Understanding effects of COVID-19 on undergraduate academic stress, motivation and coping over time

The rapid and unprecedented shift from face-to-face instruction to remote online learning as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial impact on teaching and learning in Higher Education: students had to adapt to a new way of learning, away from typical campus settings and their peers, and to new forms of assessments. This study examined academic stress, learning strategies, motivation and ways of coping from a sample of 177 unique students from a large London university, collecting primary data via survey at three time points during the academic year 2020/21 when teaching was remote and online only. Our findings show how patterns in academic stress, learning strategies, motivation and coping vary over the course of the academic year giving novel insight into how student learning and adaptation to the situation changed over time. We also report on differences in these patterns according to year group and for those students who are the first-in-family to attend university and those who are not. Based on these findings we identify priority areas where higher education institutions should support undergraduate students and provide evidence that some groups of students may need more and targeted support to secure their ongoing learning and well-being.