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College of Public Health

Impacts of Learning Environments on Stress in the Covid Era and Beyond

Author(s): Alex Ramirez, Amy Burkhart, McKenzie Lauber

Mentor(s): Dan Freedman, Social Work

Abstract
Background: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, students had to shift to completely virtual learning. Now, with classes shifting back to being in-person, students once again have to adjust to a shift in learning environments. Students naturally experience stress related to school, but with the pandemic and the changes to learning environments, it is unknown how significantly these changes impacted student stress.

Purpose:The aim of this study is to determine what method of learning students prefer and how the pandemic has influenced any change to learning environment preferences and stress levels.

Methods: The survey was conducted online through Qualtrics, and took participants roughly fifteen minutes to complete. Participants were recruited to take the survey through the Department of Social Work email list at GMU, as well as sending the flier out in the weekly student newsletter. Analysis of the data is being conducted on SPSS.

Results: Will have results by time of presentation. The study is currently finishing up with data collection.

Conclusions: Will be done by time of presentation; the study is still ongoing.

Audio Transcript
COVID 19 was a very stressful time and changed parts of our lives in many ways. For students a large part of that was the delivery of courses. We switched from majority in person learning to all online learning. Now there are hybrid options as well. It is unknown how the learning environment and stress has impacted the student. The purpose of this study is to see whether the learning mode or environment has an impact on stress levels for the college student and their preferences of how they like to learn. The methods we are using are a fifteen minutes qualtrics survey. This survey was sent out by email by the professors in the department of social work to both undergraduate and graduate social work students. We are currently in the data collecting stage and will have results by the end of April. We will have conclusions on this study by the time we present in May. Thank you.

One reply on “Impacts of Learning Environments on Stress in the Covid Era and Beyond”

I am so excited to see that you are investigating this! I heard at a recent conference that it may be possible that students feel more stress post-pandemic versus during. The “fear of the unknown” that another pandemic could hit at any moment and reverse our learning environments all over again was really interesting. I wonder if you will get to see that in some of your data from Mason students.

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