How to help student deal with Covid
How is COVID-19 affecting student learning?
To our knowledge, none of our previous studies addressed how COVID-19 affects students’ experiences in college, but the strong implications of the findings for college administrators and schools suggest that this is an important next question for research on COVID-19. Future research is also needed to understand how the programs focus on different populations, including gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or special needs.
The findings presented in this report show that our approach to developing and implementing COVID-19 contributed to improvements in college students’ academic, social and psychological well-being, among other positive outcomes. The specific COVID-19 components that were most closely related to this change were improving the way students think about and manage their mental health and school stress and being able to achieve a “College Experience Model” that describes the experience of a college student. These findings suggest that incorporating both a rational and high-touch framework, and exploring the benefits of such a “cluster of goals,” may be the best approach to supporting college students’ mental health and well-being. We were excited to launch COVID-19 at Penn State during the Great Recession. We now believe that our previous analysis has far-reaching implications for colleges and universities nationwide.
A survey of student mental health and well-being by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) found that only 18% of students in college reported being very or extremely satisfied with their overall college experience, and 32% were not satisfied at all. Given that the stakes are so high for students’ success in college, we believe the best long-term strategies for mental health and well-being at this critical time in their lives are to understand the full spectrum of well-being challenges students face, and to design interventions that combine both the rational and high-touch components. Such an approach will allow for the best long-term investments in students’ mental health and well-being. Additional Resources
For more information on how to effectively deliver mental health care and supports to students and their families,