The psycho-social challenges faced by Bangladeshi tertiary level students during the Covid -19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a harmful impact on the students around the world and in Bangladesh as well. Hence, this study aims at exploring the psycho-social challenges the Bangladeshi students, particularly the students of Notre Dame University Bangladesh, faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also, intends to demonstrate how these psychological impacts of COVID 19 pandemic affected the academic performances of the students. The researcher designed the conceptual framework of the study through the adaptation of the PACES model of students’ well-being that: physical, affective, economic, cognitive and social domains (Nelson et al., 2015). The study adopted a qualitative multiple case study approach and selected a cohort of six students of different departments of Notre Dame University, Bangladesh through the purposive sampling techniques. For the data collection, the researcher took semi-structured individual interviews of the students. The qualitative thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that the students were inflicted with various mental and physical health issues such as depression, fear, anger, uncertainty, loss of fear, loneliness, excessive daytime sleepiness, decreased appetite, obesity and feelings of fatigue. The study reveals that because of the closure of the academic institutions and shifting to online classes the students perform poorly in academic endeavors. This study is significant in filling the gap of knowledge regarding the psychological impacts of the COVID-19 on the tertiary level students of a South Asian Country such as Bangladesh which resulted in their poor performance. Similar effects can be observed among students of English departments of higher educational institutions.