Psychological Effects of Covid-19 among University Students

Abstract

Most educational institutions were instructed to close and continue learning online due to the spread of coronavirus. This has caused the learning environment of students to change due to different places of residence. Due to not having a complete infrastructure such as living in college, there are many challenges faced by students to study online that can affect their psychology. The purpose of this study is to study the perception of university students in online learning during COVID-19 and to identify the factors or the stressors of psychological effects among university students in online learning during COVID-19. The study was conducted at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and the study’s samples were from various faculties. This study used mixed-method approaches. The data are from questionnaires to 115 students and semi-structured interviews with five students. The findings showed that students were facing difficulties in online learning during this pandemic due to academic and interpersonal stressors. The highest stressors of psychological effects among students are hours in front of the screen with 94.8% and emotional and physical exhaustion with 97.4%. In conclusion, having a good emotional management and lifestyle is particularly important in situations like today's pandemics in an effort to prevent mental illness from happening to ourselves and to our loved ones. Propose future study is to study the psychological effect of COVID-19 in online learning among wider population of higher education students.