Facing the mental health challenges of COVID-19 in HE

Over three years from 2013 to 2016, the Ebola virus emerged and ravaged nations in Western Africa. Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone were hit particularly hard. Dubbed the “Western African Ebola virus epidemic”, the World Health Organization would go on to call it “the largest, most severe and most complex Ebola epidemic in the nearly four-decade history of the disease”.

It was in the midst of this outbreak in 2015 that Bill Gates gave a remarkably prescient TED Talk in Vancouver, Canada. The talk was simply but aptly titled “The next outbreak? We’re not ready”. It was not the first nor would it be the last time that Gates would try to warn the world of its vulnerability to a deadly global pandemic. His 2015 talk would, however, go on to become one of his most well-known on the topic.

In notes that he wrote shortly after his talk, Gates stated: “The world is simply not prepared to deal with a disease – an especially virulent flu, for example – that infects large numbers of people very quickly. Of all the things that could kill 10 million people or more, by far the most likely is an epidemic.”

Today that virulent flu is upon us and the measures surrounding it have become almost part of the daily grind of life. We tune in to different media and news across the world concerning life, pop culture and political happenings, and everything is tinged with the undercurrent of COVID.

Online struggles

Throughout August and September 2020, the International and Comparative Education Research Group (ICE) at Universiti Brunei Darussalam hosted weekly seminars on “COVID-19, Society and Education”.

Together with academics and teachers from local universities and schools, many university students also participated in the seminars and shared their experiences and perspectives as well as offering recommendations regarding online or blended learning and teaching in general.

On the one hand, it was noticed that students who were in their final year tended to have more difficulties adapting to and juggling with their graduation projects, year-end exams, online supervision meetings with their project supervisors or mentors and online project presentations.

They were also brutally deprived of a proper closure to their four-year university life.

On the other hand, online and-or blended learning has become the norm for first-year students the moment they started university.

Some first-year students reported that they and their peers appeared to have a high level of tolerance for online learning in that they did not seem to have problems with not-so-good quality pre-recorded videos. Neither did they seem to think they would miss out much on the oft-talked-about fun of face-to-face classrooms and in-person group assignments.

Nevertheless, they reported tiredness, fatigue and never-ending online tasks and assignments. Admittedly, while there seemed to be ample videos that instructors could recommend to students as learning material and supplements, students confessed they were not able to cope and often just ignored them.

Online learning did take away their social activities because they felt there was a constant need to stay connected, although they might not be learning anything.

Some students who took languages as electives tended to drop out from language classes if online was the only option. Double major students were able to compare their experiences with online or blended learning between programmes and disciplinary requirements.

While students did not seem to see much difference between face-to-face and online learning in majors such as business and economics, those on creative courses tended to prefer online and blended learning.

Meanwhile, biology and science students who were required to do lab work and field work felt their study and understanding had been negatively affected by the lack of lab work exposure and hands-on experience and by limited fieldwork opportunities.

In a seminar panel specifically dedicated to students’ experiences held in late September, local and international students were given a platform to share and reflect on their experiences during the pandemic; and there were a number of perspectives that emerged concerning the use of educational technology.

As with any innovation, there were often two opposing camps and one that was in-between: one appreciating the advancements in teaching methods and the new possibilities that came with them, and the other lamenting the loss of pedagogical and relational value inherent in face-to-face classes, while the middle ground group saw the pros and cons of both camps.

Some students reported that they enjoyed the ability to attend class from the comfort of their own homes, as well as being able to learn asynchronously through blended learning and ‘flipped classroom’ modes. There were even those who felt these methods to be superior and that live lectures were “a waste of time”.

On the other hand, some found it more difficult to learn outside a live classroom setting and quickly experienced technological fatigue and an aversion to online approaches.

In the current climate, the above reported students’ experiences with technology, while novel, are not isolated or completely unique. One need not search very far to read similar accounts from students in varying fields like medicine, engineering, education and psychology, and these stories share parallels whether they are from the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom or Kenya.

The commonality that emerges from all these narratives is one of struggle and adaptation in the face of unrelenting forces and long-term uncertainties. They are likely to have long-term impacts on students’ education, career choice, research trajectories, and mental and emotional well-being.

Student well-being

Students’ mental health and emotional well-being has, in recent years, received more attention in higher education settings, including those in Asia. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought this matter to the surface and exacerbated it.

Admittedly, imposed online learning has meant that many students around the world lack the usual social engagement with their peers. Online platform-mediated learning has ultimately affected their ability to bond emotionally and culturally with their peers.

Even though there is a dialogue happening on the ‘screen’ between the learner and the teacher and among students, human-to-human exchanges such as emotional expressions, cultural cues and gestures are absent. This kind of new normal has brought a ‘digidemic’ – a digital pandemic.

More and more published research has recommended that guidelines and support regarding students’ mental health and emotional well-being be incorporated into institutions’ online and learning policies.

Moreover, recent studies on the consequences of working on a laptop or computer screen for long periods present us with alarming findings regarding mental health, including insomnia, low-mood, acute stress and symptomatic signs of mild depression.

The quick switch from physical classes to remote learning that took place at universities worldwide including our own university in Brunei (Universiti Brunei Darussalam) was commendable and responsive to health-related risks and public safety. While the primary focus during COVID-19 has been on physical health, emotional health must not be overlooked.

In the early stages of the pandemic, teachers in many countries were left to their own devices to promptly employ any available online technologies such as Canvas, Zoom, Moodle and Microsoft Teams to conduct classes and to stay connected with their students. Students, in return, also had to familiarise themselves with these technologies within a short period of time.

Then, due to the difficulties in administering and invigilating online exams, many universities, including ours, allowed most modules to be converted to 100% coursework. This arrangement then led to an increase in workload for students because they needed to complete extra assessments in lieu of the exams.

CY Hoon noted that he used humour to diffuse anxiety and stress among students caused by the uncertainties of the pandemic. Sometimes in the middle of online teaching, Hoon would joke with students about them multi-tasking while listening to him.

Hoon reported: “Knowing that I could not actually see what they were doing behind the screen, cracking a joke would at least lighten their mood during remote learning.”

There is, admittedly, no foolproof pedagogy for the disruptive shifts that have taken place during the unprecedented time of the pandemic. Knowing that many students are battling with emotional and psychological challenges amid a climate of anxiety and fear, genuine understanding, care and empathy from a lecturer may be just what is needed to help them get through this difficult period.

Many students have been emotionally overwhelmed by the real time updates about the pandemic. This is especially the case for international students who are far away from their families, as participants in our ICE seminars revealed.

Even getting messages from their friends and family back home asking about their well-being could be stressful for them. Some local students had to go into quarantine as they had been in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. Students still had to keep up with their studies while juggling with all these unexpected disruptions.

Undergraduate students also shared their experiences regarding the causes of their distress during online classes. For example, they did not want to turn on video cameras to avoid embarrassing situations whereby their younger siblings or cousins would suddenly show up in front of the camera or would scream and cry out loud.

Those students, however, also felt that their lecturers might think that they were not ‘there’ or were lazy or uninterested. This made them nervous.

Some students found it difficult to speak when they could not turn on their camera and had to be invisible to everyone. Being articulate in face-to-face classes, they were not satisfied with merely typing their views and points for discussion into the tiny chat box.

That they were learning from home also took away their usual confidence when their parents and other siblings were around. Phan Le Ha knew about this when the students confided in her.

Some students even said if online learning remained the norm then they would not know how to cope because they were unable to be as articulate and active on screen as they wanted to be. It was not because of their lecturers not helping enough; rather it had more to do with them feeling happier and more motivated in face-to-face classrooms and interactions. Clearly, these experiences send us strong messages about their emotional and mental well-being.

The digidemic also evokes mental health-related disruptions and breakdowns for lecturers. In the ICE seminars held in August and September, lecturers’ anxiety was noticeable. They were worried about not being able to directly observe students’ academic performance and about whether students actually grasped the lessons taught via the web-conferencing platform.

Meanwhile, university students were worried about losing grades in exams due to connection delays and other IT problems, chaos and noise in their homes as they shared internet connections with other family members, eye fatigue and headaches. It is clear that the impact of the digidemic requires further study and should be addressed from educational, pedagogical and mental health frameworks.

Are we ready now?

The adage that hindsight is 20/20 seems oddly relevant today. In 2020, how have we, as educators and learners, dealt with the pandemic we never expected nor were really prepared for? How have we adapted our technologies, pedagogies and indeed our own humanistic altruism to help one another make it through this pandemic?

As we reflect on the challenges we have faced as well as our triumphs and failures this year, the silver lining of the COVID cloud is all the lessons we have learned and the experience we have now garnered. With them, we can ensure that our students will continue to have the valuable education they need and deserve.

Thus, if – or indeed when – the next global upheaval looms on the horizon, we will be more academically and pedagogically prepared to confront it head-on. Or at the very least, we will be more willing to heed the next Gatesian warning that we are more vulnerable than we think.

On another note, the whole pandemic situation has thus far built our students’ inner tenacity and resilience and prompted them to seek solutions to overcome the challenges they face.

The students who came to the ICE seminars were aware of resources available to them and were capable of reaching out for social support to help them overcome difficulties and learn about their own mental health and well-being.

This positive note shows that when issues regarding mental health and emotional well-being can be talked about openly and can be approached as a normal topic in higher education, the whole community will benefit.

The new White Paper: Supporting students with their mental health recently released by Routledge speaks volumes to this important and pressing issue that higher education cannot afford to take lightly.

Chester Keasberry is a lecturer in the design and creative industries programme at the faculty of arts and social sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei. Phan Le Ha is head of the International and Comparative Education Research Group and senior professor in the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. CY Hoon is director of the Centre for Advanced Research and associate professor of anthropology at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Meridian Alam is assistant professor of sociology in the faculty of arts and social sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam.Yabit Alas is director of the Language Centre, deputy head of the International and Comparative Education Research Group, and senior assistant professor in the faculty of arts and social sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Najib Noorashid is research assistant in the International and Comparative Education Research Group, Universiti Brunei Darussalam.