Distance Education during confinement: Main effects for the students of a university campus in Mexico

Abstract

As a result of the confinement provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions around the world employed various remote strategies to continue with the students' educational process; however, given the long period of confinement, various affectations emerged, mainly related to emotional, physical health, social, academic, and technical issues. The objective of this research was to determine the main effects that students at a university campus in Mexico had while studying in the distance mode during the confinement, as well as to identify if there is a difference between the effects found among the students of the different disciplinary areas that conform the campus. A total of 475 students were surveyed and the means of the responses were compared, showing that the main effects were emotional, physical and academic, as well as that there are significant differences in three of the six disciplinary areas investigated. It was also found that the social affectation was not significant. The findings confirm that four of the five most frequent affectations found in the literature were also present in the university students of the Campus in all their disciplinary areas, which confirms that it is essential to have holistic visions of distance learning in order to face the challenges that educational systems will face in the future.