RESEARCH

COVID-19 AFTERMATH: POST-PANDEMIC QUALITY OF LIFE, A Philippine College

Student Perspective in Cebu

RATIONALE:

Earlier in 2020 a news flash report surfaced on television, social media platforms, and
etc. about an enigmatic respiratory-illness outbreak that was first documented in a seafood
and poultry market at Wuhan, Hubei province of China way back 2019. The Health experts
had identified the disease as “2019 Novel Coronavirus”. The people who caught the disease
had experienced the illness for total of 14-days experiencing these common symptoms of
fever, cough, tiredness and loss of taste and smell. The illness has become rampant not just in
China but to nearly all counties across the globe. Later on the said disease has become called
as “COVID-19” or coronavirus disease. It made people badly sick and even caused death to
some individual who had been infected. Daily news reports was all about the Covid-19 and
the gradual increasing of numbers of people that had been tested positive in COVID-19 and
mortality of patient. The virus has known to be contagious and deadly resulting to be a global
health threat to all countries. It became a worldwide crisis that cause devastating impacts on
human lives, public health and the global economy.

Most of the establishments were forced to close due to public health protocol and
going outside only limited to front liners and health workers. Also many businesses had gone
bankrupt and a lot of employee has lost their job while some employee had to work from a
home setup. For student it become a long vacation and it made some educators and parents to
be alarmed due to postponement of child’s learning, Eventually they came up with an idea of
using the social media platform to have an online class. Modules or learning materials had
been distributed by some educators especially not everyone is privilege enough to afford
advance technology devices for online class. This type of new learnings has gained different
opinions, some would say it is effective at least that student can retain the knowledge and
some would say the latter, that it cause pressure due to the hectic schedule and the deadlines
of school works given by their educators amidst the pandemic.

Now that the world has slowly recovering from the damage of destructive pandemic
outbreak, establishments has begun opening for the public with minimal health restrictions.
The schools have been opened to have face to face classes in all levels in school and
universities. After the student has undergone to distance learning and assessments this study
will explore the Quality of life of a student in adapting to a “NEW NORMAL”.
References:

Review of Related Literature

The closure of the schools and universities has postponed a student’s learning that
serves as one hindrance for student to achieve academically. This situation has become a
challenge for parents and educators towards their learners. To catch up the loss, educators
has tried online learning but this has become also to be challenging to handle pressure on
deadlines of school work . Student has developed mental stress during the outbreaks that
leads them not to perform well during examination and assessment. Sahu P (April 04, 2020)

The rapid changes in style of learnings has positive and negative effect on student In
the (Woday et al., 2020) survey, the study finds during schools closure the level of anxiety,
depression disorders, and stress are high among students. Despite that online learning is a
solution to continue the education system it is not easy because especially in the Philippines
that some areas does not have internet service and even some have no electricity for isolated
areas. Access to computers and access to the internet is basic to successful distance teaching.
This is not guaranteed for all students in developing countries (Zhang, 2020).

Educators have to come up with a new style of teaching to alleviate the psychological
impact that has brought to student for several years. This negative impacts of Covid-19 to
learners will might give them the idea not to strive in their study. The physical school closure
and the implementation of distance education lead the student to spent less time learning,
stress, and lack of learning motivation (Di Pietro et al., 2020).

Research objectives

Student

The aim of this study is to explore the student’s outlook towards “New normal” about
their learning experiences transitioning from e-learning to an actual classroom setup or a
hybrid setup.

Educators

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact towards the student about this
new-normal setup. This will help teachers to understand student to come up with new
learning strategies.