Open Access“My Uni Experience Wasn’t Completely Ruined”: The Impacts of COVID-19 on the First-Year Experience
Author(s) -
Loraine McKay,
Steven J. O’Bryan,
Ella R. Kahu
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
student success
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.34
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 2205-0795
DOI - 10.5204/ssj.1762
Subject(s) - covid-19 , student engagement , cohort , focus group , psychology , diversity (politics) , medical education , higher education , focus (optics) , sociology , pedagogy , medicine , political science , virology , disease , pathology , outbreak , anthropology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law , physics , optics
The first year at university is always challenging, but particularly in 2020 when COVID-19 triggered lockdowns and a rapid shift to online learning. This mixed methods study tracked the wellbeing and engagement of 60 new students in an undergraduate teacher education program at an Australian university throughout the first trimester of 2020. Follow-up focus groups with 14 students used interview and photo elicitation to explore how COVID-19 influenced wellbeing and engagement. Quantitative results demonstrate both student wellbeing and student engagement dipped strongly at the start of lockdown but recovered towards the end of the trimester. Focus group findings illustrate the diversity of experience in terms of student access to time and space to study, their ability to sustain relationships online, and the cumulative stress of COVID-19. The findings lead to recommendations for supporting this cohort and for future research.