COVID-19 Effects on Higher Education: A Case Study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected higher education across the country. Many colleges and universities responded swiftly to this outbreak by moving to remote learning in order to cope with the pandemic. The responses varied in different education systems at national and international levels, but a commonality can be found between the most institutions worldwide: transitioning delivery mode from face-to-face teaching to remote learning approaches using online platforms. Although this new remote teaching format was different from classic online pedagogy in many cases, it was the beginning of a new era in higher education to establish or expand the necessary infrastructure for online education. Unfortunately, many college students encountered some difficulties due to this fast transition in addition to facing personal challenges such as unexpected job loss, restricted social activities, and mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, etc. Studies show that psychological distress and symptoms of mental illness in college students have been dramatically increased due to social isolation result of campus closure since the pandemic started. In this research, we conducted two surveys to evaluate how engineering technology and construction management students have been impacted by the outbreak at Northern Kentucky University. The intended outcome of our research is to prepare a better plan to mitigate the effects of pandemic on students' educational experience and performance. This study measures different aspects of college students' demands such as satisfaction with their classes, connectedness to the university, learning requirements, and technology resources. Furthermore, a Chi-Square test was deployed to compare these impacts on students in terms of gender and personality. The finding of these surveys demonstrate that the pandemic had greater mental impact on female students, however introverted and extroverted students have expressed similar experience. In addition, this research shows that all academic levels have been impacted by the pandemic to some extent.