Studying In
A Different Time Zone
During the COVID

As I mentioned before, it is quite interesting that when I was considering the topic of my ethnography, the first thing that came into my mind was the subculture of students who studied on zoom in 2020. Maybe that is a sequel of my experience of studying online for completely a year - the experience’s influence on my life was so great that I was so excited to be free from “the University of Zoom”, to be free from sitting in front of my laptop all day, and to be free from living a chaotic and reverse daily schedule. 

But then lots of problems followed. At first, I was wishing to study “whether the subculture has a life-long impact on these international students’ life, either physically or mentally”. Yet apparently, as pointed out during the conference with my instructor, the topic was too broad for me to literally draw a conclusion by the end of this quarter. My Instructor Ms. Ghasedi explained that “it usually takes decades to carry out the research and find out the ‘life-long impact’”, and I agreed with her. So I refined my research question to a narrower focus: how did the experience of studying online impact students’ physical and mental health? 

Wishing to seek more ideas on my research topic, I brought my research draft to a librarian at the Odegaard Writing and Research Center. We all thought that it would be pretty easy to find related articles in the library; but when we typed keywords such as “online study”, “international students” and “coronavirus” into the search bar, most of the search results were way off or irrelevant to my topic. The only two seemingly related articles were Is the online learning good in the midst of Covid-19 Pandemic? The case of EFL learners by Markus Deli Girik Allo and Psychological Impacts of Students on Online Learning During the Pandemic COVID-19 by Andi Wahyu Irawan et al.. Though the studies were conducted at the right time - “in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic” (Girik Allo, 1) and “from March 16, 2020” (Irawan 2), they were not in the right place - both of them were conducted in Indonesia, and what I was looking for were previous studies in the US.

I realized that my topic might be too recent to find support from previous research articles. Probably most information that is exactly on my topic would have to be collected from face-to-face interviews in the future, from direct conversations with the participants. Thus, I made a little change in my research keywords and decided only to find the objective difficulties of remote learning because I supposed that these difficulties are common and can usually be shared among different students.

The first article I came across using the keyword “online study” was a qualitative study conducted by Trisha Parks from Capella University on the topic of “Technological Impacts during Transition from Face-to-Face Teaching to Synchronous during the Pandemic”. It reminded me of some probable difficulties that I once ignored. The study was conducted under the background of the pandemic when educational programs were forced to transit their teaching mode from onsite to remote synchronous education during the pandemic. Though the study mainly focuses on the technological challenges school faculties, teachers, and instructors faced, it also provides some findings related to students. For example, one of the conclusions derived from the study results is that both students and faculty found it uneasy to find a place quiet enough to attend class or participate in group works. What’s more, the study also mentioned that some students and teachers did not have access to the internet because “rural areas commonly lack the high-speed internet necessary to run robust programs (Meachem, 2020).” (Parks 81) These findings reminded me of some new perspectives of challenges that may also impact international students when studying online. I did not consider these impacts before because the impact was minimal in my own life. But then I realized that not all students had a private study room as I did; also, not all students had an always-stable internet connection as I did. These “minimal impacts” might be great in some students’ life, and some of the students might have been suffering from these technology issues throughout 2020. For example, if the student had siblings who also studied at the “University of Zoom”, they might have to compete for quiet study places, computers, and probably even microphones and cameras. There might be some quarrels if one needed a quiet place to take canvas quizzes and another had to participate in a group discussion at the same time, same place. These possible circumstances may also lead to some physical or mental impact, which is what I care about.
After getting information from the keyword of “online study”, I then tried searching articles with the keyword “international students”. In the research article by Tala Michelle Karkar-Esperat from Texas Tech University, it is concluded that international graduate students studying online faced challenges including language proficiency, isolation, inexperienced instructor motivation, and the features of online classes. The purpose of this case study was to “identify the learning experiences and examine the challenges facing three international graduate students enrolled in online, asynchronous classes in an American public university.” (Karkar-Esperat 1722) Lacking in  English language proficiency was indicated as a common challenge in taking online classes (Byram & Feng, 2006) because online classes focused heavily on reading and writing which makes not being proficient in the language a barrier in communication. Participants also expressed “a feeling of isolation caused by a lack of communication and interaction with their peers and the instructor.” It was also difficult for participants to stay motivated in some cases due to being isolated and the lack of interaction with others.

Though the case study was conducted in 2018 (which means the situation could be a lot different from the current environment) and mainly focused on international graduate students, these findings are still generalizable and can be used as references in my project. I used to think that these challenges are specific during the pandemic remote learning, but after reading this article, I learned that these challenges have been existing for a long time and not only among undergraduate students but also among graduate students. Thus, I may also expand my project focuses to international graduate students and broaden my choices of interviewees. 

Before reading the research article by Susan W. Parker, Mary A. Hansen and Carianne Bernadowski from Robert Morris University, I did not expect that these difficulties may also directly lead to negative impacts. This research examined “perspectives of undergraduate and graduate students regarding their experiences with rapid conversion from on-ground, in-person courses to remote instruction during the spring 2020 semester.” The researchers studied on attitudes and behaviors of students in general and by several demographic variables including “level (undergraduate versus graduate), type of institution (public versus private), student status (commuter versus non-commuter), and size of institution (less than 5000, 5000-less to 20,000, more than 20,000)” (Parker 6). With numerous research findings, this article provides more examples of difficulties including students received low-quality remote instruction and being distracted by other things happening around them. To make up for their lack of focus and engagement, they seemed to “collaborate with others on assignments including tests and quizzes, and justify their responses with their feelings of being overwhelmed and wanting to get through the semester. Cheating was often viewed as a means to an end.” What’s more, the lack of engagement, motivation, and accountability was mentioned by all interview participants when talking about studying at home, which is very similar to the findings mentioned before. 

The most surprising finding in this article was the fifth theme of the interview themes: Cheating to Finish. Though I could imagine how common it might be during that specific time, I did not think about its potential side-effect. It’s even difficult to decide what kind of negative impact “cheating” would lead to - it does not seem to be physical, yet it can hardly be regarded as mental either. Besides, it is also hard to literally get evidence or support from the participants. I’m also wondering if I could include the issue of cheating in my future interviews. I doubt if I could get any useful information from that because generally, people tend to hide their negative behaviors when not responding anonymously.

None of the articles I came across directly provided information related to the mental and physical impact of remote learning, but some of them did give me some hints and new ways to think. The article by Trisha Parks inspired me to consider impacts seemingly irrelevant to students’ mental and physical health, such as the technological impact studied in the article. If we take a step further, we may find that these impacts will also eventually lead to physical and mental impacts. Just as mentioned in the reading, “[f]aculty participants indicated that competing for space, computers, and bandwidth left both students and faculty feeling stressed and frustrated.” (Parks 80) If students had been overwhelmed with such stress for a long period of time, would their mental health be somehow affected, especially when people had to keep social distances and had few social connections? I have also seen a friend being extremely anxious because there was a power cut in his neighborhood when he needed to take a mid-term exam online. And unfortunately, he wasn’t lucky enough to have a chance to take a make-up exam, which meant that he eventually got a zero for the mid. My friend was depressed for a time because he had always been so strict with himself that he aimed at getting a 4.0 GPA for all courses he had taken. Would this case be common? Would such effects be great and long-lasting? I haven’t found other articles discussing these topics, but I think it’ll be a good idea to include them in the questions for future interviews.

 

Works Cited
Girik Allo, M. D. (2020). “Is the online learning good in the midst of Covid-19 Pandemic? The case of EFL learners.” Jurnal Sinestesia, 10(1), 1–10. Retrieved from https://www.sinestesia.pustaka.my.id/journal/article/view/24
Andi Wahyu Irawan, Dwisona Dwisona, Mardi Lestari. “Psychological Impacts of Students on Online Learning During the Pandemic COVID-19.” Conseli. https://doi.org/10.24042/kons.v7i1.6389
Parks, Trisha. “Technological Impacts during Transition from Face-to-Face Teaching to Synchronous during the Pandemic”. Capella University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2021. 28546558.
Parker SW, Hansen MA, Bernadowski C. “COVID-19 Campus Closures in the United States: American Student Perceptions of Forced Transition to Remote Learning.” Social Sciences. 2021; 10(2):62. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10020062
Karkar-Esperat, T. M. (2018). “International Graduate Students’ Challenges and Learning Experiences in Online Classes.” Journal of International Students, 8(4), 1722–1735. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v8i4.227

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