Outcomes of student-lead research regarding the effects of COVID-19 on education

In our OT school, it is the custom, that every first-year course does a project about professional policies. At first, our plan was to organize the national meeting of students from all over Germany, which takes place every year, in our school. But unfortunately, the pandemic made it impossible. Suddenly we had to do home office and didn’t hear much from each other. We asked ourselves how our schoolmates felt with this education and life situation especially regarding any deficits in learning and how they cope with the time alone without getting depressed or lonely. Which we thought it would be interesting to report to other students all over the world.

We created a survey to ask our schoolmates how they managed the school situation during the first lockdown in summer 2020. In the following part we analyze the results:

First of all, we asked our schoolmates how often they consume information about the Corona situation. Most of them (37,5 %) declare to do it once a week, 31,25 % once a day. They told us that this news primarily is causing fear, worries about the future, stress, and incomprehension about other people’s behavior. In addition, some of them are already annoyed and exhausted by the new’s quantity. More than half of our schoolmates have fear about other people, about education, changes in the daily routine, isolation, loss, and financial anxiety.

It is well known that as a result of Corona restrictions plenty of humans are missing contact with others and the opportunity to go out for things like festivals, dinner, sports, etc. In spite of all that we keep contact with our friends via social media even more than before. On the other hand, Corona has a positive effect in relation to environmental conditions. Turns out that going into nature got a higher value for most of the people as a coping mechanism towards the shutdown. Other occupations with similar effects are cleaning up, spend time with animals (pets), doing sport, and playing (parlor) games good coping strategies.

In regard to the previously mentioned closing of our school is perceived as reasonable because of the risk of contagion. The majority of our schoolmates is satisfied with the school’s organization of the home office. Nonetheless, there are few suggestions for improvements (e.g. fewer tasks or more feedback via online lessons).

The whole class believes that there are learning deficits because homeschooling has another quality than being in school to discuss the content with our schoolmates and teachers. (The percentage pie below depicts the outcome of the matter above)

On the other side, we had to find our own routine to learn, so almost half of our class said that they dig deeper into the topics.

With this survey, we got a feeling about the individuality of experiencing the pandemic, which amplifies our occupational therapeutic view. Thus we would love to read something related to the online education matter mentioned above or anything that has to do with the quarantine’s coping mechanism you developed!

If you want to know more feel free to email us at er**************@we*.de

Disclaimer

This blog is the work of: Lea Boschen Lana Breden, Laura Koconrek, Jonna Stolz and Nicole Stoye, students of Schule für Ergotherapie, Bildungsakademie der Gesundheit Nord – Klinikverbund Bremen gGmbH

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