research topics about covid 19 for students

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

The COVID Catch-up Challenge

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
• Springer Nature - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Students academic and social concerns during COVID-19 pandemic

Azzah al-maskari.

1 University of Technology and Applied Colleges- Ibra, Ibra, Oman

Thurayya Al-Riyami

Siraj k. kunjumuhammed.

2 Modern College of Business and Sciences, Muscat, Oman

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Higher Education Institutions (HEI) replaced regular face-to-face teaching with online teaching and learning. However, the shift caused several academic and social concerns for students, such as lack of academic support, lack of adequate resources to support online teaching, lack of socialization, stress, anxiety, and lack of motivation in attending classes. This research evaluates the impact of HEIs support, faculty support, and resources available on the academic and social concerns of students in HEIs during the pandemic. 11,114 students across the HEIs in Sultanate of Oman participated in an online national survey. Regression and factor analysis were used to verify the research model developed based on the literature review. Results showed that HEI support and faculty support significantly affect university students' academic and social concerns. Furthermore, resource availability was found to affect the academic concerns of students but not their social concerns. This research recommends strategies for HEIs and faculty to promote faculty-student interaction using both synchronous and asynchronous modes to reduce student concerns and motivate them to engage in online classes.

Introduction

COVID-19 pandemic influenced all walks of life; the higher education sector is not an exception. Since WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic in March 2020, lockdown, social distancing, work from home, and online classes became part of life. Distance education replaced regular face-to-face classes; higher education institutions (HEI) rely heavily on a distance learning model to continue offering their programs. HEI invested heavily in IT infrastructure, trained staff and students, and moved their different activities online, including teaching and assessment. The shift, however, caused several concerns for students and staff. A few recent research have explored the challenges encountered by students during the pandemic (e.g., Mailizar et al., 2020 ; Aristovnik et al., 2020 ; Al-Salman & Haider, 2021 ). However, all these studies suggested the need for further studies on students' responses towards online learning and their concerns (Basilaia & Kvavadze, 2020 ; Mailizar et al., 2020 ; Basilaia & Kvavadze, 2020 ).

Distance Education (DE) includes all study methods and all levels of education that do not enjoy direct and continuous supervision by teachers attending with their students in traditional classrooms. Still, the education process is subject to planning, organization, and directed by an educational institution and teachers" (Holmberg, 1977 , p.9). DL experiments with synchronous or asynchronous environments using different devices such as mobile phones, tablets, or laptops. Participants interact with their teachers and share their ideas with colleagues remotely. It offers many benefits, for instance, flexibility. Besides, the course contents are accessible to students anytime. DE is not costly as it saves the costs of establishing new classrooms and saves electricity, water, and others (Ferriman, 2013 ). However, a low level of motivation, feelings of isolation, and loneliness are some of the challenges affecting DE's effectiveness (Hetsevich, 2017 ).

In the Sultanate of Oman, the Supreme Committee decided to suspend face-to-face classes and shift to online education on March 15, 2020. Accordingly, HEIs shifted teaching and learning online, modified their assessment scheme, and initiated measures to enhance their investments in IT. It allowed HEIs to continue their academic programs and maintain the health of their stakeholders. However, the shift posed significant challenges as it was not well planned. The challenges include lack of infrastructure and resources, teacher's inexperience in the virtual teaching mode, resources available for students, network connectivity issues. Indeed, the student's academic concerns and social concerns due to pandemic created a unique situation that was never a subject matter in the empirical research.

Against this background, this paper investigates students' academic and social concerns in the HEIs in the Sultanate of Oman. Specifically, this paper examines the role of HEI support, faculty support, and resources on the academic and social concerns of the students.

Literature review

Academic concerns refer to learning difficulties, lack of attention from teachers, and increasing workload that have restricted students' ability to concentrate during online classes. Several authors around the world have researched students' academic concerns caused by COVID-19. For instance, Realyvásquez-Vargas et al. ( 2020 ) found that shifting to online learning affected students' academic performance and caused a lot of intellectual fatigue due to the increased workload. Also, the challenge includes a high risk of students dropping out of their courses (Cohen, 2017 ). The only way to overcome such a phenomenon is individualized monitoring, which is probably hard to be accomplished by all teachers (UNESCO, 2020 ). Besides, many students have not benefited from online learning since they have not received proper guidance from their teachers (Ali, 2020 ; Sullivan et al., 2018 ) and lose interest in attending classes online. Also, Al-Salman and Haider ( 2021 ) stated that the volume of assignments has negatively affected students' academic performance. In another study, Aristovnik et al. ( 2020 ) analyzed how students perceive the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic with a sample of 30,383 university students from 62 countries; their study revealed that students complained about the intensive workload that affected students' academic performance.

This paper defines social concerns as the outcome of student experiences, feelings of loneliness, fear of a pandemic, worries about health and the health of loved ones, and lack of communication with classmates and relatives. According to the UNESCO report ( 2020 ), the shift to a virtual mode of teaching–learning limited social contact and socialization routines, a central part of students' daily experience in HEIs. The report indicated that 75% of students in HEIs worldwide had experienced anxiety and unease due to the study suspension. In the same vein, Duraku and Hoxha ( 2020 ) found that a majority of students in HEIs reported moderate levels of stress (65.4%), while more than one-quarter of students reported high levels of stress (26.9%). Similarly, Almuraqab ( 2020 ), in his study in the UAE, found that more than half of respondents (58%) agreed that distance learning made group collaboration among students less and very limited, which affected the ability to learn and interact with their classmates. Gillis and Krull ( 2020 ) observed that students experienced barriers to learning due to the pandemic, including distractions, increased anxiety, and feeling less motivated. Further, Aristovnik et al. ( 2020 ) found that students experienced boredom, anxiety, and frustration due to the adoption of particular hygienic behaviors that prevented them from performing simple daily practices such as shaking hands and getting in touch with their family members and friends.

Factors that impact students' academic and social Concerns during online education

The success of online classes depends on many factors. Empirical research univocally highlighted the critical role of faculty in shaping students' experience in online classes. For instance, Adnan and Anwar ( 2020 ), based on a study among 126 undergraduates and postgraduate college students in different HEIs in Pakistan, found that students' academic performance is affected due to lack of face-to-face interaction with the instructors and delays in responding to students' inquiries. Bates and Khasawneh ( 2007 ) stated that frequent feedback from teachers improved students' academic performance and increased their motivation and engagement during online learning. Students learned more when their lecturers provided training on using the online learning system at the beginning of the course. In addition, Zhou et al. ( 2020 ) have found that most teachers in China are unfamiliar with synchronous and asynchronous online teaching tools and could not guide their students on using online platforms/or learning management systems. Hence, it is imperative that faculty knowledge, experience, and interaction during online classes significantly influence students' experiences in online classes.

Considering the challenges posed by the pandemic, Daniel ( 2020 ) observed that faculty should take advantage of asynchronous teaching to engage students and ease their concerns to juggle home and study demands. However, this is contrary to the expectation that faculty should continuously utilize synchronous platforms to engage in discussions and interactions with students. Drane et al. ( 2020 ) observed that students from more vulnerable backgrounds are likely to experience persistent disadvantage through a range of barriers, for instance, long-term educational disengagement, digital exclusion, poor technology management, and increased psychosocial challenge. These barriers can be significantly managed by the faculty while designing the online classes and mode of engagement.

Although teachers' moved to online classes based on HEIs directive, teachers at HEIs have not had enough time to adapt their course contents to online mode, both synchronous and asynchronous. Chaaban and Ellili-Cherif ( 2017 ) considered lack of time to look for appropriate online materials that cater to students' level and needs as one of the obstacles teachers encounter. It needs adequate time to find materials that meet the standardized curriculum and assessment implemented in most HEIs (Biancarosa & Griffiths, 2012 ; Vrasidas, 2015 ). Thus, due to the pandemic, teachers shared as many materials as possible and expected students to choose the best materials for themselves, which caused many challenges for students. Amita ( 2020 ) stated that learners encountered difficulties in choosing the best source amongst many sent by their teachers, which affected their academic performance and increased their anxiety and frustration.

It suggests that, given the urgency of continuing education online during the pandemic, faculty support is critical in addressing students' academic and social concerns. For instance, a faculty need to maintain effective interaction with their students, give them necessary feedback, and provide them with sufficient learning materials that have a meaningful impact on student's academic and social concerns during the pandemic. Therefore, the empirical discussion furthers the following hypothesis (H1):

• H1: Faculty support significantly affects students' academic and social concerns during online education.

HEI support also critically influences student experiences in online learning. Recent research established the role of HEI support in student's academic success and wellbeing in general (e.g., technical training and support, counseling support, financial support, communication support, etc.). In their study, Fernandez and Shaw ( 2020 ) emphasized the role of effective communication to gain the trust and commitment of faculty, staff, and students. Altamirano and Collazo ( 2020 ) cited an example wherein the leaders at Urban Diverse College communicated with staff by weekly emails that contain heartfelt motivational messages and information on developments concerning the community at large. In a national survey, Active Minds ( 2020 ) reported that many students expressed that a lack of regular and caring communication from their institutions was a primary stressor during COVID-19. Students expect communications from their HEIs, and checking if have accessibility issue or staying focused during online classes. Besides, HEIs should share meaningful and heartful messages with students. HEIs should also provide support services to facilitate student's success and wellbeing during online learning. Some students may lack the skills or have trouble using online platforms. Zeeshan et al. ( 2020 ) emphasized the importance of technical support from their university administration to motivate students to manage technological stresses and develop full readiness for online learning.

Sarker et al. ( 2019 ), in their study in a private university in Bangladesh, stated that to obtain optimum benefit from e-learning technologies, HEIs must ensure quality content distribution through user-friendly systems and enhanced asynchronous interaction between the lecturers and students. For instance, HEIs should provide training for both lecturers and students to cope with the new learning environment during the pandemic. HEIs were rated differently in their approach to academic support to faculty and students in the previous empirical literature. Abu Shekhadim et al. ( 2020 ) based on a study in Palestine, concluded that HEIs provided moderate support; they did not train students to use e-learning, neither no guidelines disseminated to students on how to use the virtual platforms. Similarly, Draissi and Yong ( 2020 ) found that the support provided to students in Moroccan HEIs was insufficient due to the lack of infrastructure needed to implement online education successfully. These empirical findings support WorldBank's ( 2020 ) observation that most students had difficulties accessing online learning due to the lack of support from the HEIs. Furthermore, lack of support aggravates student concerns, and simultaneously students lose their interest in attending classes online. Yilmaz et al. ( 2020 ) emphasized that many students do not know what to do in the online learning process and need external support; otherwise, their motivation decreases and affects their academic performance.

From the empirical literature on HEI's relevance to students' learning experience, academic and social concerns, the second hypothesis, H2, is proposed.

• H2: HEI support significantly affects students' academic and social concerns during online education.

Availability of resources is another factor that facilitates the success of online education. Previous research has shown that one of the main challenges for implementing a virtual mode of learning is an internet connection which has proven to be a significant issue for students, especially those located in remote areas. Poor internet connection is considered the main challenge for online education during the pandemic in many studies worldwide (e.g., Baticulon et al., 2020 ; Kamarianos et al., 2020 ; Means & Neisler, 2020 ; Sahu, 2020 ). A study conducted in China found that network coverage in remote areas is insufficient. Learners in mountainous areas had to walk for hours to find places with stable network signals (Huang et al., 2020 ).

Similarly, in Egypt, Mahdy ( 2020 ) found that learners suffered from poor internet connectivity during the lockdown, which affected the quality of their learning. In Morocco, students encountered several issues during online education due to network capacity and lack of internet access in remote and rural areas. The government addressed it by utilizing television channels to broadcast lectures for HEI students. In Saudi Arabia, limited bandwidth has been a significant issue reported by both teachers and students during the pandemic (Khalil et al., 2020 ; Alnajjar et al., 2020 ). Lassoued et al. ( 2020 ) investigated the obstacles encountered by 300 students experiencing distance education in four Arab countries during the COVID-19 pandemic (Algerian, Egyptian, Palestinian, and Iraqi). The students stated that the lack of resources needed during online education, namely internet connection, was a significant challenge. In contrast, a study conducted in the UAE (Almuraqab, 2020 ) found that 74.5% of respondents had good internet access and appropriate devices for online learning.

Although we focus on infrastructure at HEI, resources available with students, teachers and HEI are also significant determinants of the effectiveness of distance online learning. In Oman, the government has initiated a strategy to provide laptops to all students in HEIs, which is an excellent gesture to ensure the availability of adequate infrastructure during online classes. For instance, in the Mckinsey & Company report in the USA, Kim et al. ( 2020 ) reported that only 11% of the participants reported having all the necessary equipment for remote learning. Having necessary devices like laptops is an essential requirement for successful online learning. However, many studies indicate that students rely more on their smartphones during online education, which might not be compatible with many online platforms and programs. For example, Mahdy ( 2020 ) found that the most used devices by students in 86 countries were smartphones. Also, lack of devices or limited access due to gadget sharing were encountered by medical students in the Philippines (Baticulon et al., 2020 ) and Pakistan (Abbasi et al., 2020 ). In addition, during the pandemic, many students have difficulties accessing online education due to the lack of basic digital skills (Lassoued et al., 2020 ; World Bank, 2020 ). It caused students to lose interest in attending classes online, affecting their academic achievement (Arënliu & Bërxulli, 2020 ; Quacquarelli Symonds, 2020 ). Shetty et al. ( 2020 ) reported many concerns facing students like lack of face-to-face interactions, lack of socialization, distraction by social media, and technology-related issues. They rated their concern about health, hygiene measures, and the feeling of loneliness as the significant reasons for their social concerns. Among the social concerns, students worried about their health and lack of social interaction leading to a lonely life. These observations support Guangul et al. ( 2020 ), Fernandez and Shaw ( 2020 ), Khalil et al. ( 2020 ), and Alnajjar et al. ( 2020 ). Reassuring students and parents with targeted communication should be vital in the institutional response (Daniel, 2020 ) to address the student concerns. Daniel ( 2020 ) further explained that teachers and counselors might be better than parents at assuaging students' anxieties in deprived situations. HEI should maintain continuous interaction with the students, using synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning modes. Almuraqab ( 2020 ) considered the resources to support teaching and learning an essential requirement to ease students' concerns. (See Fig. ​ Fig.1 1 )

Conceptual framework

Son et al. ( 2020 ) conducted interview surveys with 195 students at a large public university in the United States to understand the effects of the pandemic on their mental health and wellbeing. The majority of the participants indicated increased stress and anxiety due to the COVID-19 outbreak. They fear and worry about their health and loved ones, difficulty concentrating, disruptions to sleeping patterns, decreased social interactions due to social distancing and increased concerns on academic performance. Therefore, the third hypothesis is proposed:

• H3: Resource availability significantly affects students' academic and social concerns during online education.

Research methodology

Data collection method.

A quantitative survey method using a structured questionnaire is adopted for data collection. It is considered as an efficient way of collecting data from many respondents in geographically spread areas within a short time (Campbell et al., 2004 ). The researchers designed the questionnaire; some items of the questionnaire were developed from the literature review and previous studies (e.g., Quacquarelli Symonds, 2020 ; Almuraqab, 2020 ; Abu Shekhadim et al., 2020 ), while others were based on the researchers' experience and intuitiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The questionnaire included different parts. Part one consisted of demographic information of the participants such as gender, specialization, year of study, institution type (private or government), location of the HEI, type of internet connection they use (wi-fi or data mobile), and laptop ownership., and tools used for online learning (e.g., laptop, smartphone, or others). Part two consisted of student perceptions of the support provided by HEIs (5 items) and the support provided by faculty (4 items) during Spring 2020. They expressed their perceptions on a five-point Likert scale: "very effective = 5", "effective = 4", "neutral = 3", "ineffective = 2", and "very ineffective = 1". Part three consisted of student concerns during online education. They have expressed their concern in 7 items. Part four consisted of resources availability needed for online education (6 items). In parts three and four, students have expressed their opinions on a five-point Likert scale: "strongly agree = 5", "agree = 4", "neutral = 3", "disagree = 2", "strongly disagree = 1". The questionnaire also had open-ended questions that asked students what they appreciated about their lecturers and institutions and the kind of challenges they encountered during online education in the spring semester.

The internal consistency reliability of the questionnaire items was checked through the application of Cronbach's alpha tests of inter-reliability correlations. Table ​ Table1 1 shows Cronbach's Alpha which shows that our questionnaire is reliable given that all the items are above the minimum threshold of 0.7.

Cronbach's Alpha of the Questionnaire's Sections

To verify the validity and practicality of the questionnaire (Oppenheim, 2000 ), it was piloted with a group of students. In addition, to check the content validity, which referred to reviewing the questionnaire items by experts in the field to examine its readability, clarity, and comprehensiveness (Sangoseni et al., 2013 ), the questionnaire was reviewed by experts in the field, and their suggestions incorporated. The ethical considerations were adhered to by obtaining permission from institutions. Also, a research ethics form was completed and approved. The researchers obtained participants' informed consent before they participated in the online questionnaire, and they were assured that they could withdraw from the study at any time.

The questionnaire was plotted online from June 20 to July 26, 2020. The questionnaire was prepared in Arabic and English so students could adequately express themselves. The questionnaire link using 'Google forms' shared with the Ministry of Higher Education, and they provided full support for this study and communicated with all HEIs in Oman. They shared the link with their students through email and WhatsApp. The responses covered all regions in the Sultanate of Oman.

As per the most recent data received from the Education Council in the Sultanate of Oman, there are 127,962 students cumulatively enrolled in HEIs in Oman. In this study, we had 11,141 respondents, a response rate of 9%. This rate is sufficient as it aligns with the generalized scientific guideline for sample size decisions proposed by Krejcie and Morgan ( 1970 ). Krejcie and Morgan ( 1970 ) noted that as the population increases, the proportion of the population required in the sample size is reduced or even becomes static after reaching a specific limit. However, if the population size is small, then the whole population may be required as the sample (e.g., less than 30) (p. 610). For this study, the suitability of data checked using Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) and the Bartlett test. Here the KMO measure is greater than 0.6 (0.938), and the Bartlett test is statistically significant (0.000), so the data is deemed valid for use in this research (Bartlett, 1954 ; Kaiser, 1974 ).

Data are coded using Microsoft Excel and performed statistical analysis using Microsoft Excel and SPSS version 22. While reporting descriptive data, the study utilized percentage, mean (M) and standard deviation (SD). Hypothesis testing used the p -value, as recommended by Tabachnick and Fidell ( 2007 ). The study employed regression analysis and factor loading to explore the underlying relationships and the associations between the dependent and independent variables. Cronbach's alpha score confirmed the internal consistency of the questionnaire.

This section consists of results related to the main findings: demographic information of the participants, student perceptions of the support provided by HEIs, the support provided by faculty, resources' availability during online education, and student concerns during online education.

Demographic information of the participants

The demographic profile of participants is described in terms of gender, specialization, year of study, and location of the HEIs they attend. Female participants are more than double that of male. Out of the 11,114 students who participated in this study, 7,590 are female (67.9%), and 3,591 are male (32.1%). Concerning student’s specialization, 3,235 of them belongs to Engineering (28.9%), 2,769 in Business (24.8%), 1,918 in Computer Science/ IT (17.2%), and 1,413 in Nursing (12.6%). We have fewer respondents from other specializations: Applied Sciences (594), Education (244), Pharmacy (152), Language (101), Islamic Study (97), and Medicine (34). We also have 624 students from other specializations. All our participants are undergraduate students: 2,132 (19.1%) are still in the foundation program, 2,302 (20%) are in the first year of study, 2,743 (20.6%) respondents are in the second year of study (24.5%), 2,074 (18.5%) in the third year of study, 1,776 (15.9%) in the fourth year of study, and 87 students in other years of their studies. Their age ranged between 18 to 23 years old. Most of our respondents belong to government HEIs ( N  = 9108, 81%). Furthermore, our participants are studying in HEIs located in different regions in Oman. 35.7% of participants belong to Muscat ( N  = 3997), as most HEIs locates there. 60.4% HEIs moved online towards the end of the semester, while 28.7% and 10.9% moved online in the middle and at the beginning of the semester, respectively.

At the time of the data collection, less than half of our participants have their laptop ( N  = 5,140, 46%), while 4,046 share the same laptop with other people in the same house (36.2%), and 1,995 do not have a laptop at all (17.8%). Many of our participants have used their mobile data ( N  = 4,751, 42.5%) for internet connection, while only 2,717 (24.3%) have used wi-fi at home, and 3,713 (33.2%) have used both wi-fi and mobile data.

Descriptive analysis of the data

Table ​ Table2 2 presents the descriptive data. Students rated their perceptions with the support provided by the HEIs (3.45) more than the faculty support (3.02). Resource availability such as internet connection, having a suitable place for online studying, and having the required equipment to study online are rated moderate (3.13).

Mean and Standard Deviation

Students' social concerns due to anxiety, worries, and loneliness averaged (4.08). The pandemic and the subsequent lockdown forced students to change their academic routines completely, move online and socially distant. Interestingly, students' academic concerns averaged 4.25. Among the students' academic concerns, whether they will complete the academic semester, the workload during online education, and whether they will graduate on time were major academic concerns. Their average score significantly reflected both academic concerns and social concerns.

An interesting observation based on the correlation, shown in Table ​ Table3, 3 , there is a significant relationship between academic concerns and social concerns ( r  = 0.479, p  < 0.001).

Correlation Between Variables Selected

*Significant at 0.05 level; **significant at 0.01 level

Regression analysis

The results ( f -statistic = 1047.376, p  < 0.001) explains that 23.3% of the variability in student's academic concerns (adjusted R 2  = 27.5) can be explained by HEI support, faculty support and resource availability. The R 2 value is deemed accepted if greater than 0.1 and was deemed adequate for our study (Falk & Miller, 1992 ; Van Tonder & Petzer, 2018 ). Table ​ Table4 4 gives information about the regression coefficients for the predictor variables entered into the model. HEI support, faculty support, resource availability, and social concerns were significant predictors. Specifically, for the dependent variable (student social concern) an R 2 value equal to 0.234 was obtained, which declares that the independent variables (HEI support, faculty support, resources, and academic concerns) explained this dependent variable at 27.5%. (See Fig. ​ Fig.2 2 ).

Regression Results of (Academic Concern as Dependent Variable)

H 1 : Our data support the hypothesis that the HEI support (e.g., sharing timely information, technical support, and showing care for students) while taking online classes from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on the students' academic concern

H 2: Our data support the hypothesis that the faculty support (e.g., showing care for students, engaging and interacting with them) while taking online classes from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on the students' academic concern

H 3 : Our data support the hypothesis that the availability of the resources (e.g., internet connection, equipment needed for online education, suitable places to study) while taking online classes from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on the students' academic concern

Similarly, variables that were found significantly correlated with the dependent variable, student social concerns, were entered as predictors into a multiple regression using the standard method. A significant model emerged : F (4, 11,176) = 851.781, p  < 0.001. The model explains that 23.4% of the variance in student's social concerns (adjusted R 2= 23.3). Table ​ Table5 5 gives information about the regression coefficients for the predictor variables entered into the model. HEI support, faculty support, resource availability, and social concerns were significant predictors. Specifically, for the dependent variable (student academic concern) an R 2 value equal to 0.275 was obtained, which declares that the independent variables (HEI support, faculty support, resources, and social concerns) explained this dependent variable at 23.4%. (See Fig. ​ Fig.3 3 ).

Regression Results of (Social Concern as Dependent Variable)

H 1 : Our data support the hypothesis that the HEI support (e.g., sharing timely information, technical support, and showing care for students) while taking online classes from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on the students' social concern

H 2: Our data support the hypothesis that the faculty support (e.g., showing care for students, engaging, and interacting with them) while taking online classes from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact the students' social concern

H 3 : Our data do not support the hypothesis that the availability of the resources (e.g., internet connection, equipment needed for online education, suitable places to study) while taking online classes from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on the students' social concern

Factor analysis

In order to verify whether the selected variables are significant predictors of the dependent variables, the study utilized factor analysis. The composite reliability, Cronbach's alpha, average variance extracted (AVE), and Variance Inflation Factor index (VIF) were calculated to test the internal consistency and validity of the model. It is generally known that if the reliability coefficient is above 0.7, then it is acceptable (Carrasco & Jover,  2003 ), which shows that the measures are reliable and internally consistent.

Table ​ Table6 6 shows composite reliability is above 0.70 for all the variables in this study. The model's reliability is considered good if the composite reliability is more than 0.6 and the average variance extracted (AVE) is greater than 0.5 (Srinivasan et al., 2002 ). This level of AVE or higher indicates that, on average, the construct explains 50 percent or more of the variance of its indicators. Moreover, the AVE in this study is above 0.50, which indicates that the latent variables have a convergence ability that is quite ideal. The Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) is used to measure the degree of multi-collinearity of the independent variable with the other independent variables in a regression model. A value of ≤ 10 for VIF and 0.10 for the minimum level of tolerance is considered acceptable levels (Rovai et al., 2013 ).

Factor Loading

The changes happening in the DV variable can be explained collectively by the three factors 74.1% of the time. This means that about 26% can be explained by other variables not explored in this study. The model's validity is explained here, using the AVE, VIF, Cronbach alpha, Composite Reliability and R 2. Based on the factor analysis, HEI support, faculty support and resources are combined as factor I, while social concerns and academic concerns are combined as Factor II. Together they explain 74.4% of the variance out of total. This means that other factors will explain a 22% variance. The analysis is done using the rotation method.

While examining the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on students at HEIs, it is observed that all the empirical literature has univocally concluded that both social and academic concerns significantly influenced student experience in online learning at HEIs. The literature also highlighted the role of HEI support, faculty support, and resources in addressing the social and academic concerns of the students. Three major inferences were drawn based on the analysis. At first, this research supports the previous empirical findings that social concerns and academic concerns significantly affect student learning in online classes during the pandemic. Secondly, this research found that HEI support, faculty support, and resources available are significant predictors of academic concerns. The third important observation is that HEI support and faculty support significantly influence the student's social concerns. All the inferences point out that though the pandemic created social and academic concerns, strategic interventions from the HEI can play a significant role in addressing the concerns. Students feel lonely and are tensed due to the pandemic. However, HEI support, faculty support, and resources can play a major role in reducing social and academic concerns.

As outlined, this research furthers the empirical findings that students' academic and social concerns were significant during the current pandemic. For example, Shetty et al. ( 2020 ) considered it due to a lack of face-to-face communication, lack of social interaction, and technology-related issues. They rated their concern about health, hygiene measures, and the feeling of loneliness as the significant reasons for their social concerns. Among the social concerns, students worried about their health and lack of social interaction leading to a lonely life. These observations support Guangul et al. ( 2020 ); Fernandez and Shaw ( 2020 ); Khalil et al. ( 2020 ); Alnajjar et al. ( 2020 ); Son et al. ( 2020 ). Socialization is a significant part of student experiences before the pandemic. However, the emergency remote teaching, lockdown, and social distancing measures created anxiety and stress among students due to the suspension of face-to-face classes. Empirical research highlighted that students experienced stress, increased anxiety, and feeling less motivated (Almuraqab, 2020 ; Aristovnik et al., 2020 ; Duraku & Hoxha, 2020 ; Gillis & Krull, 2020 ). This research furthers the empirical findings and reports that social concerns significantly influenced their behavior during the pandemic. Four statements were mainly focused on the student's social concerns, and the overall score of the statement was 4.08, indicating a firm agreement with these statements. This inference is also significant and requires the attention of HEI and faculty.

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) is still around, this is a time of momentous change, and communication with students is more crucial than ever. Therefore, HEIs should use all possible means to communicate necessary information to their students. Tyrovolas et al. ( 2020 ) in Saudi Arabia reported that students perceived social media (e.g., Facebook and WhatsApp) as a more appropriate tool for communication due to its ease of use and simplicity. Therefore, HEIs should activate their accounts on social media and communicate information to their students. Additionally, the HEIs should communicate with students personally through personalized messaging and orientations as it is known that personal touch is an effective technique for involving students and supporting them. HEIs can also produce videos about health and safety measures or rationale for decisions made and send them to students and their families. In addition, the HEIs should support students to diminish students' concerns by providing them with counseling services. Daniel ( 2020 ) explained that counselors might be better than parents at assuaging students' anxieties in deprived situations.

Specifically addressing the academic concerns, this research established that HEI support, faculty support, and resources significantly influence student's academic concerns. Unlike face-to-face teaching, wherein the students and faculty interact daily, online learning created a physical distance. Add to this the social pressures and tensions posed by the pandemic. In order to mitigate students' academic concerns, HEIs strategic interventions are required. For instance, the HEIs have to design appropriate and compelling content and establish an adequate infrastructure for their current faculty to achieve better learning outcomes.

Furthermore, HEIs should provide their faculty with the necessary training to successfully carry out online learning, increase student interaction, and achieve quality in online education. HEIs must encourage synchronous online sessions since they give lecturers more opportunities to interact with their students, respond to their inquiries, and establish peer collaboration, leading to a better understanding of the topics studied (Papadima-Sophocleous & Loizides, 2016 ). Teachers should utilize professional development activities to improve their technological and pedagogical competencies. Communities of Practice (COP) are recommended to share common interests or passion in a certain area and regularly meet to exchange ideas and assist each other to develop professionally (Wenger et al.,  2002 ).

The reasons for academic concerns are increased workload (Realyvásquez-Vargas et al., 2020 ; Aristovnik et al., 2020 ; Mishra et al., 2020 ), the volume of assignments (Al-Salman & Haider, 2021 ) lack of proper guidance (Ali, 2020 ; Sullivan et al., 2018 ). All these factors were significant based on the analysis. For instance, the statement "my university/college workload has significantly increased during online education' is rated as strongly agree, with a mean score of 4.08 by students. This observation supports the empirical research findings and requires the attention of HEI administrators. As students, similar to any other group of people, are also undergoing tremendous pressure due to the pandemic in terms of health and safety concerns and feelings of loneliness, adding more assignments and activities will only negatively impact their studies. This also requires HEIs and faculty to continuously interact with students and address their concerns to feel supported during this pandemic. Blackmon and Major ( 2012 ) emphasized that teachers had a substantial impact on students' online education experience, largely through their being accessible during the course and providing needed support to their students. They also highlighted that if the students had negative experiences with their teachers due to lack of contact or support, students would be uncomfortable during the online experience, affecting their performance. Therefore, the HEIs need to develop policies and procedures to ensure that teachers provide adequate support for their students during the online teaching mode. This can be done via conducting one-to-one meetings with individuals or groups of students to address their needs or via their efforts to provide opportunities for their students to connect with peers.

The findings revealed that resources such as internet connectivity have also impacted student's academic concerns. Internet connectivity issues hinder student's ability to attend and participate in their course online. Internet connection has been an issue for many years, and the research findings complement numerous previous studies in different parts of the world, not exclusively limited to Oman (Ali, 2020 ; Amita, 2020 ; Duraku & Hoxha, 2020 ; Huang et al., 2020 ; Lassoued et al., 2020 ; Means & Neisler, 2020 ). Therefore, Oman needs to enhance its online infrastructure, especially internet connection, speed, and internet prices to benefit from online learning in the future.

Given that the pandemic is ongoing worldwide and strict measures are still continuously applied, such as lockdown and distance education, the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacts higher education. The research findings demand interventions and preventive strategies to address the academic and social concerns of students. They need psychosocial and robust counseling services to provide the necessary support to help them overcome this stage. Even though COVID has changed the way universities operate, most importantly, HEIs should exert more effort to care for their students and make sure that their concerns are well managed. This can be achieved by constant communication with them and considering sustainable mental health support as a priority for the university. Purcell and Lumbreras ( 2021 ) stated that the pandemic is a period of punctuated equilibrium. The learnings from this period could lead to transformation in the HEI sector towards more significant equity and impact across teaching/learning, research/innovation, community service/engagement, and the staff/students' experience.

Future work should concentrate on students' equal access to DE where student needs and technical profiles are investigated, so necessary policies and interventions can be suggested to provide equal opportunities to all students. In addition, future research should examine the types of interactions among students and teachers during DE and their effectiveness. This is in addition to identifying the best practices to ensure students' wellbeing during DE and maintaining their active engagement with their HEIs, teachers, and peers. In addition, a similar study can be conducted to examine teachers' academic and social concerns,

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to sincerely appreciate the support provided by the Education Council, the Ministry of Higher Education, and the different higher education institutions in Oman. Appreciation is also extended for students for their valuable time and answering the surveys for this research.

No fund was received for this research.

Declaration

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher's Note

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

Contributor Information

Azzah Al-Maskari, Email: [email protected] .

Thurayya Al-Riyami, Email: mo.ude.tci@r_ayaruht .

Siraj K. Kunjumuhammed, Email: mo.ude.sbcm@jaris .

• Abbasi, S., Ayoob, T., Malik, A., & Memon, S. I. (2020). Perceptions of students regarding E-learning during Covid-19 at a private medical college. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences , 36 (COVID19-S4). [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Active Minds. (2020). "The Impact of COVID-19 on Student Mental Health." COVID-19 Student Survey. https://www.activeminds.org/studentsurvey/ .
• Adnan M, Anwar K. Online Learning amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Students' Perspectives. Online Submission. 2020; 2 (1):45–51. [ Google Scholar ]
• Almanthari, A., Maulina, S., & Bruce, S. (2020). Secondary school mathematics teachers' views on e-learning implementation barriers during the Covid-19 pandemic: The case of Indonesia. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education , 16(7).
• Ali W. Online and remote learning in higher education institutes: A necessity in light of COVID-19 pandemic. Higher Education Studies. 2020; 10 (3):16–25. doi: 10.5539/hes.v10n3p16. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Almuraqab, N. A. S. (2020). Shall universities at the UAE continue distance learning after the Covid-19 pandemic? Revealing students' perspective.  International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering and Technology (IJARET) ,  11 (5).
• Alnajjar, H., Asif, U., & Bano, N. (2020). Faculty Experiences with Emergency Transition to Online Teaching amid COVID-19 Pandemic in a Health Science University. Prensa Medica Argentina, S2 , 024. 10.47275/0032-745X-S2-024
• Al-Salman S, Haider AS. Jordanian University Students' Views on Emergency Online Learning during COVID-19. Online Learning. 2021; 25 (1):286–302. doi: 10.24059/olj.v25i1.2470. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Altamirano, M. A., & Collazo, C. E. R. (2020). Leading with Emotional Intelligence: How Leaders of a Diverse-Based Urban College in New York Successfully Respond to the COVID-19 Crisis of 2020.  COmmunication is RObust when NAtions Come Together: The Importance of Collaboration during a Global Crisis .
• Amita. (2020). E-learning experience of students in higher education institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic: A primary survey. In Raj Pal Singh, Anupama Singh and Rakesh Kumar, COVID-19 Pandemic: A Global Challenge (pp. 115–131), ISBN 978–93–86695–28–4. New Delhi: Aryan Publications.
• Arënliu, A., & Bërxulli, D. (2020). Rapid assessment: Psychological distress among students in Kosovo during the COVID-19 pandemic Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340262171_Rapid_assessment_Psychological_distress_among_students_in_Kosovo_during_the_COVID_19_pandemic
• Aristovnik A, Keržič D, Ravšelj D, Tomaževič N, Umek L. Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on life of higher education students: A global perspective. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (20):8438. doi: 10.3390/su12208438. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bartlett MS. A note on the multiplying factors for various χ2 approximations. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (methodological) 1954; 16 (2):296–298. [ Google Scholar ]
• Basilaia, G., & Kvavadze, D. (2020). Transition to online education in schools during a SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Georgia.  Pedagogical Research ,  5 (4).
• Bates R, Khasawneh S. Self-efficacy and college students' perceptions and use of online learning systems. Computers in Human Behavior. 2007; 23 (1):175–191. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2004.04.004. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baticulon, R. E., Alberto, N. R. I., Baron, M. B. C., Mabulay, R. E. C., Rizada, L. G. T., Sy, J. J., & Reyes, J. C. B. (2020). Barriers to online learning in the time of COVID-19: A national survey of medical students in the Philippines. medRxiv . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Biancarosa, G., & Griffiths, G. G. (2012). Technology tools to support reading in the digital age.  The Future of Children , 139–160. [ PubMed ]
• Blackmon, S. J., & Major, C. (2012). Student experiences in online courses: A Qualitative Research Synthesis. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 13 (2).‏
• Campbell, A., McNamara O., & Gilroy, P. (2004). "Researching professional development." Practitioner Research and Professional Development in Education, 12–27.
• Carrasco, J. L., & Jover, L. (2003). Assessing individual bioequivalence using the structural equation model. Statistics in medicine, 22 , 901–912. [CrossRef] [PubMed] [ PubMed ]
• Chaaban Y, Ellili-Cherif M. Technology integration in EFL classrooms: A study of Qatari independent schools. Education and Information Technologies. 2017; 22 (5):2433–2454. doi: 10.1007/s10639-016-9552-3. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cohen J. Maker principles and technologies in teacher education: A national survey. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. 2017; 25 (1):5–30. [ Google Scholar ]
• Daniel J. Education and the COVID-19 pandemic. Prospects. 2020; 49 :91–96. doi: 10.1007/s11125-020-09464-3. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Draissi, Z., & ZhanYong, Q. (2020). COVID-19 Outbreak Response Plan: Implementing Distance Education in Moroccan Universities. Available at SSRN 3586783 .
• Drane, C., Vernon, L., & O'Shea, S. (2020). The impact of 'learning at home'on the educational outcomes of vulnerable children in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Literature Review Prepared by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education. Curtin University, Australia .
• Duraku ZH, Hoxha N. The impact of COVID-19, school closure, and social isolation on gifted students' wellbeing and attitudes toward remote (online) learning. Available from. 2020 doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23967.38567/1. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Falk RF, Miller NB. A primer for soft modeling. University of Akron Press; 1992. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fernandez AA, Shaw GP. Academic Leadership in a Time of Crisis: The Coronavirus and COVID-19. Journal of Leadership Studies. 2020; 14 (1):39–45. doi: 10.1002/jls.21684. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ferriman, J. (2013). 5 Reasons Why MOOCs Provide Little Real Value, LearnDash, February 18, available at http://www.learndash.com/5-reasons-why-moocs-provide-little-real-value/ , accessed September 19, 2013.
• Gillis A, Krull LM. COVID-19 Remote Learning Transition in Spring 2020: Class Structures, Student Perceptions, and Inequality in College Courses. Teaching Sociology. 2020; 48 (4):283–299. doi: 10.1177/0092055X20954263. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Guangul, F. M., Suhail, A. H., Khalit, M. I., & Khidhir, B. A. (2020). Challenges of remote assessment in higher education in the context of COVID-19: a case study of Middle East College. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability , 1–17. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Hetsevich, I. (2017). Advantages and Disadvantages of E-Learning Technologies for Students. Joomlalms.
• Holmberg, B. (1977). Distance education: A survey and bibliography.
• Huang RH, Liu DJ, Tlili A, Yang JF, Wang HH. Handbook on facilitating flexible learning during educational disruption: The Chinese experience in maintaining undisrupted learning in COVID-19 Outbreak. Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University; 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaiser HF. An index of factorial simplicity. Psychometrika. 1974; 39 (1):31–36. doi: 10.1007/BF02291575. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kamarianos, I., Adamopoulou, A., Lambropoulos, H., & Stamelos, G. (2020). Towards an understanding of university students'response in times of pandemic crisis (COVID-19). European Journal of Education Studies , 7 (7).
• Khalil R, Mansour AE, Fadda WA, Almisnid K, Aldamegh M, Al-Nafeesah A, Al-Wutayd O. The sudden transition to synchronized online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia: A qualitative study exploring medical students' perspectives. BMC Medical Education. 2020; 20 (1):1–10. doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02208-z. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kim, H., Krishnan, C., Law, J., & Rounsaville, T. (2020). "COVID-19 and US higher education enrollment: Preparing leaders for fall."
• Krejcie RV, Morgan DW. Determining sample size for research activities. Educational and Psychological Measurement. 1970; 30 (3):607–610. doi: 10.1177/001316447003000308. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lassoued Z, Alhendawi M, Bashitialshaaer R. An Exploratory Study of the Obstacles for Achieving Quality in Distance Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Education Sciences. 2020; 10 (9):232. doi: 10.3390/educsci10090232. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mahdy, M. A. (2020). "The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Academic Performance of Veterinary Medical Students." [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Means, B., & Neisler, J. (2020). Suddenly online: a national survey of undergraduates during the COVID-19 pandemic . Digital Promise.
• Mishra, L., Gupta, T., & Shree, A. (2020). Online teaching-learning in higher education during lockdown period of COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 1 , 100012. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Oppenheim AN. Questionnaire design, interviewing and attitude measurement. Bloomsbury Publishing; 2000. [ Google Scholar ]
• Papadima-Sophocleous, S., & Loizides, F. (2016). Exploring the benefits and disadvantages of introducing synchronous to asynchronous online technologies to facilitate flexibility in learning. CALL communities and culture–short papers from EUROCALL , 363–368.
• Purcell WM, Lumbreras J. Higher education and the COVID-19 pandemic: Navigating disruption using the sustainable development goals. Discover Sustainability. 2021; 2 (1):1–16. doi: 10.1007/s43621-021-00013-2. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Realyvásquez-Vargas A, Maldonado-Macías AA, Arredondo-Soto KC, Baez-Lopez Y, Carrillo-Gutiérrez T, Hernández-Escobedo G. The impact of environmental factors on academic performance of university students taking online classes during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (21):9194. doi: 10.3390/su12219194. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rovai, A. P., Baker, J. D., & Ponton, M. K. (2013). Social science research design and statistics: A practitioner's guide to research methods and IBM SPSS. Watertree Press LLC.
• Sangoseni O, Hellman M, Hill C. Development and validation of a questionnaire to assess the effect of online learning on behaviors, attitudes, and clinical practices of physical therapists in the United States regarding evidenced-based clinical practice. Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice. 2013; 11 (2):7. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sahu, P. (2020). Closure of universities due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): impact on education and mental health of students and academic staff. Cureus , 12 (4). [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Sarker, M. F. H., Al Mahmud, R., Islam, M. S., & Islam, M. K. (2019). Use of e-learning at higher educational institutions in Bangladesh.  Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education .
• Shekhadim, A., Awad, E. A., & Khalil, K. A. (2020). The effectiveness of e-learning in light of the spread of the Corona virus from the viewpoint of teachers at the University Palestine Tech (Khadouri). Arab Journal for Scientific Publishing (AJSP), 21 , 365–389. https://staff.najah.edu/media/published_research/2020/06/20/
• Shetty, S., Shilpa, C., Dey, D., & Kavya, S. (2020). Academic crisis during COVID-19: Online classes, a panacea for imminent doctors, Indian Journal of Otolaryngoly and Head Neck Surgery , pp.1–5. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Son C, Hegde S, Smith A, Wang X, Sasangohar F. Effects of COVID-19 on college students' mental health in the United States: Interview survey study. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2020; 22 (9):e21279. doi: 10.2196/21279. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Srinivasan R, Lilien GL, Rangaswamy A. Technological opportunism and radical technology adoption: An application to e-business. Journal of Marketing. 2002; 66 :47–60. doi: 10.1509/jmkg.66.3.47.18508. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sullivan R, Neu V, Yang F. Faculty development to promote effective instructional technology integration: A qualitative examination of reflections in an online community. Online Learning. 2018; 22 (4):341–359. doi: 10.24059/olj.v22i4.1373. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Symonds, Q. (2020). The impact of the coronavirus on global higher education. Retrieved from https://www.qs.com/
• Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2007).  Experimental designs using ANOVA  (p. 724). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Brooks/Cole.
• Tyrovolas S, El Bcheraoui C, Alghnam SA, Alhabib KF, Almadi MAH, Al-Raddadi RM, Mokdad AH. The burden of disease in Saudi Arabia 1990–2017: Results from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet Planetary Health. 2020; 4 (5):e195–e208. doi: 10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30075-9. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• UNESCO IESALC. (2020). COVID-19 and higher education: Today and tomorrow. Impact analysis, policy responses and recommendations. Retrieved from http://www.iesalc.unesco.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/COVID-19-EN090420-2.pdf
• Van Tonder, E., & Petzer, D. J. (2018). The interrelationships between relationship marketing constructs and customer engagement dimensions. The Service Industries Journal, 38 (13–14), 948–973.
• Vrasidas C. The rhetoric of reform and teachers' use of ICT. British Journal of Educational Technology. 2015; 46 (2):370–380. doi: 10.1111/bjet.12149. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business Press.
• World Bank. (2020). The COVID-19 Crisis Response: Supporting Tertiary Education for Continuity, Adaptation, and Innovation.
• Yilmaz, R., Yilmaz, F. G. K., & Keser, H. (2020). Vertical versus shared e-leadership approach in online project-based learning: a comparison of self-regulated learning skills, motivation and group collaboration processes.  Journal of Computing in Higher Education , 1–27.
• Zeeshan M, Chaudhry AG, Khan SE. Pandemic preparedness and techno stress among faculty of DAIs in Covid-19. Sir Syed Journal of Education & Social Research (SJESR) 2020; 3 :383–396. doi: 10.36902/sjesr-vol3-iss2-2020(383-396). [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhou, P., Yang, X. L., Wang, X. G., Hu, B., Zhang, L., Zhang, W., & Shi, Z. L. (2020). A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin.  Nature ,  579 (7798), 270–273. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2021)

Chapter: 8 major findings and research questions, 8 major findings and research questions, introduction.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in late 2019, created unprecedented global disruption and infused a significant level of uncertainty into the lives of individuals, both personally and professionally, around the world throughout 2020. The significant effect on vulnerable populations, such as essential workers and the elderly, is well documented, as is the devastating effect the COVID-19 pandemic had on the economy, particularly brick-and-mortar retail and hospitality and food services. Concurrently, the deaths of unarmed Black people at the hands of law enforcement officers created a heightened awareness of the persistence of structural injustices in U.S. society.

Against the backdrop of this public health crisis, economic upheaval, and amplified social consciousness, an ad hoc committee was appointed to review the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in academic science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) during 2020. The committee’s work built on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine: Opening Doors (the Promising Practices report), which presents evidence-based recommendations to address the well-established structural barriers that impede the advancement of women in STEMM. However, the committee recognized that none of the actions identified in the Promising Practices report were conceived within the context of a pandemic, an economic downturn, or the emergence of national protests against structural racism. The representation and vitality of academic women in STEMM had already warranted national attention prior to these events, and the COVID-19

pandemic appeared to represent an additional risk to the fragile progress that women had made in some STEMM disciplines. Furthermore, the future will almost certainly hold additional, unforeseen disruptions, which underscores the importance of the committee’s work.

In times of stress, there is a risk that the divide will deepen between those who already have advantages and those who do not. In academia, senior and tenured academics are more likely to have an established reputation, a stable salary commitment, and power within the academic system. They are more likely, before the COVID-19 pandemic began, to have established professional networks, generated data that can be used to write papers, and achieved financial and job security. While those who have these advantages may benefit from a level of stability relative to others during stressful times, those who were previously systemically disadvantaged are more likely to experience additional strain and instability.

As this report has documented, during 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic had overall negative effects on women in academic STEMM in areas such productivity, boundary setting and boundary control, networking and community building, burnout rates, and mental well-being. The excessive expectations of caregiving that often fall on the shoulders of women cut across career timeline and rank (e.g., graduate student, postdoctoral scholar, non-tenure-track and other contingent faculty, tenure-track faculty), institution type, and scientific discipline. Although there have been opportunities for innovation and some potential shifts in expectations, increased caregiving demands associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, such as remote working, school closures, and childcare and eldercare, had disproportionately negative outcomes for women.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in STEMM during 2020 are understood better through an intentionally intersectional lens. Productivity, career, boundary setting, mental well-being, and health are all influenced by the ways in which social identities are defined and cultivated within social and power structures. Race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, academic career stage, appointment type, institution type, age, and disability status, among many other factors, can amplify or diminish the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for a given person. For example, non-cisgender women may be forced to return to home environments where their gender identity is not accepted, increasing their stress and isolation, and decreasing their well-being. Women of Color had a higher likelihood of facing a COVID-19–related death in their family compared with their white, non-Hispanic colleagues. The full extent of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for women of various social identities was not fully understood at the end of 2020.

Considering the relative paucity of women in many STEMM fields prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, women are more likely to experience academic isolation, including limited access to mentors, sponsors, and role models that share gender, racial, or ethnic identities. Combining this reality with the physical isolation stipulated by public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic,

women in STEMM were subject to increasing isolation within their fields, networks, and communities. Explicit attention to the early indicators of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected women in academic STEMM careers during 2020, as well as attention to crisis responses throughout history, may provide opportunities to mitigate some of the long-term effects and potentially develop a more resilient and equitable academic STEMM system.

MAJOR FINDINGS

Given the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not possible to fully understand the entirety of the short- or long-term implications of this global disruption on the careers of women in academic STEMM. Having gathered preliminary data and evidence available in 2020, the committee found that significant changes to women’s work-life boundaries and divisions of labor, careers, productivity, advancement, mentoring and networking relationships, and mental health and well-being have been observed. The following findings represent those aspects that the committee agreed have been substantiated by the preliminary data, evidence, and information gathered by the end of 2020. They are presented either as Established Research and Experiences from Previous Events or Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic during 2020 that parallel the topics as presented in the report.

Established Research and Experiences from Previous Events

___________________

1 This finding is primarily based on research on cisgender women and men.

Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic during 2020

Research questions.

While this report compiled much of the research, data, and evidence available in 2020 on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, future research is still needed to understand all the potential effects, especially any long-term implications. The research questions represent areas the committee identified for future research, rather than specific recommendations. They are presented in six categories that parallel the chapters of the report: Cross-Cutting Themes; Academic Productivity and Institutional Responses; Work-Life Boundaries and Gendered Divisions of Labor; Collaboration, Networking, and Professional Societies; Academic Leadership and Decision-Making; and Mental Health and Well-being. The committee hopes the report will be used as a basis for continued understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in its entirety and as a reference for mitigating impacts of future disruptions that affect women in academic STEMM. The committee also hopes that these research questions may enable academic STEMM to emerge from the pandemic era a stronger, more equitable place for women. Therefore, the committee identifies two types of research questions in each category; listed first are those questions aimed at understanding the impacts of the disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by those questions exploring the opportunities to help support the full participation of women in the future.

Cross-Cutting Themes

• What are the short- and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the career trajectories, job stability, and leadership roles of women, particularly of Black women and other Women of Color? How do these effects vary across institutional characteristics, 2 discipline, and career stage?

2 Institutional characteristics include different institutional types (e.g., research university, liberal arts college, community college), locales (e.g., urban, rural), missions (e.g., Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Asian American/Native American/Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities), and levels of resources.

• How did the confluence of structural racism, economic hardships, and environmental disruptions affect Women of Color during the COVID-19 pandemic? Specifically, how did the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black citizens impact Black women academics’ safety, ability to be productive, and mental health?
• How has the inclusion of women in leadership and other roles in the academy influenced the ability of institutions to respond to the confluence of major social crises during the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How can institutions build on the involvement women had across STEMM disciplines during the COVID-19 pandemic to increase the participation of women in STEMM and/or elevate and support women in their current STEMM-related positions?
• How can institutions adapt, leverage, and learn from approaches developed during 2020 to attend to challenges experienced by Women of Color in STEMM in the future?

Academic Productivity and Institutional Responses

• How did the institutional responses (e.g., policies, practices) that were outlined in the Major Findings impact women faculty across institutional characteristics and disciplines?
• What are the short- and long-term effects of faculty evaluation practices and extension policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic on the productivity and career trajectories of members of the academic STEMM workforce by gender?
• What adaptations did women use during the transition to online and hybrid teaching modes? How did these techniques and adaptations vary as a function of career stage and institutional characteristics?
• What are examples of institutional changes implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that have the potential to reduce systemic barriers to participation and advancement that have historically been faced by academic women in STEMM, specifically Women of Color and other marginalized women in STEMM? How might positive institutional responses be leveraged to create a more resilient and responsive higher education ecosystem?
• How can or should funding arrangements be altered (e.g., changes in funding for research and/or mentorship programs) to support new ways of interaction for women in STEMM during times of disruption, such as the COVID-19 pandemic?

Work-Life Boundaries and Gendered Divisions of Labor

• How do different social identities (e.g., racial; socioeconomic status; culturally, ethnically, sexually, or gender diverse; immigration status; parents of young children and other caregivers; women without partners) influence the management of work-nonwork boundaries? How did this change during the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How have COVID-19 pandemic-related disruptions affected progress toward reducing the gender gap in academic STEMM labor-force participation? How does this differ for Women of Color or women with caregiving responsibilities?
• How can institutions account for the unique challenges of women faculty with parenthood and caregiving responsibilities when developing effective and equitable policies, practices, or programs?
• How might insights gained about work-life boundaries during the COVID-19 pandemic inform how institutions develop and implement supportive resources (e.g., reductions in workload, on-site childcare, flexible working options)?

Collaboration, Networking, and Professional Societies

• What were the short- and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic-prompted switch from in-person conferences to virtual conferences on conference culture and climate, especially for women in STEMM?
• How will the increase in virtual conferences specifically affect women’s advancement and career trajectories? How will it affect women’s collaborations?
• How has the shift away from attending conferences and in-person networking changed longer-term mentoring and sponsoring relationships, particularly in terms of gender dynamics?
• How can institutions maximize the benefits of digitization and the increased use of technology observed during the COVID-19 pandemic to continue supporting women, especially marginalized women, by increasing accessibility, collaborations, mentorship, and learning?
• How can organizations that support, host, or facilitate online and virtual conferences and networking events (1) ensure open and fair access to participants who face different funding and time constraints; (2) foster virtual connections among peers, mentors, and sponsors; and (3) maintain an inclusive environment to scientists of all backgrounds?
• What policies, practices, or programs can be developed to help women in STEMM maintain a sense of support, structure, and stability during and after periods of disruption?

Academic Leadership and Decision-Making

• What specific interventions did colleges and universities initiate or prioritize to ensure that women were included in decision-making processes during responses to the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How effective were colleges and universities that prioritized equity-minded leadership, shared leadership, and crisis leadership styles at mitigating emerging and potential negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in their communities?
• What specific aspects of different leadership models translated to more effective strategies to advance women in STEMM, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How can examples of intentional inclusion of women in decision-making processes during the COVID-19 pandemic be leveraged to develop the engagement of women as leaders at all levels of academic institutions?
• What are potential “top-down” structural changes in academia that can be implemented to mitigate the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic or other disruptions?
• How can academic leadership, at all levels, more effectively support the mental health needs of women in STEMM?

Mental Health and Well-being

• What is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and institutional responses on the mental health and well-being of members of the academic STEMM workforce as a function of gender, race, and career stage?
• How are tools and diagnostic tests to measure aspects of wellbeing, including burnout and insomnia, used in academic settings? How does this change during times of increased stress, such as the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How might insights gained about mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic be used to inform preparedness for future disruptions?
• How can programs that focus on changes in biomarkers of stress and mood dysregulation, such as levels of sleep, activity, and texting patterns, be developed and implemented to better engage women in addressing their mental health?
• What are effective interventions to address the health of women academics in STEMM that specifically account for the effects of stress on women? What are effective interventions to mitigate the excessive levels of stress for Women of Color?

This page intentionally left blank.

The spring of 2020 marked a change in how almost everyone conducted their personal and professional lives, both within science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) and beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global scientific conferences and individual laboratories and required people to find space in their homes from which to work. It blurred the boundaries between work and non-work, infusing ambiguity into everyday activities. While adaptations that allowed people to connect became more common, the evidence available at the end of 2020 suggests that the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic endangered the engagement, experience, and retention of women in academic STEMM, and may roll back some of the achievement gains made by women in the academy to date.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identifies, names, and documents how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the careers of women in academic STEMM during the initial 9-month period since March 2020 and considers how these disruptions - both positive and negative - might shape future progress for women. This publication builds on the 2020 report Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine to develop a comprehensive understanding of the nuanced ways these disruptions have manifested. The Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will inform the academic community as it emerges from the pandemic to mitigate any long-term negative consequences for the continued advancement of women in the academic STEMM workforce and build on the adaptations and opportunities that have emerged.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Study Protocol

Assessing the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, shift to online learning, and social media use on the mental health of college students in the Philippines: A mixed-method study protocol

Roles Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft

Affiliation College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines

Roles Methodology, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Clinical Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines, Institute of Clinical Epidemiology, National Institutes of Health, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines

Roles Methodology

Affiliation Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

• Leonard Thomas S. Lim, 
• Zypher Jude G. Regencia, 
• J. Rem C. Dela Cruz, 
• Frances Dominique V. Ho, 
• Marcela S. Rodolfo, 
• Josefina Ly-Uson, 
• Emmanuel S. Baja

• Published: May 3, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267555
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic declared by the WHO has affected many countries rendering everyday lives halted. In the Philippines, the lockdown quarantine protocols have shifted the traditional college classes to online. The abrupt transition to online classes may bring psychological effects to college students due to continuous isolation and lack of interaction with fellow students and teachers. Our study aims to assess Filipino college students’ mental health status and to estimate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to online learning, and social media use on mental health. In addition, facilitators or stressors that modified the mental health status of the college students during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning will be investigated.

Methods and analysis

Mixed-method study design will be used, which will involve: (1) an online survey to 2,100 college students across the Philippines; and (2) randomly selected 20–40 key informant interviews (KIIs). Online self-administered questionnaire (SAQ) including Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Brief-COPE will be used. Moreover, socio-demographic factors, social media usage, shift to online learning factors, family history of mental health and COVID-19, and other factors that could affect mental health will also be included in the SAQ. KIIs will explore factors affecting the student’s mental health, behaviors, coping mechanism, current stressors, and other emotional reactions to these stressors. Associations between mental health outcomes and possible risk factors will be estimated using generalized linear models, while a thematic approach will be made for the findings from the KIIs. Results of the study will then be triangulated and summarized.

Ethics and dissemination

Our study has been approved by the University of the Philippines Manila Research Ethics Board (UPMREB 2021-099-01). The results will be actively disseminated through conference presentations, peer-reviewed journals, social media, print and broadcast media, and various stakeholder activities.

Citation: Lim LTS, Regencia ZJG, Dela Cruz JRC, Ho FDV, Rodolfo MS, Ly-Uson J, et al. (2022) Assessing the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, shift to online learning, and social media use on the mental health of college students in the Philippines: A mixed-method study protocol. PLoS ONE 17(5): e0267555. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267555

Editor: Elisa Panada, UNITED KINGDOM

Received: June 9, 2021; Accepted: April 11, 2022; Published: May 3, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Lim et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This project is being supported by the American Red Cross through the Philippine Red Cross and Red Cross Youth. The funder will not have a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak as a global pandemic, and the Philippines is one of the 213 countries affected by the disease [ 1 ]. To reduce the virus’s transmission, the President imposed an enhanced community quarantine in Luzon, the country’s northern and most populous island, on March 16, 2020. This lockdown manifested as curfews, checkpoints, travel restrictions, and suspension of business and school activities [ 2 ]. However, as the virus is yet to be curbed, varying quarantine restrictions are implemented across the country. In addition, schools have shifted to online learning, despite financial and psychological concerns [ 3 ].

Previous outbreaks such as the swine flu crisis adversely influenced the well-being of affected populations, causing them to develop emotional problems and raising the importance of integrating mental health into medical preparedness for similar disasters [ 4 ]. In one study conducted on university students during the swine flu pandemic in 2009, 45% were worried about personally or a family member contracting swine flu, while 10.7% were panicking, feeling depressed, or emotionally disturbed. This study suggests that preventive measures to alleviate distress through health education and promotion are warranted [ 5 ].

During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers worldwide have been churning out studies on its psychological effects on different populations [ 6 – 9 ]. The indirect effects of COVID-19, such as quarantine measures, the infection of family and friends, and the death of loved ones, could worsen the overall mental wellbeing of individuals [ 6 ]. Studies from 2020 to 2021 link the pandemic to emotional disturbances among those in quarantine, even going as far as giving vulnerable populations the inclination to commit suicide [ 7 , 8 ], persistent effect on mood and wellness [ 9 ], and depression and anxiety [ 10 ].

In the Philippines, a survey of 1,879 respondents measuring the psychological effects of COVID-19 during its early phase in 2020 was released. Results showed that one-fourth of respondents reported moderate-to-severe anxiety, while one-sixth reported moderate-to-severe depression [ 11 ]. In addition, other local studies in 2020 examined the mental health of frontline workers such as nurses and physicians—placing emphasis on the importance of psychological support in minimizing anxiety [ 12 , 13 ].

Since the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, risk factors that could affect specific populations’ psychological well-being have been studied [ 14 , 15 ]. A cohort study on 1,773 COVID-19 hospitalized patients in 2021 found that survivors were mainly troubled with fatigue, muscle weakness, sleep difficulties, and depression or anxiety [ 16 ]. Their results usually associate the crisis with fear, anxiety, depression, reduced sleep quality, and distress among the general population.

Moreover, the pandemic also exacerbated the condition of people with pre-existing psychiatric disorders, especially patients that live in high COVID-19 prevalence areas [ 17 ]. People suffering from mood and substance use disorders that have been infected with COVID-19 showed higher suicide risks [ 7 , 18 ]. Furthermore, a study in 2020 cited the following factors contributing to increased suicide risk: social isolation, fear of contagion, anxiety, uncertainty, chronic stress, and economic difficulties [ 19 ].

Globally, multiple studies have shown that mental health disorders among university student populations are prevalent [ 13 , 20 – 22 ]. In a 2007 survey of 2,843 undergraduate and graduate students at a large midwestern public university in the United States, the estimated prevalence of any depressive or anxiety disorder was 15.6% and 13.0% for undergraduate and graduate students, respectively [ 20 ]. Meanwhile, in a 2013 study of 506 students from 4 public universities in Malaysia, 27.5% and 9.7% had moderate and severe or extremely severe depression, respectively; 34% and 29% had moderate and severe or extremely severe anxiety, respectively [ 21 ]. In China, a 2016 meta-analysis aiming to establish the national prevalence of depression among university students analyzed 39 studies from 1995 to 2015; the meta-analysis found that the overall prevalence of depression was 23.8% across all studies that included 32,694 Chinese university students [ 23 ].

A college student’s mental status may be significantly affected by the successful fulfillment of a student’s role. A 2013 study found that acceptable teaching methods can enhance students’ satisfaction and academic performance, both linked to their mental health [ 24 ]. However, online learning poses multiple challenges to these methods [ 3 ]. Furthermore, a 2020 study found that students’ mental status is affected by their social support systems, which, in turn, may be jeopardized by the COVID-19 pandemic and the physical limitations it has imposed. Support accessible to a student through social ties to other individuals, groups, and the greater community is a form of social support; university students may draw social support from family, friends, classmates, teachers, and a significant other [ 25 , 26 ]. Among individuals undergoing social isolation and distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, social support has been found to be inversely related to depression, anxiety, irritability, sleep quality, and loneliness, with higher levels of social support reducing the risk of depression and improving sleep quality [ 27 ]. Lastly, it has been shown in a 2020 study that social support builds resilience, a protective factor against depression, anxiety, and stress [ 28 ]. Therefore, given the protective effects of social support on psychological health, a supportive environment should be maintained in the classroom. Online learning must be perceived as an inclusive community and a safe space for peer-to-peer interactions [ 29 ]. This is echoed in another study in 2019 on depressed students who narrated their need to see themselves reflected on others [ 30 ]. Whether or not online learning currently implemented has successfully transitioned remains to be seen.

The effect of social media on students’ mental health has been a topic of interest even before the pandemic [ 31 , 32 ]. A systematic review published in 2020 found that social media use is responsible for aggravating mental health problems and that prominent risk factors for depression and anxiety include time spent, activity, and addiction to social media [ 31 ]. Another systematic review published in 2016 argues that the nature of online social networking use may be more important in influencing the symptoms of depression than the duration or frequency of the engagement—suggesting that social rumination and comparison are likely to be candidate mediators in the relationship between depression and social media [ 33 ]. However, their findings also suggest that the relationship between depression and online social networking is complex and necessitates further research to determine the impact of moderators and mediators that underly the positive and negative impact of online social networking on wellbeing [ 33 ].

Despite existing studies already painting a picture of the psychological effects of COVID-19 in the Philippines, to our knowledge, there are still no local studies contextualized to college students living in different regions of the country. Therefore, it is crucial to elicit the reasons and risk factors for depression, stress, and anxiety and determine the potential impact that online learning and social media use may have on the mental health of the said population. In turn, the findings would allow the creation of more context-specific and regionalized interventions that can promote mental wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Materials and methods

The study’s general objective is to assess the mental health status of college students and determine the different factors that influenced them during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, it aims:

• To describe the study population’s characteristics, categorized by their mental health status, which includes depression, anxiety, and stress.
• To determine the prevalence and risk factors of depression, anxiety, and stress among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning.
• To estimate the effect of social media use on depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategies towards stress among college students and examine whether participant characteristics modified these associations.
• To estimate the effect of online learning shift on depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategies towards stress among college students and examine whether participant characteristics modified these associations.
• To determine the facilitators or stressors among college students that modified their mental health status during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning.

Study design

A mixed-method study design will be used to address the study’s objectives, which will include Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and an online survey. During the quarantine period of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines from April to November 2021, the study shall occur with the population amid community quarantine and an abrupt transition to online classes. Since this is the Philippines’ first study that will look at the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning, the online survey will be utilized for the quantitative part of the study design. For the qualitative component of the study design, KIIs will determine facilitators or stressors among college students that modified their mental health status during the quarantine period.

Study population

The Red Cross Youth (RCY), one of the Philippine Red Cross’s significant services, is a network of youth volunteers that spans the entire country, having active members in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The group is clustered into different age ranges, with the College Red Cross Youth (18–25 years old) being the study’s population of interest. The RCY has over 26,060 students spread across 20 chapters located all over the country’s three major island groups. The RCY is heterogeneously composed, with some members classified as college students and some as out-of-school youth. Given their nationwide scope, disseminating information from the national to the local level is already in place; this is done primarily through email, social media platforms, and text blasts. The research team will leverage these platforms to distribute the online survey questionnaire.

In addition, the online survey will also be open to non-members of the RCY. It will be disseminated through social media and engagements with different university administrators in the country. Stratified random sampling will be done for the KIIs. The KII participants will be equally coming from the country’s four (4) primary areas: 5–10 each from the national capital region (NCR), Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, including members and non-members of the RCY.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The inclusion criteria for the online survey will include those who are 18–25 years old, currently enrolled in a university, can provide consent for the study, and are proficient in English or Filipino. The exclusion criteria will consist of those enrolled in graduate-level programs (e.g., MD, JD, Master’s, Doctorate), out-of-school youth, and those whose current curricula involve going on duty (e.g., MDs, nursing students, allied medical professions, etc.). The inclusion criteria for the KIIs will include online survey participants who are 18–25 years old, can provide consent for the study, are proficient in English or Filipino, and have access to the internet.

Sample size

A continuity correction method developed by Fleiss et al. (2013) was used to calculate the sample size needed [ 34 ]. For a two-sided confidence level of 95%, with 80% power and the least extreme odds ratio to be detected at 1.4, the computed sample size was 1890. With an adjustment for an estimated response rate of 90%, the total sample size needed for the study was 2,100. To achieve saturation for the qualitative part of the study, 20 to 40 participants will be randomly sampled for the KIIs using the respondents who participated in the online survey [ 35 ].

Study procedure

Self-administered questionnaire..

The study will involve creating, testing, and distributing a self-administered questionnaire (SAQ). All eligible study participants will answer the SAQ on socio-demographic factors such as age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, residence, household income, socioeconomic status, smoking status, family history of mental health, and COVID-19 sickness of immediate family members or friends. The two validated survey tools, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Brief-COPE, will be used for the mental health outcome assessment [ 36 – 39 ]. The DASS-21 will measure the negative emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress [ 40 ], while the Brief-COPE will measure the students’ coping strategies [ 41 ].

For the exposure assessment of the students to social media and shift to online learning, the total time spent on social media (TSSM) per day will be ascertained by querying the participants to provide an estimated time spent daily on social media during and after their online classes. In addition, students will be asked to report their use of the eight commonly used social media sites identified at the start of the study. These sites include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and social messaging sites Viber/WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with response choices coded as "(1) never," "(2) less often," "(3) every few weeks," "(4) a few times a week," and “(5) daily” [ 42 – 44 ]. Furthermore, a global frequency score will be calculated by adding the response scores from the eight social media sites. The global frequency score will be used as an additional exposure marker of students to social media [ 45 ]. The shift to online learning will be assessed using questions that will determine the participants’ satisfaction with online learning. This assessment is comprised of 8 items in which participants will be asked to respond on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree.’

The online survey will be virtually distributed in English using the Qualtrics XM™ platform. Informed consent detailing the purpose, risks, benefits, methods, psychological referrals, and other ethical considerations will be included before the participants are allowed to answer the survey. Before administering the online survey, the SAQ shall undergo pilot testing among twenty (20) college students not involved with the study. It aims to measure total test-taking time, respondent satisfaction, and understandability of questions. The survey shall be edited according to the pilot test participant’s responses. Moreover, according to the Philippines’ Data Privacy Act, all the answers will be accessible and used only for research purposes.

Key informant interviews.

The research team shall develop the KII concept note, focusing on the extraneous factors affecting the student’s mental health, behaviors, and coping mechanism. Some salient topics will include current stressors (e.g., personal, academic, social), emotional reactions to these stressors, and how they wish to receive support in response to these stressors. The KII will be facilitated by a certified psychologist/psychiatrist/social scientist and research assistants using various online video conferencing software such as Google Meet, Skype, or Zoom. All the KIIs will be recorded and transcribed for analysis. Furthermore, there will be a debriefing session post-KII to address the psychological needs of the participants. Fig 1 presents the diagrammatic flowchart of the study.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267555.g001

Data analyses

Quantitative data..

Descriptive statistics will be calculated, including the prevalence of mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategies. In addition, correlation coefficients will be estimated to assess the relations among the different mental health outcomes, covariates, and possible risk factors.

Several study characteristics as effect modifiers will also be assessed, including sex, gender, sexual orientation, family income, smoking status, family history of mental health, and Covid-19. We will include interaction terms between the dichotomized modifier variable and markers of social media use (total TSSM and global frequency score) and shift to online learning in the models. The significance of the interaction terms will be evaluated using the likelihood ratio test. All the regression analyses will be done in R ( http://www.r-project.org ). P values ≤ 0.05 will be considered statistically significant.

Qualitative data.

After transcribing the interviews, the data transcripts will be analyzed using NVivo 1.4.1 software [ 50 ] by three research team members independently using the inductive logic approach in thematic analysis: familiarizing with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing the themes, defining and naming the themes, and producing the report [ 51 ]. Data familiarization will consist of reading and re-reading the data while noting initial ideas. Additionally, coding interesting features of the data will follow systematically across the entire dataset while collating data relevant to each code. Moreover, the open coding of the data will be performed to describe the data into concepts and themes, which will be further categorized to identify distinct concepts and themes [ 52 ].

The three researchers will discuss the results of their thematic analyses. They will compare and contrast the three analyses in order to come up with a thematic map. The final thematic map of the analysis will be generated after checking if the identified themes work in relation to the extracts and the entire dataset. In addition, the selection of clear, persuasive extract examples that will connect the analysis to the research question and literature will be reviewed before producing a scholarly report of the analysis. Additionally, the themes and sub-themes generated will be assessed and discussed in relevance to the study’s objectives. Furthermore, the gathering and analyzing of the data will continue until saturation is reached. Finally, pseudonyms will be used to present quotes from qualitative data.

Data triangulation.

Data triangulation using the two different data sources will be conducted to examine the various aspects of the research and will be compared for convergence. This part of the analysis will require listing all the relevant topics or findings from each component of the study and considering where each method’s results converge, offer complementary information on the same issue, or appear to contradict each other. It is crucial to explicitly look for disagreements between findings from different data collection methods because exploration of any apparent inter-method discrepancy may lead to a better understanding of the research question [ 53 , 54 ].

Data management plan.

The Project Leader will be responsible for overall quality assurance, with research associates and assistants undertaking specific activities to ensure quality control. Quality will be assured through routine monitoring by the Project Leader and periodic cross-checks against the protocols by the research assistants. Transcribed KIIs and the online survey questionnaire will be used for recording data for each participant in the study. The project leader will be responsible for ensuring the accuracy, completeness, legibility, and timeliness of the data captured in all the forms. Data captured from the online survey or KIIs should be consistent, clarified, and corrected. Each participant will have complete source documentation of records. Study staff will prepare appropriate source documents and make them available to the Project Leader upon request for review. In addition, study staff will extract all data collected in the KII notes or survey forms. These data will be secured and kept in a place accessible to the Project Leader. Data entry and cleaning will be conducted, and final data cleaning, data freezing, and data analysis will be performed. Key informant interviews will always involve two researchers. Where appropriate, quality control for the qualitative data collection will be assured through refresher KII training during research design workshops. The Project Leader will check through each transcript for consistency with agreed standards. Where translations are undertaken, the quality will be assured by one other researcher fluent in that language checking against the original recording or notes.

Ethics approval.

The study shall abide by the Principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (2013). It will be conducted along with the Guidelines of the International Conference on Harmonization-Good Clinical Practice (ICH-GCP), E6 (R2), and other ICH-GCP 6 (as amended); National Ethical Guidelines for Health and Health-Related Research (NEGHHRR) of 2017. This protocol has been approved by the University of the Philippines Manila Research Ethics Board (UPMREB 2021-099-01 dated March 25, 2021).

The main concerns for ethics were consent, data privacy, and subject confidentiality. The risks, benefits, and conflicts of interest are discussed in this section from an ethical standpoint.

Recruitment.

The participants will be recruited to answer the online SAQ voluntarily. The recruitment of participants for the KIIs will be chosen through stratified random sampling using a list of those who answered the online SAQ; this will minimize the risk of sampling bias. In addition, none of the participants in the study will have prior contact or association with the researchers. Moreover, power dynamics will not be contacted to recruit respondents. The research objectives, methods, risks, benefits, voluntary participation, withdrawal, and respondents’ rights will be discussed with the respondents in the consent form before KII.

Informed consent will be signified by the potential respondent ticking a box in the online informed consent form and the voluntary participation of the potential respondent to the study after a thorough discussion of the research details. The participant’s consent is voluntary and may be recanted by the participant any time s/he chooses.

Data privacy.

All digital data will be stored in a cloud drive accessible only to the researchers. Subject confidentiality will be upheld through the assignment of control numbers and not requiring participants to divulge the name, address, and other identifying factors not necessary for analysis.

Compensation.

No monetary compensation will be given to the participants, but several tokens will be raffled to all the participants who answered the online survey and did the KIIs.

This research will pose risks to data privacy, as discussed and addressed above. In addition, there will be a risk of social exclusion should data leaks arise due to the stigma against mental health. This risk will be mitigated by properly executing the data collection and analysis plan, excluding personal details and tight data privacy measures. Moreover, there is a risk of psychological distress among the participants due to the sensitive information. This risk will be addressed by subjecting the SAQ and the KII guidelines to the project team’s psychiatrist’s approval, ensuring proper communication with the participants. The KII will also be facilitated by registered clinical psychologists/psychiatrists/social scientists to ensure the participants’ appropriate handling; there will be a briefing and debriefing of the participants before and after the KII proper.

Participation in this study will entail health education and a voluntary referral to a study-affiliated psychiatrist, discussed in previous sections. Moreover, this would contribute to modifications in targeted mental-health campaigns for the 18–25 age group. Summarized findings and recommendations will be channeled to stakeholders for their perusal.

Dissemination.

The results will be actively disseminated through conference presentations, peer-reviewed journals, social media, print and broadcast media, and various stakeholder activities.

This study protocol rationalizes the examination of the mental health of the college students in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic as the traditional face-to-face classes transitioned to online and modular classes. The pandemic that started in March 2020 is now stretching for more than a year in which prolonged lockdown brings people to experience social isolation and disruption of everyday lifestyle. There is an urgent need to study the psychosocial aspects, particularly those populations that are vulnerable to mental health instability. In the Philippines, where community quarantine is still being imposed across the country, college students face several challenges amidst this pandemic. The pandemic continues to escalate, which may lead to fear and a spectrum of psychological consequences. Universities and colleges play an essential role in supporting college students in their academic, safety, and social needs. The courses of activities implemented by the different universities and colleges may significantly affect their mental well-being status. Our study is particularly interested in the effect of online classes on college students nationwide during the pandemic. The study will estimate this effect on their mental wellbeing since this abrupt transition can lead to depression, stress, or anxiety for some students due to insufficient time to adjust to the new learning environment. The role of social media is also an important exposure to some college students [ 55 , 56 ]. Social media exposure to COVID-19 may be considered a contributing factor to college students’ mental well-being, particularly their stress, depression, and anxiety [ 57 , 58 ]. Despite these known facts, little is known about the effect of transitioning to online learning and social media exposure on the mental health of college students during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines. To our knowledge, this is the first study in the Philippines that will use a mixed-method study design to examine the mental health of college students in the entire country. The online survey is a powerful platform to employ our methods.

Additionally, our study will also utilize a qualitative assessment of the college students, which may give significant insights or findings of the experiences of the college students during these trying times that cannot be captured on our online survey. The thematic findings or narratives from the qualitative part of our study will be triangulated with the quantitative analysis for a more robust synthesis. The results will be used to draw conclusions about the mental health status among college students during the pandemic in the country, which will eventually be used to implement key interventions if deemed necessary. A cross-sectional study design for the online survey is one of our study’s limitations in which contrasts will be mainly between participants at a given point of time. In addition, bias arising from residual or unmeasured confounding factors cannot be ruled out.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying effects will persistently affect the mental wellbeing of college students. Mental health services must be delivered to combat mental instability. In addition, universities and colleges should create an environment that will foster mental health awareness among Filipino college students. The results of our study will tailor the possible coping strategies to meet the specific needs of college students nationwide, thereby promoting psychological resilience.

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

How Teens Navigate School During COVID-19

A majority of teens prefer in-person over virtual or hybrid learning. hispanic and lower-income teens are particularly likely to fear they’ve fallen behind in school due to covid-19 disruptions, table of contents.

• Teens and parents express their views about virtual learning and the pandemic’s impact on educational achievement
• More than four-in-ten teens report feeling closer to their parents or guardians since the start of the pandemic
• About three-in-ten teens face at least one challenge related to the ‘homework gap’
• Teen computer access at home differs by parent’s level of education, household income
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand teens’ and parents’ experiences with schooling, virtual learning and the digital divide amid the coronavirus pandemic. For this analysis, we surveyed 1,316 pairs of U.S. teens and their parents – one parent and one teen from each household. The survey was conducted online by Ipsos from April 14 to May 4, 2022.

Ipsos invited one parent from each of a representative set of households with parents of teens in the desired age range from its KnowledgePanel, a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses, to take this survey. For some of these questions, parents were asked to think about one teen in their household (if there were multiple teens ages 13 to 17 in the household, one was randomly chosen). At the conclusion of the parent’s section, the parent was asked to have this chosen teen come to the computer and complete the survey in private.

The survey is weighted to be representative of two different populations: 1) parents with teens ages 13 to 17 and 2) teens ages 13 to 17 who live with parents. For each of these populations, the survey is weighted to be representative by age, gender, race, ethnicity, household income and other categories.  

Here are the questions used for this report , along with responses, and its methodology .

More than two years after the COVID-19 outbreak forced school officials to shift classes and assignments online, teens continue to navigate the pandemic’s impact on their education and relationships, even while they experience glimpses of normalcy as they return to the classroom.

Eight-in-ten U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 say they attended school completely in person over the past month, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted April 14-May 4. Fewer teens say they attended school completely online (8%) or did so through a mix of both online and in-person instruction (11%) in the month prior to taking the survey.

When it comes to the type of learning environment youths prefer, teens strongly favor in-person over remote or hybrid learning. Fully 65% of teens say they would prefer school to be completely in person after the COVID-19 outbreak is over, while a much smaller share (9%) would opt for a completely online environment. Another 18% say they prefer a mix of both online and in-person instruction, while 7% are not sure of their preferred type of schooling after the pandemic.

Across major demographic groups, teens favor attending school completely in person over other options. Still there are some differences that emerge by race and ethnicity and household income.

While 70% of White teens and 64% of Hispanic teens say they would prefer for school to be completely in person after the COVID-19 outbreak is over, that share drops to 51% among Black teens. At the same time, Black or Hispanic teens are more likely than White teens to prefer a mix of both online and in-person instruction post-pandemic.

In addition, 71% of teens living in higher-income households earning $75,000 or more a year report they prefer for school to be completely in person after the pandemic is over. That share drops to six-in-ten or less among those whose annual family income is less than $75,000. Preference for hybrid schooling is also more common among teens living in households earning less than $75,000 a year than among teens in households earning more.

From declining test scores to widening achievement gaps , teachers, parents and advocates have raised concerns about the negative impact the pandemic may have had on students. Beyond academic woes, experts also warn that these disruptions could have lingering effects on young people’s mental and emotional well-being.

Teens hold mixed views of how their schools tackled remote schooling. Some 28% of teens say they are extremely or very satisfied with the way their school has handled virtual learning, while a similar share report being only a little or not at all satisfied with their school’s performance. Some teens fall in the middle of the spectrum, with 33% saying they are somewhat satisfied with this. (Another 9% state their school has not had virtual learning.)

In addition to having teens weigh in on these subjects, the Center also asked parents of these same teens about their child’s experience with school during the pandemic. The survey finds that parents, too, hold somewhat divided views on remote learning, though they offer a somewhat more positive assessment than their children. About four-in-ten parents of teens (39%) say they are extremely or very satisfied with the way their child’s school has handled virtual learning; 33% say they are somewhat satisfied about this, while 20% report being only a little or not at all satisfied by this.

When asked about the effect COVID-19 may have had on their schooling, a majority of teens express little to no concern about falling behind in school due to disruptions caused by the outbreak. Still, there are youth who worry the pandemic has hurt them academically: 16% of teens say they are extremely or very worried they may have fallen behind in school because of COVID-19-related disturbances.

Parents tend to express more concern than their children. Roughly three-in-ten parents report they are extremely (12%) or very (16%) worried their teen may have fallen behind in school due to the pandemic.

The level of concern about falling behind in school varies by race and ethnicity – for both teens and their parents.

Roughly three-in-ten Hispanic teens (28%) say they are extremely or very worried they may have fallen behind in school because of disruptions caused by the coronavirus outbreak, compared with 19% of Black teens and 11% of White teens. 1 This pattern is present among parents as well. Hispanic parents (42%) are more likely than their White (25%) or Black counterparts (23%) to report being extremely or very worried their teen may have fallen behind in school during this time.

Teens and parents from lower-income households are also more likely to express concern about the pandemic’s negative impact on schooling. For example, 44% of parents living in households earning less than $30,000 a year say they are extremely or very worried their teen has fallen behind in school because of COVID-19 disruptions, but this falls to 24% among those whose annual household income is $75,000 or more. Teens from households making less than $75,000 annually are also more likely than those from households with higher incomes to express concern about falling behind in school.

With recent research pointing to the negative impacts the coronavirus outbreak has had on adolescents’ social connections, teens were asked to share how their relationships may have changed since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Some 45% of teens say they feel more close to their parents or guardians compared with before the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. A smaller share says the same for their friends, extended family, classmates or teachers.

At the same time, some teens express feeling less connected to certain groups. Roughly one-third say they feel less close to classmates (33%) or teachers (30%), while 24% each feel this way about their friends or extended family. Just 5% of teens say they feel less close to their parents or guardians than they did before the pandemic.

Still, the most common responses to these questions hint at social stability. Roughly half or more teens say they are about as close to their friends, parents or guardians, classmates, extended family or teachers as they were before the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Teens’ views about how their relationships may have evolved during the pandemic share similar sentiments across many of the demographic groups explored in the study. There are, however, some modest differences by race and ethnicity. For example, Hispanic and Black teens are more likely than White teens to say they feel less close to their friends than before the pandemic.

Even prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, some teens faced problems completing their homework because they lacked a computer or internet access at home – a phenomenon often referred to as the “ homework gap .” And as students pivoted to virtual learning , and later shifted between online and in-person classes, access to technology and reliable internet connectivity continued to be crucial to student success.

The new survey reveals some teens – especially those from less affluent households – face digital challenges to completing their schoolwork. About one-in-five teens (22%) say they often or sometimes have to do their homework on a cellphone. Some 12% say they at least sometimes are not able to complete homework assignments because they do not have reliable access to a computer or internet connection, while 6% say they have to use public Wi-Fi to do their homework at least sometimes because they do not have an internet connection at home. (Respondents were not specifically asked to think about the pandemic when asked these questions.)

As in previous Center studies , parents’ socioeconomic status matters when it comes to homework gap challenges. 2

Some 24% of teens who live in a household making less than $30,000 a year say they at least sometimes are not able to complete their homework because they do not have reliable access to a computer or internet connection, compared with 14% of those in a household making $30,000 to $74,999, and 8% of those in a household making $75,000 or more. Teens whose parent reports an annual income of less than $30,000 are also more likely to say they often or sometimes have to do homework on a cellphone or use public Wi-Fi for homework, compared with those living in higher-earning households.

There are similar patterns by parental education: Larger shares of teens whose parent has a high school diploma or less say they at least sometimes face each of the three challenges the survey asked about, compared with those whose parent has a bachelor’s or advanced degree.

When it comes to racial and ethnic differences, Hispanic teens are more likely than both Black and White teens to say they at least sometimes are not able to complete homework because they lack reliable computer or internet access, and they are more likely than White teens to say the same about having to do their homework on a cellphone or using public Wi-Fi for homework. Black and White teens are equally likely to report at least sometimes experiencing each of the three problems the survey covered.

All told, 28% of teens experience at least one of these three homework-related challenges often or sometimes. Some 43% of teens living in a household with an annual income of less than $30,000 report at least sometimes facing one or more of these challenges to completing homework – about twice the share of teens from households making $75,000 or more annually and 13 percentage points higher than the share of teens in a household making $30,000 to $74,999 annually who say so. And 34% of Hispanic teens have experienced the same – 10 points higher than the share of White teens who have experienced at least one of these challenges at least sometimes, but statistically equivalent to the share of Black teens who report this.

For some youth, these challenges have made it harder to keep up with their homework. Among those who have not been able to complete homework often or sometimes due to lack of reliable computer or internet access, 36% say it has made keeping up with their homework a lot harder. About one-in-five of those who at least sometimes have to do homework on their cellphone say the same.

While most teens say they have a home computer, there are some – particularly those living in households with lower incomes or whose parent has a high school education or less – who do not have this technology at home. One-in-ten teens report not having access to a desktop or laptop computer at home.

This rises to one-in-five for those living in a household with an annual income of less than $30,000, and to a similar share (19%) for teens whose parent has a high school diploma or less formal education.

• There were not enough Asian American respondents in the sample to be broken out into a separate analysis. As always, their responses are incorporated into the general population figures throughout the report. ↩
• A 2018 Center survey also asked U.S. teens about technology challenges related to the homework gap. Due to differences in the ways that survey was conducted versus this analysis, direct comparisons cannot be made across the two surveys to understand change over time. Still, there are common patterns between the two separate surveys; for example, teens living in lower-income households are more likely to experience homework gap-related problems than those in higher-income households. ↩

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• COVID-19 & Technology
• Digital Divide
• Education & Learning Online
• Teens & Tech

How Americans View the Coronavirus, COVID-19 Vaccines Amid Declining Levels of Concern

Online religious services appeal to many americans, but going in person remains more popular, about a third of u.s. workers who can work from home now do so all the time, how the pandemic has affected attendance at u.s. religious services, mental health and the pandemic: what u.s. surveys have found, most popular, report materials.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

© 2024 Pew Research Center

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
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Published: 16 June 2020

COVID-19 impact on research, lessons learned from COVID-19 research, implications for pediatric research

• Debra L. Weiner 1 , 2 ,
• Vivek Balasubramaniam 3 ,
• Shetal I. Shah 4 &
• Joyce R. Javier 5 , 6

on behalf of the Pediatric Policy Council

Pediatric Research volume  88 ,  pages 148–150 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

147k Accesses

81 Citations

19 Altmetric

Metrics details

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented research worldwide. The impact on research in progress at the time of the pandemic, the importance and challenges of real-time pandemic research, and the importance of a pediatrician-scientist workforce are all highlighted by this epic pandemic. As we navigate through and beyond this pandemic, which will have a long-lasting impact on our world, including research and the biomedical research enterprise, it is important to recognize and address opportunities and strategies for, and challenges of research and strengthening the pediatrician-scientist workforce.

The first cases of what is now recognized as SARS-CoV-2 infection, termed COVID-19, were reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019 as cases of fatal pneumonia. By February 26, 2020, COVID-19 had been reported on all continents except Antarctica. As of May 4, 2020, 3.53 million cases and 248,169 deaths have been reported from 210 countries. 1

Impact of COVID-19 on ongoing research

The impact on research in progress prior to COVID-19 was rapid, dramatic, and no doubt will be long term. The pandemic curtailed most academic, industry, and government basic science and clinical research, or redirected research to COVID-19. Most clinical trials, except those testing life-saving therapies, have been paused, and most continuing trials are now closed to new enrollment. Ongoing clinical trials have been modified to enable home administration of treatment and virtual monitoring to minimize participant risk of COVID-19 infection, and to avoid diverting healthcare resources from pandemic response. In addition to short- and long-term patient impact, these research disruptions threaten the careers of physician-scientists, many of whom have had to shift efforts from research to patient care. To protect research in progress, as well as physician-scientist careers and the research workforce, ongoing support is critical. NIH ( https://grants.nih.gov/policy/natural-disasters/corona-virus.htm ), PCORI ( https://www.pcori.org/funding-opportunities/applicant-and-awardee-faqs-related-covid-19 ), and other funders acted swiftly to provide guidance on proposal submission and award management, and implement allowances that enable grant personnel to be paid and time lines to be relaxed. Research institutions have also implemented strategies to mitigate the long-term impact of research disruptions. Support throughout and beyond the pandemic to retain currently well-trained research personnel and research support teams, and to accommodate loss of research assets, including laboratory supplies and study participants, will be required to complete disrupted research and ultimately enable new research.

In the long term, it is likely that the pandemic will force reallocation of research dollars at the expense of research areas funded prior to the pandemic. It will be more important than ever for the pediatric research community to engage in discussion and decisions regarding prioritization of funding goals for dedicated pediatric research and meaningful inclusion of children in studies. The recently released 2020 National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) strategic plan that engaged stakeholders, including scientists and patients, to shape the goals of the Institute, will require modification to best chart a path toward restoring normalcy within pediatric science.

COVID-19 research

This global pandemic once again highlights the importance of research, stable research infrastructure, and funding for public health emergency (PHE)/disaster preparedness, response, and resiliency. The stakes in this worldwide pandemic have never been higher as lives are lost, economies falter, and life has radically changed. Ultimate COVID-19 mitigation and crisis resolution is dependent on high-quality research aligned with top priority societal goals that yields trustworthy data and actionable information. While the highest priority goals are treatment and prevention, biomedical research also provides data critical to manage and restore economic and social welfare.

Scientific and technological knowledge and resources have never been greater and have been leveraged globally to perform COVID-19 research at warp speed. The number of studies related to COVID-19 increases daily, the scope and magnitude of engagement is stunning, and the extent of global collaboration unprecedented. On January 5, 2020, just weeks after the first cases of illness were reported, the genetic sequence, which identified the pathogen as a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was released, providing information essential for identifying and developing treatments, vaccines, and diagnostics. As of May 3, 2020 1133 COVID-19 studies, including 148 related to hydroxychloroquine, 13 to remdesivir, 50 to vaccines, and 100 to diagnostic testing, were registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, and 980 different studies on the World Health Organization’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (WHO ICTRP), made possible, at least in part, by use of data libraries to inform development of antivirals, immunomodulators, antibody-based biologics, and vaccines. On April 7, 2020, the FDA launched the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program (CTAP) ( https://www.fda.gov/drugs/coronavirus-covid-19-drugs/coronavirus-treatment-acceleration-program-ctap ). On April 17, 2020, NIH announced a partnership with industry to expedite vaccine development ( https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launch-public-private-partnership-speed-covid-19-vaccine-treatment-options ). As of May 1, 2020, remdesivir (Gilead), granted FDA emergency use authorization, is the only approved therapeutic for COVID-19. 2

The pandemic has intensified research challenges. In a rush for data already thousands of manuscripts, news reports, and blogs have been published, but to date, there is limited scientifically robust data. Some studies do not meet published clinical trial standards, which now include FDA’s COVID-19-specific standards, 3 , 4 , 5 and/or are published without peer review. Misinformation from studies diverts resources from development and testing of more promising therapeutic candidates and has endangered lives. Ibuprofen, initially reported as unsafe for patients with COVID-19, resulted in a shortage of acetaminophen, endangering individuals for whom ibuprofen is contraindicated. Hydroxychloroquine initially reported as potentially effective for treatment of COVID-19 resulted in shortages for patients with autoimmune diseases. Remdesivir, in rigorous trials, showed decrease in duration of COVID-19, with greater effect given early. 6 Given the limited availability and safety data, the use outside clinical trials is currently approved only for severe disease. Vaccines typically take 10–15 years to develop. As of May 3, 2020, of nearly 100 vaccines in development, 8 are in trial. Several vaccines are projected to have emergency approval within 12–18 months, possibly as early as the end of the year, 7 still an eternity for this pandemic, yet too soon for long-term effectiveness and safety data. Antibody testing, necessary for diagnosis, therapeutics, and vaccine testing, has presented some of the greatest research challenges, including validation, timing, availability and prioritization of testing, interpretation of test results, and appropriate patient and societal actions based on results. 8 Relaxing physical distancing without data regarding test validity, duration, and strength of immunity to different strains of COVID-19 could have catastrophic results. Understanding population differences and disparities, which have been further exposed during this pandemic, is critical for response and long-term pandemic recovery. The “Equitable Data Collection and Disclosure on COVID-19 Act” calls for the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and other HHS (United States Department of Health & Human Services) agencies to publicly release racial and demographic information ( https://bass.house.gov/sites/bass.house.gov/files/Equitable%20Data%20Collection%20and%20Dislosure%20on%20COVID19%20Act_FINAL.pdf )

Trusted sources of up-to-date, easily accessible information must be identified (e.g., WHO https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov , CDC https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/hcp/index.html , and for children AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) https://www.aappublications.org/cc/covid-19 ) and should comment on quality of data and provide strategies and crisis standards to guide clinical practice.

Long-term, lessons learned from research during this pandemic could benefit the research enterprise worldwide beyond the pandemic and during other PHE/disasters with strategies for balancing multiple novel approaches and high-quality, time-efficient, cost-effective research. This challenge, at least in part, can be met by appropriate study design, collaboration, patient registries, automated data collection, artificial intelligence, data sharing, and ongoing consideration of appropriate regulatory approval processes. In addition, research to develop and evaluate innovative strategies and technologies to improve access to care, management of health and disease, and quality, safety, and cost effectiveness of care could revolutionize healthcare and healthcare systems. During PHE/disasters, crisis standards for research should be considered along with ongoing and just-in-time PHE/disaster training for researchers willing to share information that could be leveraged at time of crisis. A dedicated funded core workforce of PHE/disaster researchers and funded infrastructure should be considered, potentially as a consortium of networks, that includes physician-scientists, basic scientists, social scientists, mental health providers, global health experts, epidemiologists, public health experts, engineers, information technology experts, economists and educators to strategize, consult, review, monitor, interpret studies, guide appropriate clinical use of data, and inform decisions regarding effective use of resources for PHE/disaster research.

Differences between adult and pediatric COVID-19, the need for pediatric research

As reported by the CDC, from February 12 to April 2, 2020, of 149,760 cases of confirmed COVID-19 in the United States, 2572 (1.7%) were children aged <18 years, similar to published rates in China. 9 Severe illness has been rare. Of 749 children for whom hospitalization data is available, 147 (20%) required hospitalization (5.7% of total children), and 15 of 147 required ICU care (2.0%, 0.58% of total). Of the 95 children aged <1 year, 59 (62%) were hospitalized, and 5 (5.3%) required ICU admission. Among children there were three deaths. Despite children being relatively spared by COVID-19, spread of disease by children, and consequences for their health and pediatric healthcare are potentially profound with immediate and long-term impact on all of society.

We have long been aware of the importance and value of pediatric research on children, and society. COVID-19 is no exception and highlights the imperative need for a pediatrician-scientist workforce. Understanding differences in epidemiology, susceptibility, manifestations, and treatment of COVID-19 in children can provide insights into this pathogen, pathogen–host interactions, pathophysiology, and host response for the entire population. Pediatric clinical registries of COVID-infected, COVID-exposed children can provide data and specimens for immediate and long-term research. Of the 1133 COVID-19 studies on ClinicalTrials.gov, 202 include children aged ≤17 years. Sixty-one of the 681 interventional trials include children. With less diagnostic testing and less pediatric research, we not only endanger children, but also adults by not identifying infected children and limiting spread by children.

Pediatric considerations and challenges related to treatment and vaccine research for COVID-19 include appropriate dosing, pediatric formulation, and pediatric specific short- and long-term effectiveness and safety. Typically, initial clinical trials exclude children until safety has been established in adults. But with time of the essence, deferring pediatric research risks the health of children, particularly those with special needs. Considerations specific to pregnant women, fetuses, and neonates must also be addressed. Childhood mental health in this demographic, already struggling with a mental health pandemic prior to COVID-19, is now further challenged by social disruption, food and housing insecurity, loss of loved ones, isolation from friends and family, and exposure to an infodemic of pandemic-related information. Interestingly, at present mental health visits along with all visits to pediatric emergency departments across the United States are dramatically decreased. Understanding factors that mitigate and worsen psychiatric symptoms should be a focus of research, and ideally will result in strategies for prevention and management in the long term, including beyond this pandemic. Social well-being of children must also be studied. Experts note that the pandemic is a perfect storm for child maltreatment given that vulnerable families are now socially isolated, facing unemployment, and stressed, and that children are not under the watch of mandated reporters in schools, daycare, and primary care. 10 Many states have observed a decrease in child abuse reports and an increase in severity of emergency department abuse cases. In the short term and long term, it will be important to study the impact of access to care, missed care, and disrupted education during COVID-19 on physical and cognitive development.

Training and supporting pediatrician-scientists, such as through NIH physician-scientist research training and career development programs ( https://researchtraining.nih.gov/infographics/physician-scientist ) at all stages of career, as well as fostering research for fellows, residents, and medical students willing to dedicate their research career to, or at least understand implications of their research for, PHE/disasters is important for having an ongoing, as well as a just-in-time surge pediatric-focused PHE/disaster workforce. In addition to including pediatric experts in collaborations and consortiums with broader population focus, consideration should be given to pediatric-focused multi-institutional, academic, industry, and/or government consortiums with infrastructure and ongoing funding for virtual training programs, research teams, and multidisciplinary oversight.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research and research in response to the pandemic once again highlights the importance of research, challenges of research particularly during PHE/disasters, and opportunities and resources for making research more efficient and cost effective. New paradigms and models for research will hopefully emerge from this pandemic. The importance of building sustained PHE/disaster research infrastructure and a research workforce that includes training and funding for pediatrician-scientists and integrates the pediatrician research workforce into high-quality research across demographics, supports the pediatrician-scientist workforce and pipeline, and benefits society.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Covid-19 Case Tracker. Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html (2020).

US Food and Drug Administration. Coronavirus (COVID-19) update: FDA issues emergency use authorization for potential COVID-19 treatment. FDA News Release . https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-issues-emergency-use-authorization-potential-covid-19-treatment (2020).

Evans, S. R. Fundamentals of clinical trial design. J. Exp. Stroke Transl. Med. 3 , 19–27 (2010).

Article   Google Scholar  

Antman, E. M. & Bierer, B. E. Standards for clinical research: keeping pace with the technology of the future. Circulation 133 , 823–825 (2016).

Food and Drug Administration. FDA guidance on conduct of clinical trials of medical products during COVID-19 public health emergency. Guidance for Industry, Investigators and Institutional Review Boards . https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/fda-guidance-conduct-clinical-trials-medical-products-during-covid-19-public-health-emergency (2020).

National Institutes of Health. NIH clinical trials shows remdesivir accelerates recovery from advanced COVID-19. NIH New Releases . https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-shows-remdesivir-accelerates-recovery-advanced-covid-19#.XrIX75ZmQeQ.email (2020).

Radcliffe, S. Here’s exactly where we are with vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. Health News . https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-exactly-where-were-at-with-vaccines-and-treatments-for-covid-19 (2020).

Abbasi, J. The promise and peril of antibody testing for COVID-19. JAMA . https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.6170 (2020).

CDC COVID-19 Response Team. Coronavirus disease 2019 in children—United States, February 12–April 2, 2020. Morb. Mortal Wkly Rep . 69 , 422–426 (2020).

Agarwal, N. Opinion: the coronavirus could cause a child abuse epidemic. The New York Times . https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-child-abuse.html (2020).

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Pediatrics, Division of Emergency Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Debra L. Weiner

Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Department of Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI, USA

Vivek Balasubramaniam

Department of Pediatrics and Division of Neonatology, Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, USA

Shetal I. Shah

Division of General Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Joyce R. Javier

Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors made substantial contributions to conception and design, data acquisition and interpretation, drafting the manuscript, and providing critical revisions. All authors approve this final version of the manuscript.

Pediatric Policy Council

Scott C. Denne, MD, Chair, Pediatric Policy Council; Mona Patel, MD, Representative to the PPC from the Academic Pediatric Association; Jean L. Raphael, MD, MPH, Representative to the PPC from the Academic Pediatric Association; Jonathan Davis, MD, Representative to the PPC from the American Pediatric Society; DeWayne Pursley, MD, MPH, Representative to the PPC from the American Pediatric Society; Tina Cheng, MD, MPH, Representative to the PPC from the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs; Michael Artman, MD, Representative to the PPC from the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs; Shetal Shah, MD, Representative to the PPC from the Society for Pediatric Research; Joyce Javier, MD, MPH, MS, Representative to the PPC from the Society for Pediatric Research.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Debra L. Weiner .

Ethics declarations

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.

Members of the Pediatric Policy Council are listed below Author contributions.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Weiner, D.L., Balasubramaniam, V., Shah, S.I. et al. COVID-19 impact on research, lessons learned from COVID-19 research, implications for pediatric research. Pediatr Res 88 , 148–150 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-020-1006-3

Download citation

Received : 07 May 2020

Accepted : 21 May 2020

Published : 16 June 2020

Issue Date : August 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-020-1006-3

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

This article is cited by

Catalysing global surgery: a meta-research study on factors affecting surgical research collaborations with africa.

• Thomas O. Kirengo
• Hussein Dossajee
• Nchafatso G. Obonyo

Systematic Reviews (2024)

Lessons learnt while designing and conducting a longitudinal study from the first Italian COVID-19 pandemic wave up to 3 years

• Alvisa Palese
• Stefania Chiappinotto
• Carlo Tascini

Health Research Policy and Systems (2023)

Pediatric Research and COVID-19: the changed landscape

• E. J. Molloy
• C. B. Bearer

Pediatric Research (2022)

Cancer gene therapy 2020: highlights from a challenging year

• Georgios Giamas
• Teresa Gagliano

Cancer Gene Therapy (2022)

Quick links

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

Most US Students Are Recovering From Pandemic-Era Setbacks, but Millions Are Making up Little Ground

America’s schools have just started making progress toward getting students back on track after they fell behind by historic margins during the pandemic

Jacquelyn Martin

Fifth grade students attend a math lesson with teacher Jana Lamontagne, right, during class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — On one side of the classroom, students circled teacher Maria Fletcher and practiced vowel sounds. In another corner, children read together from a book. Scattered elsewhere, students sat at laptop computers and got reading help from online tutors.

For the third graders at Mount Vernon Community School in Virginia , it was an ordinary school day. But educators were racing to get students learning more, faster, and to overcome setbacks that have persisted since schools closed for the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago.

America’s schools have started to make progress toward getting students back on track. But improvement has been slow and uneven across geography and economic status, with millions of students — often those from marginalized groups — making up little or no ground.

Nationally, students made up one-third of their pandemic losses in math during the past school year and one-quarter of the losses in reading, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard , an analysis of state and national test scores by researchers at Harvard and Stanford.

But in nine states, including Virginia, reading scores continued to fall during the 2022-23 school year after previous decreases during the pandemic.

Clouding the recovery is a looming financial crisis. States have used some money from the historic $190 billion in federal pandemic relief to help students catch up , but that money runs out later this year.

“The recovery is not finished, and it won’t be finished without state action,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist behind the scorecard. “States need to start planning for what they’re going to do when the federal money runs out in September. And I think few states have actually started that discussion.”

Virginia lawmakers approved an extra $418 million last year to accelerate recovery. Massachusetts officials set aside $3.2 million to provide math tutoring for fourth and eighth grade students who are behind grade level, along with $8 million for literacy tutoring.

But among other states with lagging progress, few said they were changing their strategies or spending more to speed up improvement.

Virginia hired online tutoring companies and gave schools a “playbook” showing how to build effective tutoring programs. Lisa Coons, Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction, said last year's state test scores were a wake-up call.

“We weren’t recovering as fast as we needed,” Coons said in an interview.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has called for states to continue funding extra academic help for students as the federal money expires.

"We just can’t stop now," he said at a May 30 conference for education journalists. “The states need to recognize these interventions work. Funding public education does make a difference.”

In Virginia, the Alexandria district received $2.3 million in additional state money to expand tutoring.

At Mount Vernon, where classes are taught in English and Spanish, students are divided into groups and rotate through stations customized to their skill level. Those who need the most help get online tutoring. In Fletcher’s classroom, a handful of students wore headsets and worked with tutors through Ignite Learning, one of the companies hired by the state.

With tutors in high demand, the online option has been a big help, Mount Vernon principal Jennifer Hamilton said.

“That’s something that we just could not provide here,” she said.

Ana Marisela Ventura Moreno said her 9-year-old daughter, Sabrina, benefited significantly from extra reading help last year during second grade, but she’s still catching up.

“She needs to get better. She’s not at the level she should be,” the mother said in Spanish. She noted the school did not offer the tutoring help this year, but she did not know why.

Alexandria education officials say students scoring below proficient or close to that cutoff receive high-intensity tutoring help and they have to prioritize students with the greatest needs. Alexandria trailed the state average on math and reading exams in 2023, but it's slowly improving.

More worrying to officials are the gaps: Among poorer students at Mount Vernon, just 24% scored proficient in math and 28% hit the mark in reading. That's far lower than the rates among wealthier students, and the divide is growing wider.

Failing to get students back on track could have serious consequences. The researchers at Harvard and Stanford found communities with higher test scores have higher incomes and lower rates of arrest and incarceration. If pandemic setbacks become permanent, it could follow students for life.

The Education Recovery Scorecard tracks about 30 states, all of which made at least some improvement in math from 2022 to 2023. The states whose reading scores fell in that span, in addition to Virginia, were Nevada, California, South Dakota, Wyoming , Indiana, Oklahoma, Connecticut and Washington.

Only a few states have rebounded to pre-pandemic testing levels. Alabama was the only state where math achievement increased past 2019 levels, while Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana accomplished that in reading.

In Chicago Public Schools, the average reading score went up by the equivalent of 70% of a grade level from 2022 to 2023. Math gains were less dramatic, with students still behind almost half a grade level compared with 2019. Chicago officials credit the improvement to changes made possible with nearly $3 billion in federal relief.

The district trained hundreds of Chicago residents to work as tutors. Every school building got an interventionist, an educator who focuses on helping struggling students.

The district also used federal money for home visits and expanded arts education in an effort to re-engage students.

“Academic recovery in isolation, just through ‘drill and kill,’ either tutoring or interventions, is not effective,” said Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district's chief education officer. “Students need to feel engaged.”

At Wells Preparatory Elementary on the city's South Side, just 3% of students met state reading standards in 2021. Last year, 30% hit the mark. Federal relief allowed the school to hire an interventionist for the first time, and teachers get paid to team up on recovery outside working hours.

In the classroom, the school put a sharper focus on collaboration. Along with academic setbacks, students came back from school closures with lower maturity levels, principal Vincent Izuegbu said. By building lessons around discussion, officials found students took more interest in learning.

“We do not let 10 minutes go by without a teacher giving students the opportunity to engage with the subject,” Izuegbu said. “That’s very, very important in terms of the growth that we’ve seen.”

Olorunkemi Atoyebi was an A student before the pandemic, but after spending fifth grade learning at home, she fell behind. During remote learning, she was nervous about stopping class to ask questions. Before long, math lessons stopped making sense.

When she returned to school, she struggled with multiplication and terms such as “dividend” and “divisor” confused her.

While other students worked in groups, her math teacher took her aside for individual help. Atoyebi learned a rhyming song to help memorize multiplication tables. Over time, it began to click.

“They made me feel more confident in everything,” said Atoyebi, now 14. “My grades started going up. My scores started going up. Everything has felt like I understand it better.”

Associated Press writers Michael Melia in Hartford, Connecticut, and Chrissie Thompson in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

Copyright 2024 The  Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Photos You Should See - May 2024

Join the Conversation

Tags: Associated Press , Wyoming , Alabama , Nevada , California , politics , Oklahoma , South Dakota , Indiana , Massachusetts , Connecticut , Illinois , Virginia , Washington , Louisiana , education , Mississippi

Related Articles

America 2024

Best States

Best States Rankings

• # 2 New Hampshire
• # 3 Nebraska
• # 4 Minnesota

Health News Bulletin

Stay informed on the latest news on health and COVID-19 from the editors at U.S. News & World Report.

Sign in to manage your newsletters »

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 .

You May Also Like

The 10 best states in america.

Elliott Davis Jr. May 7, 2024

Why Utah Is the Best State

Elliott Davis Jr. and Julia Haines May 7, 2024

Why Florida Is No. 1 in Education

Tim Smart May 7, 2024

Budget Season Arrives in Pennsylvania Capitol as Lawmakers Prepare for Debate Over Massive Surplus

Associated Press June 3, 2024

Sandy Hook Families Ask Bankruptcy Judge to Liquidate Alex Jones' Media Company

California Firefighters Make Significant Progress Against Wildfire East of San Francisco Bay

Kilauea, Hawaii's Second-Largest Volcano, Is Erupting Again

Ohio's Republican Governor Signs Measure Ensuring Biden Appears on the Fall Ballot

Music Review: Bon Jovi Takes a Victory Lap, Assessing a 40-Year Career on New Album 'Forever'

GM Promotes 2 Former Apple Executives to Key Roles in Developing Software and Digital Services

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

11 Questions to Ask About COVID-19 Research

Debates have raged on social media, around dinner tables, on TV, and in Congress about the science of COVID-19. Is it really worse than the flu? How necessary are lockdowns? Do masks work to prevent infection? What kinds of masks work best? Is the new vaccine safe?

You might see friends, relatives, and coworkers offer competing answers, often brandishing studies or citing individual doctors and scientists to support their positions. With so much disagreement—and with such high stakes—how can we use science to make the best decisions?

Here at Greater Good , we cover research into social and emotional well-being, and we try to help people apply findings to their personal and professional lives. We are well aware that our business is a tricky one.

Summarizing scientific studies and distilling the key insights that people can apply to their lives isn’t just difficult for the obvious reasons, like understanding and then explaining formal science terms or rigorous empirical and analytic methods to non-specialists. It’s also the case that context gets lost when we translate findings into stories, tips, and tools, especially when we push it all through the nuance-squashing machine of the Internet. Many people rarely read past the headlines, which intrinsically aim to be relatable and provoke interest in as many people as possible. Because our articles can never be as comprehensive as the original studies, they almost always omit some crucial caveats, such as limitations acknowledged by the researchers. To get those, you need access to the studies themselves.

And it’s very common for findings and scientists to seem to contradict each other. For example, there were many contradictory findings and recommendations about the use of masks, especially at the beginning of the pandemic—though as we’ll discuss, it’s important to understand that a scientific consensus did emerge.

Given the complexities and ambiguities of the scientific endeavor, is it possible for a non-scientist to strike a balance between wholesale dismissal and uncritical belief? Are there red flags to look for when you read about a study on a site like Greater Good or hear about one on a Fox News program? If you do read an original source study, how should you, as a non-scientist, gauge its credibility?

Here are 11 questions you might ask when you read about the latest scientific findings about the pandemic, based on our own work here at Greater Good.

1. Did the study appear in a peer-reviewed journal?

In peer review, submitted articles are sent to other experts for detailed critical input that often must be addressed in a revision prior to being accepted and published. This remains one of the best ways we have for ascertaining the rigor of the study and rationale for its conclusions. Many scientists describe peer review as a truly humbling crucible. If a study didn’t go through this process, for whatever reason, it should be taken with a much bigger grain of salt. 

“When thinking about the coronavirus studies, it is important to note that things were happening so fast that in the beginning people were releasing non-peer reviewed, observational studies,” says Dr. Leif Hass, a family medicine doctor and hospitalist at Sutter Health’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, California. “This is what we typically do as hypothesis-generating but given the crisis, we started acting on them.”

In a confusing, time-pressed, fluid situation like the one COVID-19 presented, people without medical training have often been forced to simply defer to expertise in making individual and collective decisions, turning to culturally vetted institutions like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Is that wise? Read on.

2. Who conducted the study, and where did it appear?

“I try to listen to the opinion of people who are deep in the field being addressed and assess their response to the study at hand,” says Hass. “With the MRNA coronavirus vaccines, I heard Paul Offit from UPenn at a UCSF Grand Rounds talk about it. He literally wrote the book on vaccines. He reviewed what we know and gave the vaccine a big thumbs up. I was sold.”

From a scientific perspective, individual expertise and accomplishment matters—but so does institutional affiliation.

Why? Because institutions provide a framework for individual accountability as well as safety guidelines. At UC Berkeley, for example , research involving human subjects during COVID-19 must submit a Human Subjects Proposal Supplement Form , and follow a standard protocol and rigorous guidelines . Is this process perfect? No. It’s run by humans and humans are imperfect. However, the conclusions are far more reliable than opinions offered by someone’s favorite YouTuber .

Recommendations coming from institutions like the CDC should not be accepted uncritically. At the same time, however, all of us—including individuals sporting a “Ph.D.” or “M.D.” after their names—must be humble in the face of them. The CDC represents a formidable concentration of scientific talent and knowledge that dwarfs the perspective of any one individual. In a crisis like COVID-19, we need to defer to that expertise, at least conditionally.

“If we look at social media, things could look frightening,” says Hass. When hundreds of millions of people are vaccinated, millions of them will be afflicted anyway, in the course of life, by conditions like strokes, anaphylaxis, and Bell’s palsy. “We have to have faith that people collecting the data will let us know if we are seeing those things above the baseline rate.”

3. Who was studied, and where?

Animal experiments tell scientists a lot, but their applicability to our daily human lives will be limited. Similarly, if researchers only studied men, the conclusions might not be relevant to women, and vice versa.

Many psychology studies rely on WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) participants, mainly college students, which creates an in-built bias in the discipline’s conclusions. Historically, biomedical studies also bias toward gathering measures from white male study participants, which again, limits generalizability of findings. Does that mean you should dismiss Western science? Of course not. It’s just the equivalent of a “Caution,” “Yield,” or “Roadwork Ahead” sign on the road to understanding.

This applies to the coronavirus vaccines now being distributed and administered around the world. The vaccines will have side effects; all medicines do. Those side effects will be worse for some people than others, depending on their genetic inheritance, medical status, age, upbringing, current living conditions, and other factors.

For Hass, it amounts to this question: Will those side effects be worse, on balance, than COVID-19, for most people?

“When I hear that four in 100,000 [of people in the vaccine trials] had Bell’s palsy, I know that it would have been a heck of a lot worse if 100,000 people had COVID. Three hundred people would have died and many others been stuck with chronic health problems.”

4. How big was the sample?

In general, the more participants in a study, the more valid its results. That said, a large sample is sometimes impossible or even undesirable for certain kinds of studies. During COVID-19, limited time has constrained the sample sizes.

However, that acknowledged, it’s still the case that some studies have been much larger than others—and the sample sizes of the vaccine trials can still provide us with enough information to make informed decisions. Doctors and nurses on the front lines of COVID-19—who are now the very first people being injected with the vaccine—think in terms of “biological plausibility,” as Hass says.

Did the admittedly rushed FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine make sense, given what we already know? Tens of thousands of doctors who have been grappling with COVID-19 are voting with their arms, in effect volunteering to be a sample for their patients. If they didn’t think the vaccine was safe, you can bet they’d resist it. When the vaccine becomes available to ordinary people, we’ll know a lot more about its effects than we do today, thanks to health care providers paving the way.

5. Did the researchers control for key differences, and do those differences apply to you?

Diversity or gender balance aren’t necessarily virtues in experimental research, though ideally a study sample is as representative of the overall population as possible. However, many studies use intentionally homogenous groups, because this allows the researchers to limit the number of different factors that might affect the result.

While good researchers try to compare apples to apples, and control for as many differences as possible in their analyses, running a study always involves trade-offs between what can be accomplished as a function of study design, and how generalizable the findings can be.

The Science of Happiness

What does it take to live a happier life? Learn research-tested strategies that you can put into practice today. Hosted by award-winning psychologist Dacher Keltner. Co-produced by PRX and UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

You also need to ask if the specific population studied even applies to you. For example, when one study found that cloth masks didn’t work in “high-risk situations,” it was sometimes used as evidence against mask mandates.

However, a look beyond the headlines revealed that the study was of health care workers treating COVID-19 patients, which is a vastly more dangerous situation than, say, going to the grocery store. Doctors who must intubate patients can end up being splattered with saliva. In that circumstance, one cloth mask won’t cut it. They also need an N95, a face shield, two layers of gloves, and two layers of gown. For the rest of us in ordinary life, masks do greatly reduce community spread, if as many people as possible are wearing them.

6. Was there a control group?

One of the first things to look for in methodology is whether the population tested was randomly selected, whether there was a control group, and whether people were randomly assigned to either group without knowing which one they were in. This is especially important if a study aims to suggest that a certain experience or treatment might actually cause a specific outcome, rather than just reporting a correlation between two variables (see next point).

For example, were some people randomly assigned a specific meditation practice while others engaged in a comparable activity or exercise? If the sample is large enough, randomized trials can produce solid conclusions. But, sometimes, a study will not have a control group because it’s ethically impossible. We can’t, for example, let sick people go untreated just to see what would happen. Biomedical research often makes use of standard “treatment as usual” or placebos in control groups. They also follow careful ethical guidelines to protect patients from both maltreatment and being deprived necessary treatment. When you’re reading about studies of masks, social distancing, and treatments during the COVID-19, you can partially gauge the reliability and validity of the study by first checking if it had a control group. If it didn’t, the findings should be taken as preliminary.

7. Did the researchers establish causality, correlation, dependence, or some other kind of relationship?

We often hear “Correlation is not causation” shouted as a kind of battle cry, to try to discredit a study. But correlation—the degree to which two or more measurements seem connected—is important, and can be a step toward eventually finding causation—that is, establishing a change in one variable directly triggers a change in another. Until then, however, there is no way to ascertain the direction of a correlational relationship (does A change B, or does B change A), or to eliminate the possibility that a third, unmeasured factor is behind the pattern of both variables without further analysis.

In the end, the important thing is to accurately identify the relationship. This has been crucial in understanding steps to counter the spread of COVID-19 like shelter-in-place orders. Just showing that greater compliance with shelter-in-place mandates was associated with lower hospitalization rates is not as conclusive as showing that one community that enacted shelter-in-place mandates had lower hospitalization rates than a different community of similar size and population density that elected not to do so.

We are not the first people to face an infection without understanding the relationships between factors that would lead to more of it. During the bubonic plague, cities would order rodents killed to control infection. They were onto something: Fleas that lived on rodents were indeed responsible. But then human cases would skyrocket.

Why? Because the fleas would migrate off the rodent corpses onto humans, which would worsen infection. Rodent control only reduces bubonic plague if it’s done proactively; once the outbreak starts, killing rats can actually make it worse. Similarly, we can’t jump to conclusions during the COVID-19 pandemic when we see correlations.

8. Are journalists and politicians, or even scientists, overstating the result?

Language that suggests a fact is “proven” by one study or which promotes one solution for all people is most likely overstating the case. Sweeping generalizations of any kind often indicate a lack of humility that should be a red flag to readers. A study may very well “suggest” a certain conclusion but it rarely, if ever, “proves” it.

This is why we use a lot of cautious, hedging language in Greater Good , like “might” or “implies.” This applies to COVID-19 as well. In fact, this understanding could save your life.

When President Trump touted the advantages of hydroxychloroquine as a way to prevent and treat COVID-19, he was dramatically overstating the results of one observational study. Later studies with control groups showed that it did not work—and, in fact, it didn’t work as a preventative for President Trump and others in the White House who contracted COVID-19. Most survived that outbreak, but hydroxychloroquine was not one of the treatments that saved their lives. This example demonstrates how misleading and even harmful overstated results can be, in a global pandemic.

9. Is there any conflict of interest suggested by the funding or the researchers’ affiliations?

A 2015 study found that you could drink lots of sugary beverages without fear of getting fat, as long as you exercised. The funder? Coca Cola, which eagerly promoted the results. This doesn’t mean the results are wrong. But it does suggest you should seek a second opinion : Has anyone else studied the effects of sugary drinks on obesity? What did they find?

It’s possible to take this insight too far. Conspiracy theorists have suggested that “Big Pharma” invented COVID-19 for the purpose of selling vaccines. Thus, we should not trust their own trials showing that the vaccine is safe and effective.

But, in addition to the fact that there is no compelling investigative evidence that pharmaceutical companies created the virus, we need to bear in mind that their trials didn’t unfold in a vacuum. Clinical trials were rigorously monitored and independently reviewed by third-party entities like the World Health Organization and government organizations around the world, like the FDA in the United States.

Does that completely eliminate any risk? Absolutely not. It does mean, however, that conflicts of interest are being very closely monitored by many, many expert eyes. This greatly reduces the probability and potential corruptive influence of conflicts of interest.

10. Do the authors reference preceding findings and original sources?

The scientific method is based on iterative progress, and grounded in coordinating discoveries over time. Researchers study what others have done and use prior findings to guide their own study approaches; every study builds on generations of precedent, and every scientist expects their own discoveries to be usurped by more sophisticated future work. In the study you are reading, do the researchers adequately describe and acknowledge earlier findings, or other key contributions from other fields or disciplines that inform aspects of the research, or the way that they interpret their results?

Greater Good’s Guide to Well-Being During Coronavirus

Practices, resources, and articles for individuals, parents, and educators facing COVID-19

This was crucial for the debates that have raged around mask mandates and social distancing. We already knew quite a bit about the efficacy of both in preventing infections, informed by centuries of practical experience and research.

When COVID-19 hit American shores, researchers and doctors did not question the necessity of masks in clinical settings. Here’s what we didn’t know: What kinds of masks would work best for the general public, who should wear them, when should we wear them, were there enough masks to go around, and could we get enough people to adopt best mask practices to make a difference in the specific context of COVID-19 ?

Over time, after a period of confusion and contradictory evidence, those questions have been answered . The very few studies that have suggested masks don’t work in stopping COVID-19 have almost all failed to account for other work on preventing the disease, and had results that simply didn’t hold up. Some were even retracted .

So, when someone shares a coronavirus study with you, it’s important to check the date. The implications of studies published early in the pandemic might be more limited and less conclusive than those published later, because the later studies could lean on and learn from previously published work. Which leads us to the next question you should ask in hearing about coronavirus research…

11. Do researchers, journalists, and politicians acknowledge limitations and entertain alternative explanations?

Is the study focused on only one side of the story or one interpretation of the data? Has it failed to consider or refute alternative explanations? Do they demonstrate awareness of which questions are answered and which aren’t by their methods? Do the journalists and politicians communicating the study know and understand these limitations?

When the Annals of Internal Medicine published a Danish study last month on the efficacy of cloth masks, some suggested that it showed masks “make no difference” against COVID-19.

The study was a good one by the standards spelled out in this article. The researchers and the journal were both credible, the study was randomized and controlled, and the sample size (4,862 people) was fairly large. Even better, the scientists went out of their way to acknowledge the limits of their work: “Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.”

Unfortunately, their scientific integrity was not reflected in the ways the study was used by some journalists, politicians, and people on social media. The study did not show that masks were useless. What it did show—and what it was designed to find out—was how much protection masks offered to the wearer under the conditions at the time in Denmark. In fact, the amount of protection for the wearer was not large, but that’s not the whole picture: We don’t wear masks mainly to protect ourselves, but to protect others from infection. Public-health recommendations have stressed that everyone needs to wear a mask to slow the spread of infection.

“We get vaccinated for the greater good, not just to protect ourselves ”

As the authors write in the paper, we need to look to other research to understand the context for their narrow results. In an editorial accompanying the paper in Annals of Internal Medicine , the editors argue that the results, together with existing data in support of masks, “should motivate widespread mask wearing to protect our communities and thereby ourselves.”

Something similar can be said of the new vaccine. “We get vaccinated for the greater good, not just to protect ourselves,” says Hass. “Being vaccinated prevents other people from getting sick. We get vaccinated for the more vulnerable in our community in addition for ourselves.”

Ultimately, the approach we should take to all new studies is a curious but skeptical one. We should take it all seriously and we should take it all with a grain of salt. You can judge a study against your experience, but you need to remember that your experience creates bias. You should try to cultivate humility, doubt, and patience. You might not always succeed; when you fail, try to admit fault and forgive yourself.

Above all, we need to try to remember that science is a process, and that conclusions always raise more questions for us to answer. That doesn’t mean we never have answers; we do. As the pandemic rages and the scientific process unfolds, we as individuals need to make the best decisions we can, with the information we have.

This article was revised and updated from a piece published by Greater Good in 2015, “ 10 Questions to Ask About Scientific Studies .”

About the Authors

Jeremy Adam Smith

Uc berkeley.

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the GGSC’s online magazine, Greater Good . He is also the author or coeditor of five books, including The Daddy Shift , Are We Born Racist? , and (most recently) The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good . Before joining the GGSC, Jeremy was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D. , is the science director of the Greater Good Science Center, where she directs the GGSC’s research fellowship program and serves as a co-instructor of its Science of Happiness and Science of Happiness at Work online courses.

You May Also Enjoy

In a Pandemic, Elbow Touches Might Keep Us Going

How to Form a Pandemic Pod

How to Keep the Greater Good in Mind During the Coronavirus Outbreak

Why Is COVID-19 Killing So Many Black Americans?

How Does COVID-19 Affect Trust in Government?

Why Your Sacrifices Matter During the Pandemic

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Most US students are recovering from pandemic-era setbacks, but millions are making up little ground

Fifth grade students attend a math lesson with teacher Jana Lamontagne, right, during class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

A fifth grade student explains a math answer to his classmate during a math lesson at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Fifth grade students attend a math lesson with teacher Alex Ventresca, right, during class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

A fifth grade student attends a math lesson during class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Fifth grade students work on computers during a math class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Fifth grade teacher Jana Lamontagne, center, teaches a math lesson during class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Osbell, 9, works on the Ignite program with a live tutor, during a third grade English language arts class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Bridget, 9, attends a third grade English language arts class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Jaelene, 9, works on a computer during a third grade English language arts class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Students work on a writing assignment during a third grade English language arts class at Mount Vernon Community School, in Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Wells Preparatory Elementary School principal Vincent Izuegbu talks about the school’s mission to overcome the effects of remote pandemic learning Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. In the classroom, the school put a sharper focus on collaboration. Along with academic setbacks, students came back from school closures with lower maturity levels, said Izuegbu. “We do not let 10 minutes go by without a teacher giving students the opportunity to engage with the subject,” Izuegbu said. “That’s very, very important in terms of the growth that we’ve seen.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The Wells Preparatory Elementary School Student Creed hangs on the wall behind principal Vincent Izuegbu on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. At Wells Preparatory Elementary on the South Side, just 3% of students met state reading standards in 2021. Last year, 30% hit the mark. Federal relief allowed the school to hire an interventionist for the first time, and teachers get paid to team up on recovery outside working hours. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Wells Preparatory Elementary School student Olorunkemi Atoyebi, responds to a question during an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. Atoyebi was an A student before the pandemic, but after spending fifth grade behind a computer screen, she fell behind. During remote learning, she was nervous about stopping class to ask questions. Before long, math lessons stopped making sense. When she returned to in classroom learning other students worked in groups, her math teacher helped her one-on-one. Atoyebi learned a rhyming song to help memorize multiplication tables. Over time, it began to click. “They made me feel more confident in everything,” said Atoyebi, now 14. “My confidence started going up, my grades started going up, my scores started going up. Everything has felt like I understand it better."(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Students at the Wells Preparatory Elementary School make their way to the cafeteria past reminders of the education and subjects they are receiving on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. In Chicago Public Schools, the average reading score went up by the equivalent of 70% of a grade level from 2022 to 2023. Math gains were less dramatic, with students still behind almost half a grade level compared to 2019. Chicago officials credit the improvement to changes made possible with nearly $3 billion in federal relief. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The desktop of a student at the Wells Preparatory Elementary School reflects the literature they are studying in Charlotte Owens’ fifth grade class on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. In Chicago Public Schools, the average reading score went up by the equivalent of 70% of a grade level from 2022 to 2023. Math gains were less dramatic, with students still behind almost half a grade level compared to 2019. Chicago officials credit the improvement to changes made possible with nearly $3 billion in federal relief. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Wells Preparatory Elementary School teacher Charlotte Owens, left, works with her fifth grade students during the literature segment of their day, Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. In Chicago Public Schools, the average reading score went up by the equivalent of 70% of a grade level from 2022 to 2023. Math gains were less dramatic, with students still behind almost half a grade level compared to 2019. Chicago officials credit the improvement to changes made possible with nearly $3 billion in federal relief. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

• Copy Link copied

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — On one side of the classroom, students circled teacher Maria Fletcher and practiced vowel sounds. In another corner, children read together from a book. Scattered elsewhere, students sat at laptop computers and got reading help from online tutors.

For the third graders at Mount Vernon Community School in Virginia, it was an ordinary school day. But educators were racing to get students learning more, faster, and to overcome setbacks that have persisted since schools closed for the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago.

America’s schools have started to make progress toward getting students back on track. But improvement has been slow and uneven across geography and economic status, with millions of students — often those from marginalized groups — making up little or no ground.

Nationally, students made up one-third of their pandemic losses in math during the past school year and one-quarter of the losses in reading, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard , an analysis of state and national test scores by researchers at Harvard and Stanford.

But in nine states, including Virginia, reading scores continued to fall during the 2022-23 school year after previous decreases during the pandemic.

Clouding the recovery is a looming financial crisis. States have used some money from the historic $190 billion in federal pandemic relief to help students catch up , but that money runs out later this year.

“The recovery is not finished, and it won’t be finished without state action,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist behind the scorecard. “States need to start planning for what they’re going to do when the federal money runs out in September. And I think few states have actually started that discussion.”

Virginia lawmakers approved an extra $418 million last year to accelerate recovery. Massachusetts officials set aside $3.2 million to provide math tutoring for fourth and eighth grade students who are behind grade level, along with $8 million for literacy tutoring.

But among other states with lagging progress, few said they were changing their strategies or spending more to speed up improvement.

Virginia hired online tutoring companies and gave schools a “playbook” showing how to build effective tutoring programs. Lisa Coons, Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction, said last year’s state test scores were a wake-up call.

“We weren’t recovering as fast as we needed,” Coons said in an interview.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has called for states to continue funding extra academic help for students as the federal money expires.

“We just can’t stop now,” he said at a May 30 conference for education journalists. “The states need to recognize these interventions work. Funding public education does make a difference.”

In Virginia, the Alexandria district received $2.3 million in additional state money to expand tutoring.

At Mount Vernon, where classes are taught in English and Spanish, students are divided into groups and rotate through stations customized to their skill level. Those who need the most help get online tutoring. In Fletcher’s classroom, a handful of students wore headsets and worked with tutors through Ignite Learning, one of the companies hired by the state.

With tutors in high demand, the online option has been a big help, Mount Vernon principal Jennifer Hamilton said.

“That’s something that we just could not provide here,” she said.

Ana Marisela Ventura Moreno said her 9-year-old daughter, Sabrina, benefited significantly from extra reading help last year during second grade, but she’s still catching up.

“She needs to get better. She’s not at the level she should be,” the mother said in Spanish. She noted the school did not offer the tutoring help this year, but she did not know why.

Alexandria education officials say students scoring below proficient or close to that cutoff receive high-intensity tutoring help and they have to prioritize students with the greatest needs. Alexandria trailed the state average on math and reading exams in 2023, but it’s slowly improving.

More worrying to officials are the gaps: Among poorer students at Mount Vernon, just 24% scored proficient in math and 28% hit the mark in reading. That’s far lower than the rates among wealthier students, and the divide is growing wider.

Failing to get students back on track could have serious consequences. The researchers at Harvard and Stanford found communities with higher test scores have higher incomes and lower rates of arrest and incarceration. If pandemic setbacks become permanent, it could follow students for life.

The Education Recovery Scorecard tracks about 30 states, all of which made at least some improvement in math from 2022 to 2023. The states whose reading scores fell in that span, in addition to Virginia, were Nevada, California, South Dakota, Wyoming, Indiana, Oklahoma, Connecticut and Washington.

Only a few states have rebounded to pre-pandemic testing levels. Alabama was the only state where math achievement increased past 2019 levels, while Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana accomplished that in reading.

In Chicago Public Schools, the average reading score went up by the equivalent of 70% of a grade level from 2022 to 2023. Math gains were less dramatic, with students still behind almost half a grade level compared with 2019. Chicago officials credit the improvement to changes made possible with nearly $3 billion in federal relief.

The district trained hundreds of Chicago residents to work as tutors. Every school building got an interventionist, an educator who focuses on helping struggling students.

The district also used federal money for home visits and expanded arts education in an effort to re-engage students.

“Academic recovery in isolation, just through ‘drill and kill,’ either tutoring or interventions, is not effective,” said Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer. “Students need to feel engaged.”

At Wells Preparatory Elementary on the city’s South Side, just 3% of students met state reading standards in 2021. Last year, 30% hit the mark. Federal relief allowed the school to hire an interventionist for the first time, and teachers get paid to team up on recovery outside working hours.

In the classroom, the school put a sharper focus on collaboration. Along with academic setbacks, students came back from school closures with lower maturity levels, principal Vincent Izuegbu said. By building lessons around discussion, officials found students took more interest in learning.

“We do not let 10 minutes go by without a teacher giving students the opportunity to engage with the subject,” Izuegbu said. “That’s very, very important in terms of the growth that we’ve seen.”

Olorunkemi Atoyebi was an A student before the pandemic, but after spending fifth grade learning at home, she fell behind. During remote learning, she was nervous about stopping class to ask questions. Before long, math lessons stopped making sense.

When she returned to school, she struggled with multiplication and terms such as “dividend” and “divisor” confused her.

While other students worked in groups, her math teacher took her aside for individual help. Atoyebi learned a rhyming song to help memorize multiplication tables. Over time, it began to click.

“They made me feel more confident in everything,” said Atoyebi, now 14. “My grades started going up. My scores started going up. Everything has felt like I understand it better.”

Associated Press writers Michael Melia in Hartford, Connecticut, and Chrissie Thompson in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

• Frontiers in Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Research Topics

COVID-19: Mid- and Long-Term Educational and Psychological Consequences for Students and Educators

Total Downloads

Total Views and Downloads

About this Research Topic

In many countries, almost a year after the COVID-19 pandemic started, businesses are still closed or minimally active, travel bans are still in place, as are bans on social gatherings of non-cohabitants. Due to the measures taken by the multiple countries facing the COVID-19 global pandemic, the reduction of ...

Keywords : COVID-19, Educational consequences, Psychological consequences, Mental Health, Students

Important Note : All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

Topic Editors

Topic coordinators, recent articles, submission deadlines.

Submission closed.

Participating Journals

Total views.

• Demographics

No records found

total views article views downloads topic views

Top countries

Top referring sites, about frontiers research topics.

With their unique mixes of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author.

• Skip to main content
• Skip to FDA Search
• Skip to in this section menu
• Skip to footer links

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.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration

•   Search
•   Menu
• News & Events
• FDA Newsroom
• Press Announcements

FDA Takes Action on Updated mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines to Better Protect Against Currently Circulating Variants

FDA News Release

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took action approving and authorizing for emergency use updated COVID-19 vaccines formulated to more closely target currently circulating variants and to provide better protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death. Today’s actions relate to updated mRNA vaccines for 2023-2024 manufactured by ModernaTX Inc. and Pfizer Inc. Consistent with the totality of the evidence and input from the FDA’s expert advisors, these vaccines have been updated to include a monovalent (single) component that corresponds to the Omicron variant XBB.1.5.

What You Need to Know

• Individuals 5 years of age and older regardless of previous vaccination are eligible to receive a single dose of an updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccine at least 2 months since the last dose of any COVID-19 vaccine. 
• Individuals 6 months through 4 years of age who have previously been vaccinated against COVID-19 are eligible to receive one or two doses of an updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (timing and number of doses to administer depends on the previous COVID-19 vaccine received). 
• Unvaccinated individuals 6 months through 4 years of age are eligible to receive three doses of the updated authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine or two doses of the updated authorized Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine.
• The FDA is confident in the safety and effectiveness of these updated vaccines and the agency’s benefit-risk assessment demonstrates that the benefits of these vaccines for individuals 6 months of age and older outweigh their risks.
• Individuals who receive an updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccine may experience similar side effects as those reported by individuals who previously received mRNA COVID-19 vaccines as described in the respective prescribing information or fact sheets.
• The updated vaccines are expected to provide good protection against COVID-19 from the currently circulating variants. Barring the emergence of a markedly more virulent variant, the FDA anticipates that the composition of COVID-19 vaccines may need to be updated annually, as is done for the seasonal influenza vaccine. 
• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet tomorrow (Sept. 12), to discuss clinical recommendations on who should receive an updated vaccine, as well as further considerations for specific populations such as immunocompromised and older individuals. 
• Manufacturers have publicly announced that the updated vaccines would be ready this fall, and the FDA anticipates that the updated vaccines will be available in the near future.

“Vaccination remains critical to public health and continued protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death,” said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “The public can be assured that these updated vaccines have met the agency’s rigorous scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality. We very much encourage those who are eligible to consider getting vaccinated.”

The updated mRNA vaccines are each approved for individuals 12 years of age and older and are authorized under emergency use for individuals 6 months through 11 years of age. As part of today’s actions, the bivalent Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines are no longer authorized for use in the United States.

Data Supporting the Updated mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines (2023-2024 Formula)

The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines approved and authorized today are supported by the FDA’s evaluation of manufacturing data to support the change to the 2023-2024 formula and non-clinical immune response data on the updated formulations including the XBB.1.5 component. 

• The updated mRNA vaccines are manufactured using a similar process as previous formulations. In studies that have been recently conducted, the extent of neutralization observed by the updated vaccines against currently circulating viral variants causing COVID-19, including EG.5 and BA.2.86, appears to be of a similar magnitude to the extent of neutralization observed with prior versions of the vaccines against corresponding prior variants against which they had been developed to provide protection. This suggests that the vaccines are a good match for protecting against the currently circulating COVID-19 variants.
• The benefit-risk profile of previously authorized and approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is well understood as these vaccines have been administered to hundreds of millions of people in the United States. 

Based on an evaluation of the totality of the evidence, the benefit-risk profile is favorable for individuals 6 months of age and older to receive an updated COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Although serious outcomes from COVID-19 are less common in younger individuals, they do occur, and it has been demonstrated that recently receiving a COVID-19 vaccine reduces the risk of such serious outcomes.

Additional Details on Today’s Actions

Specifically, today’s actions include:

• Approval of Comirnaty (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) to include the 2023-2024 formula, and a change to a single dose for individuals 12 years of age and older. Comirnaty was previously approved as a two-dose series for individuals 12 years of age and older. 
• Approval of Spikevax (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) to include the 2023-2024 formula, a change to a single dose for individuals 18 years of age and older, and approval of a single dose for individuals 12 through 17 years of age. Spikevax was previously approved as a two-dose series for individuals 18 years of age and older. 
• Authorization of Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine for emergency use in individuals 6 months through 11 years of age to include the 2023-2024 formula and lower the age eligibility for receipt of a single dose from 6 years to 5 years of age. Additional doses are also authorized for certain immunocompromised individuals ages 6 months through 11 years, as described in the fact sheets.
• Authorization of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for emergency use in individuals 6 months through 11 years of age to include the 2023-2024 formula. Additional doses are also authorized for certain immunocompromised individuals ages 6 months through 11 years, as described in the fact sheets.

The approval of Comirnaty (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) (2023-2024 Formula) was granted to BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH. The EUA amendment for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine (2023-2024 Formula) was issued to Pfizer Inc.

The approval of Spikevax (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) (2023-2024 Formula) was granted to ModernaTX Inc. and the EUA amendment for the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine (2023-2024 Formula) was issued to ModernaTX Inc.

Related Information

• Comirnaty (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) (2023-2024 Formula)
• Spikevax (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) (2023-2024 Formula)
• Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine (2023-2024 Formula)
• FDA Resources for the Fall Respiratory Illness Season
• Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine (2023-2024 Formula) 
• Updated COVID-19 Vaccines for Use in the United States Beginning in Fall 2023
• June 15, 2023, Meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee

The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.

WVU undergraduate students awarded Goldwater Scholarships to continue research

Monday, June 03, 2024

Three West Virginia University students — (from left) Christopher Smith, Easton Cahill and Rachel King — are recipients of 2024 Goldwater Scholarships, one of the most prestigious national undergraduate scholarships that supports students with strong commitments to careers in research. (WVU Photo/Matt Sunday)

Three outstanding West Virginia University students have been named winners of the 2024 Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s premier undergraduate scholarship in mathematics, engineering and the natural sciences. 

Easton Cahill, Rachel King and Christopher Smith are among the 438 scholars selected nationwide and join the ranks of 47 Mountaineers selected before them. Each scholarship provides as much as $7,500 annually for up to two years of undergraduate study. 

“The Goldwater Scholarship is one of the most prestigious national undergraduate scholarships and supports students who have a strong commitment to a career in research,” said Candice Brown , associate professor of neuroscience and advisor for the Goldwater Scholarship . “The success of our three stellar winners is a testament to the University’s commitment and investment in supporting undergraduate research opportunities across campus.”

Easton Cahill   The summer before his first semester at WVU, Cahill got his first taste of college-level research as part of the WVU Summer Immersion Experience with the First2 Network.

The program offered a residential STEM research experience for first-generation and underrepresented first-year students from rural areas.  

Afterward, the first-generation college student was eager to get his foot in the laboratory door as a freshman at WVU.  

Stemming from a personal experience with eye hemorrhages in middle school, the junior biology major from Bridgeport was driven by a desire to conduct ophthalmologic research and connected with Wen-Tao Deng through the Research Apprenticeship Program . 

The assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences as well as biochemistry and molecular medicine in the WVU School of Medicine has served as Cahill’s research mentor for the last three years. 

Performing single gene replacement therapy on mice with blue cone monochromacy, a type of inherited retinal disease, Cahill’s primary goal is to help the animals see again. 

“The mutations that these individuals carry means that they lack certain functional proteins, namely L- and M- cone opsins,” he said. “Our only job is to replace that protein, delivering it to their retina so that they’re able to see again. Hopefully one day I can play a role in transitioning the treatment to humans.” 

According to Cahill, one difficult part about treating eyes is that the retina is made up of neurons and neural tissues — and those neurons last a lifetime.  

“They do not regrow,” he said. “Any type of damage that you get to your eye typically will last a lifetime. Studying the eye, its photoreceptors and neurons helps us understand different diseases that affect all our neural tissue.” 

Gene therapy research is particularly important in West Virginia, a state with the highest rate of blindness and genetic predispositions to many of the different types of blindness that exist. 

“Having my own moment of understanding about what it means to have vision and to not have vision is very scary,” Cahill said. “I really empathize with people who are dealing with it. I think this kind of research is very, very important and it’s all part of my story of why I want to do this.” 

After completing his undergraduate degree, Cahill plans to enroll in a dual medical and doctoral degree program, focusing on biochemistry and molecular medicine. 

Rachel King   Also a First2 Network alum, King spent the summer before her freshman year at WVU conducting astronomy research at the Green Bank Observatory in Pocahontas County. 

The experience helped the Manheim, Pennsylvania, native lean into her childhood love of understanding what’s beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. 

“I remember being a little kid who knew all the planets and would watch space documentaries all the time,” King said. “Studying astronomy really gets at some of the secrets of the universe and uncovering how everything happened and going beyond this planet.”   

For the last three years, she has worked with mentor Maura McLaughlin , Eberly Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy , on pulsar research.   

“Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit beams of radiation from their magnetic poles and, as they spin around, these beams are observed on Earth as pulses,” King said. “They’re very similar to lighthouses. As the light spins around, you don’t see anything, except for a brief moment when the light is pointed directly at you.”   

Most recently, the physics major has been exploring pulsar nulling, a phenomenon where the pulse energy suddenly drops to zero before returning to full energy.   

“Pulsars have these incredibly regular pulses that we can detect on Earth,” she said. “Although we don’t know why, a lot of pulsar pulses will suddenly become undetectable for anywhere from seconds to hours, so I’ve been looking at different pulsars and trying to figure out what types of pulsars tend to null and, hopefully, constraining that physics a little bit.”   

As a WVU student, King has had the opportunity to present her research on campus and internationally, including at two meetings of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves. She also attended the summer 2023 International Pulsar Timing Array meeting in Australia.  

“Research really opens doors for you and teaches you skills that you can’t really learn in the classroom,” King said. “It also connects you to faculty and I’ve made a lot of friends and connections through research.” 

King plans to get a PhD in physics or astrophysics with a current goal of one day conducting astronomy research full-time. 

Christopher Smith   When Smith arrived at WVU three years ago, he knew three things — he’s good at math and science, has a strong desire to help others and is not interested in attending medical school. 

The Point Pleasant native found a home in the biomedical engineering program which allows him to combine his skills and passion. 

“Having a strong background in math and science and also a drive to make a difference in other people’s lives, I quickly found how biomedical engineering was the perfect fit,” Smith said. “I learned how to make medical devices, about different diagnostic techniques, how cell therapies work, how biomedical instrumentation works and how bright the future of medicine could look thanks to the work of biomedical engineers.”  

Being a first-generation college student, Smith said it “was hard to figure out” what options and paths were available to him in college. 

“My parents didn’t really have a college experience so they didn’t have any idea of what I could do once there, but they always just encouraged me to attend,” he said. “It was definitely difficult to get involved when I had no clue what to get involved in, what was really out there and I didn’t have anyone to tell me what it would be like.” 

Smith went on to say he “had no clue what research was” until a math professor encouraged him to get involved during his freshman year. 

“That summer, I sent an email to between 10 and 15 professors asking if they had room in their research labs,” he said. “Sometimes I think about how crazy it is that sending out those emails gave me a direction for the rest of my life.”

Soumya Srivastava , assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, welcomed Smith into her lab and provided important shadowing and learning opportunities to help him better understand the research process.  

Smith works alongside Srivastava and Raphael Oladokun , a graduate research assistant and WVU Statler Fellow, exploring the development of a diagnostic device for early diagnosis of breast cancer. 

“Our whole goal is to create a tiny device that could process small blood samples from patients and determine the potential for breast cancer based on if the cells separate,” he said. “In theory, the immune cells would have a reaction in the body before a patient would have any other signs of cancer. This would lead to different properties and separation in our device, representing a positive screening for breast cancer.” 

Smith participated in the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience last summer, presented his research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research this April and will travel to Puerto Rico this summer to participate in a Research Experience for Undergraduates.  

“Starting at WVU as a first-generation Hispanic student from rural West Virginia and having no clue what direction I was headed after school, experiential learning opportunities like undergraduate research have really been a blessing,” he said. “Being named a Goldwater Scholar is a huge honor. It helps remind me that I can achieve these things and helps suppress the common feeling of imposter syndrome. I hope this shows others from similar backgrounds they can achieve this as well.”

WVU students interested in the Goldwater Scholarship can work with the ASPIRE Office to learn more and apply. Founded in 2006, the office assists students applying for nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships, as well as students applying for graduate or professional schools.

MEDIA CONTACT: Lindsay Willey Director of Marketing and Communications WVU Honors College 304-293-2100; [email protected]

Call 1-855-WVU-NEWS for the latest West Virginia University news and information from WVUToday .

6 priorities for future research into COVID-19 and its effects on early learning

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, christina weiland , christina weiland associate professor, school of education - university of michigan @weilanch erica greenberg , erica greenberg senior research associate, center on education data and policy - urban institute @ericahgreenberg daphna bassok , daphna bassok nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy @daphnabassok anna j. markowitz , anna j. markowitz assistant professor, graduate school of education and information studies - ucla @ajmarkowitz paola guerrero rosada , and paola guerrero rosada doctoral candidate, school of education - university of michigan @paolaguerreror grace luetmer grace luetmer research analyst, center on education data and policy - urban institute @graceluetmer.

July 20, 2021

Since March 2020, researchers have produced more than 300 reports on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on young children’s learning and on the early care and education (ECE) programs that serve them. Very quickly, ECE leaders facing the urgent day-to-day demands of COVID-19 response also faced a deluge of evidence—far more than they could efficiently find, sort, and use.

To help provide policymakers with a clear understanding of the pandemic’s effects on young children’s learning and ECE programs, our team of 16 early childhood experts and 10 early childhood policy leaders recently released a summary of this evidence base. We reviewed 76 high-quality studies in depth, spanning 16 national studies, 45 studies in 31 states, and 15 local studies. Our work illuminated a national story of learning setbacks and unmet needs, for which we offered evidence-backed, equity-centered policy solutions.

But another advantage of taking stock of what we know was discovering what we don’t know. Our in-depth review revealed six takeaways about where research in this area should go next. Especially given that American Rescue Plan funds can be used to build research capacity in state and local agencies, our hope is that a clear statement of what stakeholders need to know next is helpful for producing new evidence to guide investments going forward.

Here are six priorities for future research going forward:

• Continue to track recovery for children, families, teachers, and programs. We likely have just scratched the surface of the effects of this fluid, complex crisis. The Delta variant raises new questions about health and safety, and young children have yet to be vaccinated . Extending studies of the effects of the crisis on children’s learning, the supply of ECE programs, and early educators’ experiences is essential for targeting supports and ensuring equitable solutions.
• Document changes to ECE programs and children’s experiences that are not captured in existing data. We have lots of evidence that shows the many changes ECE programs made to enhance health and safety, but we have only crude teacher reports on the effects of these changes on children’s classroom experiences. As vaccination rates increase, a return to direct observations of ECE classrooms—commonly done at large scale prior to the crisis—should be used to support both children and teachers. How are young children spending their time? Has instructional quality declined as teacher reports indicate? In what areas do teachers need support? Widely used and newer measures can answer these questions and inform instructional and policy decisions in the new normal.
• Measure learning outcomes for the youngest learners directly and across multiple domains. We found no data from direct assessments of children’s skills prior to kindergarten, and very little data outside of the literacy domain for kindergarten through second grade. We have parent and teacher reports on the youngest children that paint a worrisome picture, but the psychometrics of such measures can be questionable. The K-2 direct assessments we have show consistent and large learning setbacks, particularly for children typically marginalized in the U.S. education system. And many children, especially children from households with low incomes and children of color, are missing from recent data. Direct assessments are critical for meeting young children where they are, targeting resources effectively, and guiding investment decisions.
• Collect systematic data on the ECE workforce. Many studies have detailed how the ECE workforce suffered in the crisis, with the pandemic magnifying longstanding issues like very low pay, limited benefits, and few professional supports, particularly among teachers in child care and family child care settings. In the face of new challenges, early educators also reported new professional-development needs, including training on health and safety, remote learning, and meeting the needs of dual language learners (DLLs). Unlike in K-12, where extensive data is collected about the teaching workforce, few states systematically collect data about early educators. Collecting such data across sectors will be essential as new investments are made. ECE workforce issues commonly undercut investments and early educators are at the heart of ensuring the high-quality experiences that help young children thrive.
• Prioritize research on groups hit hardest. We know the effects of the pandemic have not been borne equally , but we found no data on some key populations such as young children from homeless families, children experiencing bereavement, children from migrant families, and Asian-American children amid the spike in Asian-American hate. Data on other critical populations like DLLs, children with disabilities, and Native-American children are sparse. Equity-centered, evidence-backed decision-making requires more data on young children who belong to groups that have suffered more in the crisis.
• Evaluate the impacts of new investments. We will need additional rigorous, fast-turnaround research as states and localities make high-stakes policy and spending decisions and families make decisions about their children’s care and education in the next chapter of the crisis. Decisions on a set of wide-ranging topics (e.g., program eligibility, teacher compensation and professional supports, and interventions for students needing help) both provide unique opportunities to study bold policy and have the potential to make lasting impacts. As an example, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan—a state hit particularly hard by the crisis—recently announced historic investments in both child care and preschool , including expanding access and improving teacher pay. Maine and Washington state also announced important new investments. Documenting state and local policy choices and their impacts is essential. Doing so will help legislartors make decisions about how best to allocate recovery dollars, and will ensure that what we learn from these historic investments will inform longer-term efforts to build truly high-quality ECE systems.

We titled our summary : “Historic crisis, historic opportunity.” The March 2021 American Rescue Plan was the largest public investment in early care and education in U.S. history. Smart and rigorous research, especially in partnership with decision-makers, has a critical role to play in pivoting from crisis to opportunity in ECE. Our young children and early educators deserve no less.

Related Content

Anita McGinty, Ann Partee, Allison Lynn Gray, Walter Herring, Jim Soland

July 19, 2021

Daphna Bassok, Lauren Bauer, Stephanie Riegg Cellini, Helen Shwe Hadani, Michael Hansen, Douglas N. Harris, Brad Olsen, Richard V. Reeves, Jon Valant, Kenneth K. Wong

March 12, 2021

Early Childhood Education

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Monica Bhatt, Jonathan Guryan, Jens Ludwig

June 3, 2024

Emily Markovich Morris, Laura Nóra, Richaa Hoysala, Max Lieblich, Sophie Partington, Rebecca Winthrop

May 31, 2024

Online only

9:30 am - 11:00 am EDT

News Center

First-year student awarded for human brain-computer interface research.

Dillan Prasad, a first-year medical student at Feinberg, was recently recognized for outstanding research by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

The Philip L. Gildenberg, MD, Resident Award is given annually to the best abstract submitted on the topic of stereotactic and functional neurosurgery. Prasad was presented with the award at the association’s annual meeting in Chicago in May.

Read a Q&A with Prasad below.

Tell us about your research interests.

Our research aims to build bionic arms to restore motor and sensory function for patients with limb loss and spinal cord injury. The field is called brain-computer interfaces; it’s straight out of science fiction, as we’re trying to build human cyborgs to bypass pathologies of the nervous system.

Simply put, we are developing robotic arms which can be installed into a patient’s residual limb and are fully under neurological control. The robotic arms are attached to chips that surgeons implant in the human brain, which are placed in different areas. Two chips are placed in the motor cortex and two in the sensory cortex. We have the chips communicate wirelessly with the arm. By “decoding” recorded motor signals, one set of chips controls the arm by translating neural signals into instructions that the arm’s motors can follow.

On the sensory side, the other set of chips allows users to once again feel sensation through intracortical microstimulation; we stimulate the brain in somatotopically-matched locations when the robotic arm contacts objects.  We’re essentially restoring the whole experience of touch, motor control and somatosensation for people who have lost an arm.

You recently won an award for your research. How did that come about?

I was super humbled and surprised to have been given this kind of award as I’m just a first-year medical student, and this was my first scientific conference.

This award is entirely thanks to the amazing work done by the scientists and surgeons in the Cortical Bionics research group. It was a collaborative win, as it was in recognition of the efforts of numerous contributors from Northwestern, UChicago, and Pitt, as well as our amazing human brain-computer interface (BCI) subjects who have undergone implantation in order to advance science forever. Science is a team sport, and I’m deeply humbled to have the opportunity to work on such an exciting and cutting-edge challenge.

The talk itself was a bit nerve-wracking because I had to give a scientific presentation in front of a room of over a hundred neurosurgeons who were all subject matter experts. I put in a lot of time preparing for the talk, and thanks to the valuable guidance of my Feinberg and UChicago mentors, it was ultimately a great experience.

How did you get started in this research area?

I did my undergrad at the University of Chicago, where I studied neuroscience, astrophysics and chemistry. I came across BCI when I took a neuroscience elective on neuroprosthetics, and I immediately loved it: cortical bionics felt like WestWorld meets Black Mirror, but in a beautiful way which will one day help patients everywhere. Over time, my interests grew more developed, and now I’m planning on dedicating my academic career to the exploration and treatment of the brain and nervous system.

This project has been unique because it integrates a whole bunch of different types of science in an exciting way. It’s computer science: machine learning decoders translate information from the brain into action that the motors in the arm can follow. It’s physics because it’s robotics. It’s neuroscience, more than anything else: every day, we learn more about how touch is encoded in the implanted microchips. It’s biology, it’s neurosurgery, it’s just about everything all brought into one.

The scientific paper, which is currently in pre-print, is officially under Charles Greenspon at the University of Chicago, but it’s collaborative with Pitt and Northwestern under Dr. Lee Miller.

The PI for the work was Sliman Bensmaia, who sadly passed away last summer at the age of 49. I dedicated the award and speech to him.  I’m really thankful for the chance to have known him. He was a great mentor, but also he was my friend, and he introduced me to a field which is quickly evolving into one of my greatest passions.

Do you plan to continue in this area of research?

Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited about this area: specifically, brain-computer interfaces.

My interests have evolved more towards the implantation of novel brain-computer interfaces, and all the minimally invasive and automated surgical techniques which I believe will eventually come to market. In my future practice, I’m excited about finding new ways to integrate technology with the brain and peripheral nerves to drive meaningful change for diverse patient populations everywhere.

I’ve found some success doing that so far with wonderful mentors at Northwestern; specifically Dr. El Tecle , Dr. Kimchi and Dr. Sonabend , among others. These neurologists and neurosurgeons are really at the top of their game and they’re at the cutting edge of their fields. They’re developing autonomous surgical platforms, using algorithms to detect delirium from EEG, and using ultrasound for neuromodulation, among much more. It’s these super exciting technological innovations which gives me confidence that the future is bright. I’m super thankful that these incredible mentors have included me in their work.

I hope to start working with the many companies who are driving meaningful change in this space as well, such as Neuralink, Precision, Synchron, etc.

You mentioned that Chicago is in your blood. Is that why you chose Feinberg?

I really couldn’t imagine going anywhere other than Feinberg. Chicago is the best city in the world, and anyone who knows me knows that it’s impossible to convince me otherwise.

I’m a Feinberg ambassador and I speak to a lot of young people. Every single applicant I talk to, I sing the praises and virtues of Feinberg, because I really deeply believe it. Obviously, our pre-clinical and clinical education is fantastic, thanks to the physicians who tirelessly work with us every week.

But Feinberg is one of the only places in the world which is truly interdisciplinary and integrative. If you have any interest of any kind, you can flesh it out with someone here through just a cold email. Honestly, there’s a high chance that person is a world expert in that topic, too. But thanks to the unbelievable breadth of work going on within the Northwestern system — from Feinberg, to ShirleyRyan, to the McCormick engineering school up in Evanston — the spirit is super educational and collaborative. People love to mentor, and love to help younger folks explore their interests.

I can’t imagine a better environment in which to train.

Related Posts

Foltz named new director of driskill graduate program, feinberg scientists to lead grant studying autism, schizophrenia, regenerating damaged heart cells.

Comments are closed.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

• Watch the latest ABC7 newscast here Full Story
• ABC7 Bay Area 24/7 live stream Watch Now

Anthony Fauci faces grilling by Republicans over COVID-19 response, origins | LIVE

It is the first time he's publicly testified since leaving government.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is facing intense scrutiny from House Republicans at a hearing on Monday as lawmakers continue to scrutinize his response to the COVID-19 pandemic and examine theories of the origin of the virus.

Fauci previously proclaimed that he has "nothing to hide" and is coming before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic voluntarily. It marks the first time he's publicly testified since he left the federal government at the end of 2022 after five decades of service.

Fauci's appearance on Capitol Hill comes amid a contentious election cycle, with Republicans continuing to hammer him on his response to the virus -- everything from mask mandates to vaccine guidelines and origin possibilities.

"Americans were aggressively bullied, shamed and silenced for merely questioning or debating issues such as social distancing, masks, vaccines or the origins of COVID," chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said as the hearing kicked off. Wenstrup, who said he was seeking accountability in this hearing, accused Fauci of overseeing "one of the most invasive regimes of domestic policy the U.S. has ever seen."

Fauci addressed those issues, and Republican attacks, in his opening statement, calling certain matters "seriously distorted."

Fauci forcefully denied GOP accusations that he meddled in research about the pandemic's origins, including claims that he tried to sway scientists away from concluding the virus came from a lab.

"The accusation being circulated that I influenced the scientists to change their minds by bribing them with millions of dollars in grant money is absolutely false, and simply preposterous," he said.

"The second issue is a false accusation that I tried to cover up the possibility that the virus originated from a lab. In fact, the truth is exactly the opposite," he added, proceeding to read an email in which he encouraged scientists to report their data to authorities.

Democrats, led by ranking member Raul Ruiz, sought to focus on moving forward -- and accused Republicans of using Fauci as a scapegoat for mistakes made during the early days of the pandemic by former President Donald Trump.

"After 15 months, the select subcommittee does not possess a shred of evidence to substantiate these extreme allegations Republicans have levied against Dr. Fauci for nearly four years," Ruiz said.

Earlier Monday, coming to Fauci's defense, Democrats on the panel announced the release of a staff report "debunking point by point Republicans' dangerous narrative" regarding the nation's former top infectious disease expert.

The latest attack on Fauci comes from Republicans on the subcommittee who cite "new evidence" they say warrants further scrutiny: an email exchange between a former Fauci senior adviser and an executive of a virus research organization where the adviser claims Fauci's private Gmail account could be utilized to evade Freedom of Information Act and future public scrutiny. Ahead of the hearing, Republicans requested access to Fauci's personal email account and cellphone records.

Fauci denied suggestions he used his private email, and both denounced and distanced himself from the adviser's actions.

"Let me state for the record that to the best of my knowledge I have never conducted official business via my personal email," Fauci said.

Dr. David Morens, the Fauci aide, advised EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak that Fauci may accept printed copies of documents if Daszak didn't want them tracked for the public record -- although it's not clear if Fauci ever had any involvement.

Records show that Morens himself used his private Gmail account to shield information from FOIA's reach, including to send Daszak official government documents and a heads-up about information that would become public through a FOIA request pertaining to EcoHealth Alliance grant materials and COVID-19 research.

EcoHealth Alliance is a U.S.-based organization -- described as a "virus-hunting group" -- that conducts research and outreach programs and global health, conservation and international development, according to its website.

Republicans say the alliance facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, without proper oversight; willingly violated multiple requirements of its multi-million dollar National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant; and, apparently, made false statements to the NIH.

The House select subcommittee released a report alleging wrongdoing there and the formal debarment of EcoHealth and Daszak. Health and Human Services has subsequently suspended U.S. funding to the organization, which totaled about $2.6 million last year.

Morens testified behind closed doors for transcribed interviews before the subcommittee on Jan 18., and later produced an additional 30,000 pages of documents pursuant to a subpoena before testifying publicly on May 22.

The panel subsequently released a staff memorandum it argues "presents overwhelming evidence" from Morens's email revealing misconduct and potentially illegal actions. The memo included previously unreleased emails, obtained by subpoena, that Republicans believe incriminates Morens by showing he undermined the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleted federal COVID-19 records and used personal email to avoid FOIA.

Considering Morens was a close adviser to Fauci, Republicans on the subcommittee expressed concern that Fauci had knowledge of his conduct and questioned whether Fauci potentially engaged in any misconduct himself.

Fauci told lawmakers on Monday he "knew nothing" of Morens' actions with Daszak or EcoHealth, and asserted Morens was not "an adviser to me on institute policy or other substantive issues."

Fauci, 83, served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, serving as a scientific check to Trump during the pandemic and later as President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor before retiring in 2022.

Fauci previously spoke out about the death threats he received due to his outsized and public role from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Monday, he said those threats continue and became emotional while answering questions about the impact on his family.

"It is very troublesome to me. It is much more troublesome because they've involved my wife and my three daughters," he said, his voice beginning to waver.

"At this moment, how do you feel?" pushed Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell.

"Terrible," Fauci replied.

Related Topics

• HEALTH & FITNESS
• ANTHONY FAUCI
• CORONAVIRUS
• REPUBLICANS
• HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Top Stories

Corral Fire burning in Livermore-Tracy area now 75% contained

• 2 hours ago

Multiple structures burn in East San Jose fires, SJFD says

Mexican citizens wait hours at SF consulate for historic election

• 15 minutes ago

More than 1,000 students unable to take SAT exam in East Bay

SF Giants host 1st-ever 'Wu-Tang Night' with special guest RZA

The cost of your airfare could rise, an aviation trade group warns

Ticketmaster hit by cyber attack that compromised user data

Skrillex and Fred Again draw thousands to SF Civic Center