Online Learning in Tertiary Level Education in the Philippines During the Pandemic: Challenges, Coping Mechanisms, and Lessons Learned

Abstract

Grounded in Lazarus & Folkman’s (1984) stress and coping theory and Garrison, Anderson, & Archer’s (2000) Community of Inquiry (CoI) Theory, this study investigates how students cope with the challenges confronting their online learning and the lessons they have learned from their experiences. The study involved a Google survey with 910 college students from various tertiary-level programs of a state university in the Philippines, such as teacher education, arts and humanities, sciences, business and accountancy, hospitality and tourism management, and engineering and architecture, who responded. About twenty-eight percent of the respondents were male, while roughly 72 percent were female. Data from the survey were thematized for similarity and then tabulated. A Google link was shared with the students, who were given the freedom to decide whether or not to respond to the survey. This study reveals the extreme effect of lockdown on education. The unhappiness and stresses of having to cope with unreasonable task deadlines, the difficulty of interpreting modules with little help from teachers, the extremely poor connection, and the deprivation in online learning experienced by the majority of students in developing countries like the Philippines could leave our students not just with the psychological pain of not having to fully learn the discipline and practice of their supposed profession, but also with anxiety for the future, where they, who are already professionals yet deprived of the significant knowledge, skills, and values they could have possessed had this pandemic not occurred among us, might find themselves unable to immediately deliver and meet the world’s expectations. One important contribution of the present study to literature is that the findings challenge the existing traditional stress theory, including Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) stress and coping theory, which views resilience as successful adaptation or bouncing back after a stressful encounter. Contrary to findings from previous studies drawn from the theory, the current findings here show that student "resilience" was stretched to a breaking point, where it coexisted with extreme psychological pain and unfulfilled learning. The theory must distinguish between genuine adaptation and forced endurance. Surviving a broken educational system does not mean the coping mechanisms were healthy or successful; it often meant absorbing hidden damage that manifests later in professional life. Further, findings in the current study show that the crisis in education during the pandemic was not just a personal stress issue; rather, it was a structural failure in remote education infrastructure.  It was observed that some graduates from developing countries like the Philippines did not have the privilege of in-person on-the-job training because of lockdowns. Consequently, some of them may face a heavy burden trying to meet industry standards without the skills they should have learned in school. Further research is necessary to address the limitations of the study.