Abstract:

Our life has changed ever since the pandemic happened and most businesses and schools adopted remote study and work now. Most companies were affected by this as were schools. School is a place for students to socialize, create a network and of course get educated with the courses they are taking. In this study, we conducted a survey to find out how students’ life and study has been affected by the pandemic (Covid-19) in 2021 study-year at Inland Norway University (INN). There are not many studies yet done related the effects of pandemic on students’ mental health and the learning outcome compare to before it happened. Therefore, we conducted this research to find this out, and learn from this so we will be more prepared when in unfortune event something similar happens again.

Most of our students, contacted professors and university staff to let them know how much they suffer with being isolated and being lonely. The great thing about most of the student’s at INN was that they were open to talk about their depression and problems they were going through. Not to mention staff and some of the professors, were available to consult with students, meanwhile, surprisingly, the dropout rate of game school was low for the first year students, and number of applicants for the Game technology course increased past study year. The reason for this will be another topic to be studied in the future research. The survey was conducted online as we are still conducting the courses online. 54 students contributed to this research by filling out an online survey, which in this study we reviewed and analyzed their feedbacks and comments.

An unexpected result shows that students were successful in their courses, even though for most of the year 2021 they were not physically attending school. The results also show that few students lost motivations and they were thinking of leaving the school as they did not see any points of attending a school online. Some students unfortunately could not bear the pressure of being isolated and could not finish the study year.

Our focus in this study is on how students manage to study and adopt to the changes quickly? what kept them motivated? And how Pandemic affected their life, mental health, and study?

Keywords:

Pandemic, remote learning, covid-19, online learning, mental health.