID-19, when they appear and how it spreads.

Advice for higher risk groups

Some people are at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19. Find information on how to protect yourself and others from becoming very unwell.

If you're at higher risk of severe illness, talk to your doctor about PCR tests.

Managing your COVID-19 illness

What to do if you test positive.

Advice on how you can safely manage mild symptoms at home.

Antiviral medicines

Find out if you're eligible for antiviral medicines and how to access them.

Information on long-term symptoms you may experience due to  COVID-19, and where to seek support.

COVID-19 guidance for families

Advice for parents and carers on COVID safety in schools and early childhood education services.

Advice for workers

What to do if you test positive and information about returning to work.

Guidance for businesses

What you need to do as an employer to manage the risk to colleagues and customers.

Easy Read and in-language resources

Easy read information on covid-19, in-language and translated covid-19 support, contact us and find translation help.

• Service NSW – information and advice for NSW residents and businesses. Phone  13 77 88
• Healthdirect – government-funded 24-hour health advice. Phone 1800 022 222
• Disability Gateway – information for people with disability. Phone 1800 643 787
• Mental health support, services and programs
• Service NSW Savings Finder – find rebates and vouchers relevant to you
• Business Concierge – tailored advice from Business Connect advisors. Phone 13 77 88
• Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National) – free service provided by the Australian Government. Phone 13 14 50

Motivational Speaker Techniques To Encourage Students’ English Speaking Skills

As teachers, we’re always looking for ways to improve our students’ English speaking skills and build their confidence in speaking English. An effective way to do this is to integrate motivational speaking techniques into our teaching methods and teach our students some engaging speaking strategies to use. 

It is important to point out to students that speakers in public talks such as TED talks or other significant speeches sound confident because of the key components that make up a successful talk. By adopting some of these, students can begin their journey to confidence and enjoyment in speaking English.

Great motivational speaker techniques 

Knowledge and clarity.

Great motivational speakers possess a deep knowledge of their subject, which helps their audience trust in the speaker. 

• For students, this emphasises the importance of understanding the content they are speaking about. 
• Encourage students to research and fully understand the topics they discuss. This will ensure they can present information clearly and confidently. 
• This can be practised through classroom presentations or group discussions where the focus is on explaining concepts in simplified terms.

Confidence and purpose

Confidence often comes from speakers feeling well-prepared and passionate about their subject. 

• Teach students to define the purpose of their speeches and talks – whether to inform, persuade or entertain. This clarity helps them deliver their message with conviction and engage their audience more effectively. 
• Role-playing different scenarios in class can help students build confidence and define their speaking goals.

Storytelling

Whether it’s a personal anecdote or something else, stories can captivate an audience and make the speech memorable. 

• Remind students that by telling a story, the audience is instantly more engaged and likely to follow along throughout the talk. 
• Help students develop their storytelling skills by integrating stories into language lessons. They could start with narrating simple personal experiences and gradually move to more complex narratives as their skills improve.

Audience awareness

Understanding the audience is crucial for effective communication. 

• Have students think of a talk or presentation they’ve recently seen. Then, have them think about who the audience for the talk was. 
• Tell students that speakers tailor their content and delivery to match the audience’s knowledge level and background. This involves using appropriate language, examples and explanations that the audience understands and can relate to. 
• In class, students can practise audience awareness by presenting the same information in different ways to different groups and tailoring the language they are using and the way they are presenting the information. 

A strong conclusion

A strong finish is essential in great motivational speaking. It reinforces the message and often includes a call to action that leaves the audience inspired. 

• Teach students to summarise their key points effectively and end with a compelling conclusion that prompts further thought or action. 
• This could be practised through debates or persuasive speeches in class, where students are encouraged to conclude with strong statements and a call to action.

Practical exercises to enhance English speaking skills

• Focus on activities that enhance clarity in communication. For example, paraphrasing or connecting complex ideas with simpler concepts.
• Have students do exercises that improve non-verbal communication, such as maintaining eye contact, using gestures and controlling hesitations.
• Help students reflect on the purpose of their talk or presentation, and choose language that aligns with their goals, for example, to convince, inform, teach or entertain.
• Have students discuss how best to explain complex ideas. Remind them that any information should be appropriate and understandable to the audience without requiring much prior knowledge.
• Explore the use of extreme adjectives and the connotations of words with your students, emphasising how language choice can inspire and motivate an audience.

Incorporating motivational speaking techniques into your lessons can have a significant impact on students’ engagement and confidence in communicating their ideas. By having these skills, students will not only improve their English proficiency but also gain valuable life skills in speaking and presenting to audiences. 

You can read more about teaching your students presentation skills here. Or read our paper for in-depth advice on teaching English pronunciation.

You may also like

Helping advanced students overcome the language learning plateau, ‘play is for children’: myths about learning through play, differentiation strategies for challenging advanced learners, leave a reply cancel reply, recent posts, soft skills activities: ideas for your language classroom, keeping it human: four things every teacher should consider when using technology, how graded readers and engaging activities can ignite student interest in the magic of books, recent comments.

Copyright 2023 © Oxford University Press 2023

Read our Privacy Policy , Cookie Policy & Legal Notice .

This blog contains external links. OUP are not responsible for the content of external sites nor do we endorse any companies or organisations linked to. Any views or opinions expressed in the articles on these posts are those of the author(s).

Oxford University Press - ELT

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• PMC10342895

Anxiety, Stress Perception, and Coping Strategies among Students with COVID-19 Exposure

Andrei shpakou.

1 Department of Integrated Medical Care, Faculty of Health Sciences, Medical University of Bialystok, 15-089 Bialystok, Poland; [email protected] (E.K.-K.); [email protected] (M.C.); [email protected] (K.K.)

Elżbieta Krajewska-Kułak

Mateusz cybulski, dorota sokołowska.

2 Department of Physical Education, Faculty of Physical Education and Tourism, Eastern European University of Applied Sciences in Bialystok, 15-472 Bialystok, Poland; [email protected]

Małgorzata Andryszczyk

3 Department of Health Care, Prof. Edward F. Szczepanik State Vocational College, 16-402 Suwałki, Poland; [email protected] (M.A.); [email protected] (E.K.)

Ewa Kleszczewska

Yelena loginovich.

4 Department of Biology System and Genetic Research, Faculty of Animal Sciences, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, 44307 Kaunas, Lithuania; moc.liamg@77golanel

5 Department of Gerontology, Public Health and Didactics, National Institute of Geriatrics, Rheumatology and Rehabilitation, 02-637 Warsaw, Poland

Andrei Tarasov

6 Department of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine, Medical Institute, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, 236041 Kaliningrad, Russia; ur.xednay@1purd

Natalia Skoblina

7 Department of Hygiene, Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, 117997 Moscow, Russia; ur.liam@mod_anilboks

Krystyna Kowalczuk

Associated data.

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy restrictions.

Background : Studying anxiety, stress, and coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial to mitigate the negative effects associated with infection risk and disease consequences. Objective : This study aimed to investigate anxiety levels, stress perception, and coping strategies in relation to the presence of illness. Material and Methods : A cross-sectional online survey was conducted anonymously among 3950 university students from Poland (1822), Lithuania (232), and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (1896). Due to the nearly identical application of anti-epidemic measures, the respondents were treated as a unified group. The State-trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Perceived Stress Scale 10 (PSS-10), and mini-COPE scale questionnaires were used. Statistical analysis included the Shapiro–Wilk test to check normality, the Mann–Whitney U test for comparative analysis between groups, the Pearson χ 2 test for categorical data, and Spearman coefficients for correlations between variables. Results : A significant proportion of young adults in the community exhibited symptoms of anxiety and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the 1212 men and 2738 women surveyed, 348 (28.7%) and 1020 (37.3%) individuals, respectively, were diagnosed with COVID-19 according to clinical protocols. Prolonged disease duration and more severe residual symptoms correlated with higher self-reported anxiety levels. Conclusions : The level of anxiety and stress varied depending on the duration of the disease, significantly impacting the choice of coping strategies. Overall, students displayed a proactive approach to coping activities but tended to postpone important decisions. Seeking social support was a prevalent coping mechanism, although respondents who had COVID-19 showed higher levels of concern for their own emotions, a tendency to discharge emotions through alcohol or other substances (male), and a greater reliance on religion (female). The study provides data that may be useful in developing educational and health policies focused on the mental well-being of university students and potentially other social groups.

1. Introduction

COVID-19 is a disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It is characterized by symptoms such as fever, cough, fatigue, loss of sense of smell and taste, and, in more severe cases, respiratory distress syndrome, which primarily affects adults [ 1 ]. While the severe form of COVID-19 is less common in young adults [ 2 ], the disease’s spread among this demographic carries significant social significance due to its high infectiousness and associated morbidity and mortality [ 3 ].

Contemporary research on the COVID-19 pandemic has focused on the emerging situation and the experiences of uncertainty, the threat of infection, disease symptoms, self-isolation, and quarantine. Individuals have approached this situation as a crisis with high stress potential [ 4 ]. Moreover, COVID-19 has been identified as an unexpected, large-scale event that disrupted community functioning and caused psychological trauma, as is evident from the literature [ 5 ]. Despite considerable efforts to control the situation, the virus continues to persist in many countries, with varying degrees of clinical manifestations [ 6 ].

The topic of mental health continues to be a prominent issue in medical care and public health, particularly in the context of ongoing pandemic waves. The universality of psychological reactions in humans during a pandemic can be understood by drawing analogies with reactions observed in other highly stressful situations [ 7 , 8 ]. The proliferation of the disease has created an environment where multiple factors simultaneously impact mental health indicators: (1) n unprecedented and potentially life-threatening situation of indefinite duration; (2) widespread restrictive measures that reduce the “psychological flexibility of the population” (insert citation for the quote); (3) the possibility of asymptomatic virus transmission and an increase in the number of mutations; (4) an unstable information landscape characterized by conflicting and abundant information on the subject; (5) uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 treatment; and (6) an unresolved vaccination situation [ 9 ].

Due to the widespread prevalence of coronavirus infection and its high neurotoxicity, even individuals who have never experienced mental health changes before are at risk [ 10 ]. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a parallel epidemic of anxiety and depressive disorders, both during the disease and in the recovery phase [ 11 ]. The current stress situation, its significance, and the overall magnitude of post-COVID consequences necessitate changes in people’s daily lives and can result in a cumulative stress effect [ 12 , 13 ].

Recovered patients, especially ones who experienced severe COVID-19, face an increased risk of developing (post-COVID) post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [ 14 , 15 ]. Patients with an optimistic outlook on life tend to have faster recovery rates compared to those with a pessimistic perception of their condition and surroundings [ 16 ]. Emotions, particularly anxiety, play a significant role in functioning, starting from the moment of exposure, through the onset of symptoms, the course of the disease, and even during the rehabilitation period. These circumstances influence individuals’ resilience to stress in threatening situations and can lead to alterations in their repertoire of coping strategies, resulting in stereotypical behaviors [ 17 ].

Considering the continuity of COVID-19 stages, its magnitude, variable course, and the vulnerability of young adult university students, especially women, it is crucial to study the characteristics of coping strategies. This research is essential to ensure appropriate and necessary psychological support for individuals who are infected, those in conditions with potential for infection, and those in the recovery phase [ 18 , 19 ]. It is widely recognized that the health, well-being, and social mood of students reflect the level of wellness, social stability, and overall life satisfaction within society as a whole [ 20 ].

A comparative stress-coping study conducted on identical populations in closely located cities within neighboring countries holds great promise for selecting optimal public health measures for the affected population [ 21 ]. The Kaliningrad region of Russia, as well as Lithuania and Poland, serve as suitable comparators due to their shared European Union (EU) border, as well as common histories, cultures, and religions. While these regions have more similarities than differences, they also exhibit some key distinctions. Notably, two of these countries are part of the EU. This study also allows for a comparison of the situation in the event of a COVID-19 crisis, considering the implementation of fairly restrictive anti-pandemic measures similar to lockdowns in these countries [ 22 ].

However, two neighboring countries on the EU’s eastern border, Belarus and Ukraine, were not included in this study. Belarus was excluded due to the different, often controversial, and more lenient anti-pandemic measures implemented by its government. Ukraine was not included in the comparison group due to the ongoing armed conflict with Russia, which has had distinct effects on the mental health of the population. It is worth mentioning that the authors have access to data for these two countries, and a subset of data concerning Belarus was already published in 2022 [ 23 ]. Given the limited number of epidemiological studies on the COVID-19 pandemic in Eastern Europe, this paper aims to fill the knowledge gap regarding the unique conditions for studying the spread of COVID-19 and its potential consequences on the health of young adults [ 24 ].

The main message of this manuscript emphasizes that increased individual risk for an unknown disease, coupled with the utilization of often ineffective emotional or behavioral strategies, can lead to changes in coping mechanisms during stressful situations and a deterioration in psychosomatic health. Considering the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic and the heightened vulnerability of young people, it is crucial to examine anxiety levels, stress perceptions, and the choice of coping strategies as indicators of mental health. This examination is necessary to provide appropriate and essential psychological support for individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 and those who are at risk of infection. Prolonged poor stress management can result in emotional and psychosomatic effects, including physical, cognitive, and emotional exhaustion, as well as reduced learning performance.

The aim of this study was to investigate the level of anxiety, both as a state reflecting the current experience of the situation and as a personality trait, along with perceptions of stress and coping strategies among student adolescents who were exposed to COVID-19. The study focused on three countries in the region along the eastern border of the European Union, where almost identical anti-epidemic measures were implemented. The study sought to address the following questions: (1) What was the frequency, expression, and severity of symptoms within the target group? (2) What were the frequency and characteristics of mental health indicators, such as anxiety as a trait and as a mental state, and susceptibility to stress in relation to COVID-19? Are there gender-based differences evident? (3) What were the prevalent stress coping strategies among students, and how were the choices of different options related to susceptibility to illness and gender? (4).

2. Material and Methods

2.1. study design and setting.

This cross-sectional study was conducted as part of the international multi-center research project known as “The COVID-19 Coping Study of Students from East Europe (SEECoping-S)”. The study utilized a cross-sectional survey conducted during January–February 2022, a period when the Omicron variant of the virus was widespread, and there was a significant increase in its incidence.

The cross-sectional survey aimed to gather reported information on the prevalence of anxiety and perceived stress among students from these three countries. The survey was administered online, ensuring the necessary assurances of anonymity to encourage respondents to provide accurate data on sensitive issues, particularly in the realm of mental health. No data were missing since the online platform did not allow incomplete student questionnaires to be submitted.

2.2. Participants

The online survey was conducted among a total of 3950 respondents from three countries situated on both sides of the eastern border of the European Union. Specifically, the respondents included individuals from Poland (PL, n = 1822), Lithuania (LT, n = 232), and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (RU, n = 1896), which is located on the border between Poland and Lithuania. The sample selection followed a simple random sampling method with a predetermined sample size.

The inclusion criteria for participants were as follows: being a student, between 18 and 25 years of age, and possessing the ability to read one of the four languages used in the survey (Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, and English). Regarding COVID-19 disease, confirmation was based on the presence of pathognomonic symptoms. In light of the most common symptoms associated with coronavirus infection in humans, including fever, taste and olfactory disturbances, dry cough, heavy breathing, weakness, and fatigue, the presence of at least three of these symptoms in combination with a positive RT-PCR (real-time polymerase chain reaction) test classified the respondent as having COVID-19. Criteria for excluding respondents from the study included the presence of any pre-existing mental illness, a history of mental disorders, and the potential influence of medication use within the month prior to the study.

2.3. Measures

To assess the various constructs, we employed well-validated and established measures in the form of standardized self-assessment questionnaires. The participants were initially asked to provide information regarding their sociodemographic characteristics, such as age, gender, and country of residence. Additionally, they were asked to disclose their health situation, including whether they had received vaccination against COVID-19. Moreover, participants were inquired about any previous diagnoses of COVID-19 among themselves and their partner or immediate family. The survey methodology underwent a standardization process, which was achieved through consensus among members of the international scientific research team.

2.4. Study Questionnaires

The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences were identified in the questionnaire as the main stressors affecting daily living. The psychometric properties of the version of the STAI, PSS-10, and Mini-COPE inventory are considered good [ 25 ]. Participants were asked to self-assess primarily anxiety, understood as a transient and situationally conditioned state of the individual and anxiety understood as a relatively fixed personality trait, using translated versions of the standardized State-trait Questionnaire Inventory (STAI) [ 26 , 27 ]. Anxiety was measured as a trait (A/T) referring to the overall level of anxiety, and as a state (A/S) operationally defined as anxiety experienced at a given time or situation. The punctuation was determined by four possible responses for each item: (a) not at all, (b) a little, (c) moderately, and (d) very much; and (1) almost never, (2) sometimes, (3) often, and (4) almost always, respectively. Each of the 40 statements (20 for anxiety as a trait and 20 as a state) had three responses assigned to assess the intensity of the respondent’s emotions. The score of each test was calculated by summing the scores of each answer and scoring according to normalized severity indices. The results were then converted into numerical values to allow quantitative evaluation from 20 to 80 points. High numerical values indicate high levels of anxiety. Scores on each scale that are ≥30 points indicate moderate, while scores ≥45 determines severe anxiety. Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient calculated in this study was α = 0.831 and yielded satisfactory results (PL = 0.911; LT = 0.865; RU = 0.818).

Stress levels over the past month were then assessed using standardized language versions of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) 10 questionnaire [ 25 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ]. The degree of subjective perception of the stressful situation (10 questions) was determined in 5 gradations. The overall score characterized the degree of perceived stress in a gradation from minimum to maximum. Herein, the higher the score, the greater the sense of stress. Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient calculated in this study was α = 0.708 (PL = 0.662; LT = 0.610; RU = 0.717).

The degree of preference for coping strategies was determined using COPE (the Coping Orientations to Problems Experienced) mini-questionnaire [ 25 ]. Coping (14 strategies) was assessed using a shortened version of the Brief-COPE—Mini-COPE (28 questions) recommended in 1997 [ 32 , 33 ]. The tool is used to assess typical ways of reacting to situations of severe stress [ 34 ]. The strategies are divided into 4 categories (integral strategies) and corresponding scales: active coping (active coping, planning, positive revaluation), helplessness (taking psychoactive substances, doing nothing, and self-accusation), seeking support (seeking emotional and instrumental support), and avoidance behaviours (dealing with other things, denial, and giving vent to one’s feelings). Such strategies as turning to religion, acceptance, and a sense of humor constitute separate categories. Coping levels among respondents ranged from 0 (no use of that specific coping strategy) to 3 (the most frequently applied one) for each strategy. All responses were grouped into four main strategic coping factors: active coping, helplessness, seeking support, and avoidance coping [ 25 ]. The original Brief-COPE inventory and its Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian versions of the Mini-COPE questionnaire have been thoroughly revised and have clear scoring guidelines [ 25 , 35 , 36 ]. Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient calculated in this study was α = 0.749 (PL = 0.854; LT = 0.780; RU = 0.893).

2.5. Procedure

The invitation to participate in the online survey (Google Forms) was distributed through targeted advertisements, including the e-learning platform (Moodle), Skype, Microsoft Teams, and university social networks. The proposed information resources were available to students and were widely used in teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The clinical questionnaire included questions about the severity of the disease and an assessment of the effects on selected indicators of respondents’ mental health. The structured questionnaire provided important information on the severity of COVID-19 [ 16 ]. With the help of a clinical questionnaire, two groups were separated for further study: COVID-19 survivors—1368 (34.6%) in varying degrees of severity, and those who did not have the disease (healthy)—2582 (65.4%).

Due to the lack of significant differences between country of residence, the respondents were treated as a unified group. Before initiating the study, permission was obtained from the leadership of the universities participating in the study and an ethics committee to conduct an anonymous survey of students. All participants were informed about the objectives of the study, the methodology, and the anonymous and confidential nature of the questionnaire. Access to the questionnaire was granted only if they agreed to participate in the study. No data were missing, since the online platform did not allow for submitting incomplete students’ questionnaires. All participants provided informed consent prior to completing the survey online (via computer by clicking “yes” after reading the study aims, methods, and confidentiality statement). The research was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and Good Clinical Practice in research. General ethical permission to conduct the study was obtained from the Bioethical Review Board at the Medical University of Bialystok, Poland (document number: APK. 002. 1932. 2022).

2.6. Statistical Analysis

Statistical analyses were conducted using the STATISTICA software package ver. 13.0. To account for potential confounders, all analyses were adjusted for gender and countries a priori. Normality was assessed using the Shapiro–Wilk test, revealing that the distribution of the quantitative data deviated from the normal pattern. Consequently, both nonparametric and parametric statistical methods were employed.

For dependent variables that followed a normal distribution, the mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) were calculated. For non-normally distributed data, the median (Me) was computed. The t-test for independent samples was used for comparative analysis between the selected groups. Additionally, in cases with large SD values, the non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test was employed. Qualitative variables were analyzed using frequencies and percentages. Categorical data were compared using the Pearson χ 2 test. Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the strength and direction of associations between variables. Statistical parameters were estimated at a 95% confidence interval, while significance tests and confidence intervals were calculated at a significance level of 0.05. For all analyses, p -values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

3.1. Characteristics of the Sample

All analyses were adjusted for age, gender, as these were considered to be potential limiting factors a priori. The study focused on students between the ages of 18 and 25 (22.6 ± 5.35). Disease survivors were slightly older: 23.1 ± 5.74 vs. 22.3 ± 5.11 ( p < 0.05). The dominant part of the sample was women: 2738 (69.3%). The ratio of men to women in the study groups reflects the general trend in the ratio of men to women in university faculties in the three countries. Among 1212 men, 348 (28.7%), and among 2738 women, 1020 (37.3%) were diagnosed with COVID-19 according to the clinical protocol. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the respondent sample related to membership in the group of healthy and those who had the disease, broken down by gender.

Characteristics of the study population by gender of healthy respondents and those who were infected, developing COVID-19 symptoms.

Note: n is the number of observations, % is the percentage of the total number of study participants in a given group; 95%CI—95% confidence interval; SD —standard deviation; t -test—a value of the Student’s t -test comparing healthy vs. those who had COVID; χ 2 —Pearson’s chi-squared test.

3.2. Main Findings

Our main set of analyses focused on a section asking about the various symptoms and feelings that people may experience with the developing disease. Clinical symptoms associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity were analyzed. Of the 1368 students, 166 (12.1%) were virtually asymptomatic (only fatigue, headache or sore throat were noted), 478 (34.9%) were mild, 629 (46.0%) were moderate, and 95 (6.9%) were severe (hospitalized). Common symptoms included smell reduction, that is, the partial or complete loss of olfaction/reduction of smell sensation—916 (67.6%); fatigue—873 (63.8%); headache—814 (59.5%); taste reduction—799 (58.7%); wheeze—552 (40.4%); cough—530 (38.7%); rash—157 (11.5%); and diarrhea—123 (9.0%). Moreover, 710 people (51.9%) had pyrexia at >37.5 °C. Each of those affected (in addition to being asymptomatic) had a combination of 4 or more symptoms. The strength of the correlation between disease severity and individual symptoms (wheezing, cough, fatigue, headache, smell or taste reduction, and their combination) was average ( r = 0.45–0.50, p < 0.05) or weak ( r = 0.20–0.35, p < 0.05) (in case of fever). The correlation between the number of symptoms and disease severity was at a high level ( r = 0.75, p < 0.01). As the severity of the disease increased, the importance of such symptoms as smell reduction, taste reduction, fever, wheezing, headache, fatigue, and cough or their combination increased.

3.3. Anxiety

The specific impact of belonging to the group of healthy or affected people was significantly reflected in an important mental health indicator of anxiety (trait and state), among others. Statistical results obtained for the overall mean according to the STAI questionnaire (trait anxiety) was 41.4 ± 12.2, and for state anxiety: −46.1 ± 10.6 ( p < 0.05). The increase in the difference between trait and state anxiety levels at 4.7 ± 8.61 indicated that the trait was rooted and the process was chronic. The analysis of the surveys shows that with regard to disease severity, the level of anxiety proved to be a differentiating factor between the two groups.

Careful comparisons showed that the lowest anxiety levels as a state were declared by men who did not have COVID-19. A more detailed analysis found that the prevalence of high anxiety (trait) (>45 points) among unaffected students was 35.2%, with anxiety as a state being 50.6%. Students who had COVID-19 experienced higher levels of anxiety (trait and state) than respondents in the unaffected group. When considering the normal values for both genders, high levels of anxiety were found in both male and female groups. Nevertheless, women were more likely to have more severe anxiety symptoms. Basic descriptive values and comparisons of the intensity of anxiety related to the COVID-19 pandemic by groups and gender are presented in Table 2 .

The comparison of the trait anxiety and state anxiety scores and dependence on affliction state and gender of the respondents ( M ± SD ).

Note: * t -test—value of the Student’s t -test between male and female ( p < 0.05).

The prevalence of high levels of anxiety was higher among qualified patients (both women and men). The prevalence of high anxiety (trait) expressed as a percentage was higher in women at 38.5% than in men at 30.8% ( p < 0.001). Similar results were obtained for anxiety (state) (58.4% vs. 39.3%).

3.4. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10)

We obtained the stress distribution for our sample, as indicated in Table 3 . Here, high stress corresponds to a score one SD above the mean. Low stress corresponds to a score one SD below the average.

Distribution of the respondents according to the degree of stress as categorized by the normative data for the PSS-10 (N, %, 95%CI).

Note: * test χ 2 for group male and female ( p < 0.05).

The incidence of anxiety and stress was related to gender, especially in the convalescent group. COVID-19 patients hospitalized during the pandemic often suffered from psychological distress after hospital discharge. For a more detailed specification of stress-coping scenarios, it was necessary to rank the selected methods, which was achieved by assessing coping strategies. High rates prevailed among women. Subjective perceptions of the overall level of tension in a stressful situation allowed us to assess and account for efforts to counteract stress.

3.5. Coping Strategies, Measured by the Mini-COPE Scale

Respondents who were not affected by the disease showed a statistically significant moderate negative relationship between their level of using strategies focused on active coping and anxiety. Accordingly, the more intensely students dealt with stressful situations proactively, the less they experienced negative symptoms of anxiety. A statistically significant yet weak negative correlation was shown among convalescent respondents. The helplessness strategy demonstrated a moderately positive relationship with anxiety in both groups, but the strength of the relationship was more pronounced in those in the second group. Avoidance behaviour strategy correlated with anxiety, and the strength of the relationship was similar in both groups. A weak association characterizes avoidant behaviour with anxiety as a trait and a moderate association with anxiety as a state.

Respondents who underwent COVID-19 differed from healthy individuals in having higher levels of concern about their own emotions, and a tendency to discharge them (an integral factor of avoidance coping). They were more likely to postpone important decisions in the context of coping in an effort to avoid stress and were characterized by more activities oriented toward seeking social support. Furthermore, they were more likely to engage in passive coping strategies, with the extended duration of the pandemic and its severity increasing the frequency of use ( Table 4 ).

Aspects of coping strategies among students in the surveyed groups with and without COVID-19 infection, taking into account gender.

Note: M —mean value; SD —standard deviation; * differences between males and females in the group ( p < 0.05); # differences between males between groups; ## differences between females between groups ( p < 0.05).

Tactics for choosing coping strategies among non-afflicted and healthy individuals were similar by gender. In the context of active coping, the differences between men and women are minimal. Respondents in both groups used psychoactive substances at a similarly low rate (this rate increased among students who had COVID-19, especially women), as is the dominant turn to religion among women in this group. However, the repertoire of coping strategies among women was broader than among men due to the focus on emotions and the expression of feelings. The risk of possible infection and apparent disease often activated coping strategies related to active functioning. In summary, it is worth highlighting that a notable proportion of young adults experienced symptoms of anxiety and stress. Furthermore, increased duration of illness and the presence of more severe residual symptoms and sequelae were associated with higher self-reported levels of anxiety and stress among patients. The severity of the disease also influenced individuals’ coping strategies for managing stress. Specifically, respondents who had contracted COVID-19 exhibited differences compared to those who had not, such as higher levels of anxiety regarding their own emotions and a tendency to seek release through the use of alcohol or other psychoactive substances. Additionally, there was a stronger attachment to religious beliefs, particularly among women.

4. Discussion

The purpose of our study was to narrow down the possible correlates of anxiety and stress, as well as potential coping mechanisms among male and female students according to the presence of COVID-19 disease, from three countries along the eastern border of the European Union.

Young adult students were chosen as the study group, because the physical and mental health, as well as the social mood of this target group, reflects the level of well-being, social stability, and degree of satisfaction with life in the greater society [ 37 ]. As students are distinguished and characterized by distinctiveness, a sense of in-group community and a tightly organized group, and the strictness and disproportionality of the consequences of anti-pandemic measures have affected them greatly compared to other age and social groups [ 38 ]. Studies on the mental health of this target group were conducted in the very first weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in China and found that the epidemic had a significant effect on the mental health of students, and those who were affected present symptoms of disorders similar to those who have suffered traumatic stress [ 39 ].

The selection of the study’s geographic area was based on its location on the eastern border of the EU, where several countries with closely situated university towns [ 40 ] have populations of young people that are nearly identical. Moreover, these countries implemented similar measures in response to the pandemic and there were minor differences in the population prevalence of COVID-19. Additionally, the region demonstrates a strong commitment to reform and an active pursuit of optimal public health measures [ 41 ]. The gender-specific characteristics of adolescent mental health are also an important aspect highlighted in the study [ 42 ]. This, too, must be taken into account when conducting a study noting the differences in mental health indicators in subgroups of men and women.

The results suggest two implications for student mental health indicators. The first refers to the negative effect of the COVID-19 situation on mental health, expressed in high levels of anxiety and stress. The second refers to the high adoption of active coping mechanisms. This is a dynamic process that changes as people interact with the environment, and can be stable or unstable at different stages of adaptation to new conditions. We confirmed the high adaptation rate among students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adaptive coping is a protective factor for students’ mental health and can be viewed as a buffer that attenuates the negative impact of COVID-19-related stressors on perceptions concerning COVID-19 infection (or mental health) risk [ 42 ]. The pandemic and the severe restrictive measures imposed as a result have contributed to accepting the reality of what happened and assessing the timeliness of the problem. According to the study, anxiety and stress levels were high compared to results from individual countries [ 43 ], which showed that about a third of the adult population suffered from anxiety, and more than half from stress. The findings from the UK survey conducted within 20 weeks of the country’s quarantine announcement [ 44 ] suggest that anxiety reached the highest levels in the early stages of isolation, but declined subsequently, probably because people adjusted to the circumstances. According to our survey, the prevalence of high anxiety (trait) among unaffected students was 35.2%, with anxiety as a state reaching 50.6%. Students who underwent COVID-19 had even higher anxiety levels than respondents in the unaffected group. This is explained by the fact that respondents who were infected with coronavirus were actually frightened by their disease. Their anxiety levels were increased by the uncertain course of the disease and its consequences, forced isolation or hospitalization, and fear of death. Again, high anxiety rates recorded among the healthy indicated an increasing problem [ 45 ]. This can be attributed to their exposure to an information field that induces anxiety. It can be further compounded by the prevailing societal mood characterized by chronic uncertainty, economic changes, and dissatisfaction with the state’s healthcare efforts [ 46 ]. Researchers have observed that socioeconomic insecurity has contributed to an increase in mental disorders associated with the COVID-19 pandemic [ 47 ].

In contrast to early studies conducted before the COVID-19 era [ 48 ], our study provides a comprehensive assessment of outcomes during the extended duration of the pandemic, taking gender into consideration. The prevalence of high anxiety (trait) was found to be higher in women, with 38.5% compared to 30.8% in men ( p < 0.001). Similar results were observed for anxiety (state), with rates of 58.4% in women and 39.3% in men. A study conducted in Turkey also confirmed that nearly half of the participants experienced anxiety, with a higher prevalence among women [ 49 ]. This may be attributed to the well-established connections between women’s emotional resilience and low self-esteem in stressful situations, which can contribute to a loss of balanced predisposition and self-control. Maintaining healthy levels of self-esteem is essential for effectively coping with anxiety. Our survey also shows a higher prevalence of stress. The perception of stress is a subjective and variable phenomenon. Special attention is paid to the processes of coping with stress, which determines the positive and negative effects of stress on the individual. A significant proportion of COVID-19 patients reported symptoms in situations of psychological distress. The course of coping was found to depend on personal resources, social support, attitudes toward the disease, and the severity of its symptoms [ 50 ]. In general, it can be concluded that the higher stress levels of students compared to data from the general population may be related to the commitment and challenges of their “working and studying,” which is consistent with previous reports [ 51 ]. It should be noted that our representative sample (students aged 18 to 25) had higher anxiety and stress levels compared to other age groups, as also reported by other authors [ 18 ]. The proportion of those affected with high levels of stress is comparable to proportions observed in recent studies [ 42 ].

Differences by gender are characteristic of two scales: total “overload” and “perception of stress”. The average stress level was 20.6 among the healthy and 21.7 among convalescents, which was higher than in the general population (13.02) [ 51 ]. The presence of a gender difference in stress among university students is also consistent with the current literature: most studies have reported that stress is higher in female students [ 52 ]. Based on this, it appears that women are more susceptible to experiencing the consequences of COVID-19 compared to men.

The COVID-19 pandemic not only affected the intensity of stress, but also changed and diversified coping strategies. Having effective strategies for stressful situations is important because they can prevent experiences that lead to mental disorders related to a critical situations [ 53 ]. People use different methods to cope with stress, as was observed in our study as well. Regardless of their attitudes toward the disease, the respondents focused on active ways of coping and positive reformulation, meaning: they chose to focus on the problem and seek instrumental support (i.e., seeking and receiving advice and help from others), as well as emotional support.

Coping is a complex construct that can play a significant role in protecting against or increasing the risk of adverse mental health outcomes during stressful life experiences [ 54 ]. No significant differences were found in the choice of active coping strategies in terms of gender, as reported by other researchers [ 42 ]. Quarantine measures, the severity of the disease, and often inadequate information about the epidemic situation influenced the coping strategies chosen: students who were not sick were more likely to choose active coping and planning, but often refused to believe what happened. Respondents who have undergone coronavirus infection differ in their actions in that they are more likely to choose an avoidance strategy and are less likely to plan. This is most likely due to the fact that the symptoms of asthenic syndrome include chronic and rapid fatigue. In addition, depressive moods, loss of energy, and reduced interests tend to dominate in both study groups. It is worth noting that convalescents exhibit maladaptive behavior due to distress, most likely caused by a lack of understanding of their future actions. A statistically significant difference was found for the strategy of self-distraction, meaning: engaging in other activities to avoid thinking about an unpleasant situation. This strategy was more common among convalescents. They accepted the reality, but more often turned to the use of “tranquilizers” (medications, alcohol) to cope with the situation.

Gender-related differences were also observed in coping strategies. Women were more likely to utilize emotion-focused coping strategies, emphasizing negative experiences and engaging in mental and behavioral withdrawal. The interaction between gender and health conditions influenced women’s typical coping behaviors—they sought emotional support as well as instrumental support, such as seeking advice, assistance, and information on managing difficulties.

Women who had no direct exposure to the disease found it more challenging to accept the situation and denied the reality of the pandemic. In contrast, men tended to be more proactive in distracting themselves from unpleasant thoughts and sought positive ways to cope, such as engaging in physical activity. However, men generally avoided seeking both instrumental and emotional social support, unlike women.

The outcome of coping is influenced by the individual’s engagement in the coping process, which serves as a means of self-realization and supports sustainable personal development. This outcome is linked to various factors, including the evaluation of the situation, the perception of self-realization possibilities within the given context, commitment to specific activities, and the subjective choice of appropriate or inappropriate coping strategies, which may pose developmental risks. Developing precise risk communication strategies that enhance risk assessment perception and self-efficacy can facilitate desirable and effective practices, not only for preventing COVID-19 but also for preventing other infections [ 55 ]. Our results stress the need to design prevention and intervention programs to reduce the negative consequences of COVID-19. There is a need to inform people about available resources and practical methods to deal with these emerging issues, along with the continuing stress of COVID-19. As COVID-19 disrupts communities around the world, further research and understanding of effective coping are crucial to reducing the short- and long-term impact of the pandemic on the psyche of young people [ 56 ].

5. Limitations

This study has some limitations that are typical for online surveys. The results are also limited to students and may not be applied to other groups or the general population. We collected data using self-reported questionnaires that are commonly used; however, they may not provide a complete picture of mental health. It is also important to note that professional and accurate assessment of mental disorders can only be done by professional psychologists or psychotherapists. The study’s findings do not represent the overall impact of COVID-19 on mental health, but they help identify areas in which students might need psychological assistance in critical situations. Finally, it is important to note that the study captures a relatively narrow time frame, which may not apply to other, possibly longer waves of the pandemic.

6. Conclusions

A large percentage of young adults in the community demonstrated anxiety and stress symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. The level of anxiety and stress varies according to the duration of the disease which significantly affects the choice of coping strategies. There was a reciprocal correlation between exposure to COVID-19 among students and anxiety, levels of perceived stress, and coping activities. For the most part, students were characterized by a clear level of active coping activities. However, they postponed important decisions in the context of coping and were characterized by a preponderance of activities oriented toward seeking social support. The presence and severity of the disease changed coping strategies. Respondents who had COVID-19 differed from those without the disease in having higher levels of concern about their own emotions and a tendency to discharge them, especially due to the use of alcohol or other psychoactive substances (male), as well as more frequently turning to religion (female).

Given the evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, our study results may serve as a starting point for future cross-border research on the physical and mental health of diverse social groups. This study offers data that may be informative for developing educational and health policies focused on the mental well-being of university students. It is crucial for universities to collaborate with psychological services in order to monitor and address stress and anxiety associated with the pandemic. To promote psychological adaptation, students should have access to programs such as seminars and team-building activities. Additionally, implementing a COVID-19 disease scale management strategy is necessary. Public education initiatives should focus on coping strategies, effective disease prevention methods, and practical resources for assistance. This process should be regarded as a long-term endeavor that begins during the pandemic and continues even after its conclusion.

Funding Statement

The research was funded through a grant from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange BPN/SZN/2021/1/00004.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, A.S.; data curation, A.S.; methodology, A.S., E.K.-K. and M.C.; project administration, M.C.; funding acquisition, A.S. and M.C.; supervision, E.K.-K.; formal analysis and investigation, A.S., M.C., E.K.-K., D.S., M.A., E.K., Y.L., A.T., N.S., J.O. and K.K.; resources, A.S., D.S., A.T., N.S., E.K.-K., A.T., N.S. and K.K.; data curation, A.S.; software, A.S.; validation, A.S. and K.K.; visualization, A.S., D.S., M.A., E.K., Y.L. and J.O.; writing—original draft preparation, A.S. and J.O.; writing—review and editing, A.S., Y.L. and J.O. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

This study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Bioethics Committee of the Medical University of Bialystok (protocol code APK.002.193.2022).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all of the subjects involved in this study.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.