Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Jun 27, 2024
Date Accepted: Jan 2, 2025
Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on the Learning Experience, Mental Health, Adaptability, and Resilience: A Focus Group Study among Health Informatics Master’s Students
ABSTRACT
Background:
The shift to online education due to the COVID-19 pandemic posed significant challenges and opportunities for students, affecting their academic performance, mental well-being, and engagement.
Objective:
The study aimed to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Health Informatics Master students at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, to gain a deeper understanding of their overall learning experience as well as the strategies that they employed to overcome learning challenges.
Methods:
Through structured focus groups, this study explored Health Informatics master’s students' experiences of shifting learning environments, for classes started in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Inductive content analysis was used to analyze the data.
Results:
The results highlight the benefits of increased autonomy and flexibility and identify challenges such as technical difficulties, diminished social interactions, and psychological impacts. The study underscores the importance of effective online educational strategies, technological preparedness, and support systems to enhance student learning experiences during emergencies. Recommendations include improving online session interactivity, addressing technological challenges, and fostering a sense of community among students to mitigate feelings of isolation.
Conclusions:
This research contributes to understanding the complexities of transitioning to online learning in urgent circumstances and offers insights for better preparing educational institutions for future pandemics.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.