By Ms Sim Pey Ning, Lecturer, Faculty of Business, Accounting & IT
The sixteenth annual Centre for Distance Education conference on Research in Distance Education (RIDE) 2022 held from 15 June 2022 to 17 June 2022 focuses on three overlapping conference themes, delivered across the programme: People, Pedagogy and Practice. The Centre for Online and Distance Education (CODE), formerly known as ‘CDE’, is a University of London initiative to support the development of expertise and innovation in the field of online and distance education through research, training, capacity building, and strategy and policy development.
Lecturers from the Faculty of Business, Accountancy and IT, Sim Pey Ning and Haritharan Devanthran, presented a paper at the online conference, under a parallel session on Wellbeing. The paper ‘Psychological Impact of Online Learning and Teaching Among the University Community of a Malaysian Education Institution’ by Sim, P. N., Devanthran, H., and Wee, G. W. E., analysed the psychological impact of online learning and teaching among the university community of Malaysian education institutions during the era of COVID-19.
The COVID-19 started in December 2019, spreading around the world quickly within months before being declared as a global pandemic. On March 5, 2022, Malaysia recorded 33,406 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, the highest number of confirmed cases recorded since the first recorded case of COVID-19 on March 3, 2020 (Statista, 2022). The situation has brought significant emotional impact to the public with increased levels of psychological impact, anxiety, depression, and stress.
The paper added to the literature of online learning and teaching with the empirical findings of the assessment on the symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, and the analysis of the emotional impact among the university community in Malaysia during the outbreak. Their findings validated the need to develop evidence-driven strategies to lessen both psychiatric symptoms and psychological impact on the university community of the shift of conventional learning and teaching to online. To prepare for the new normal, preventive measures for future pandemic situations, and mental health among the university community should be monitored and studied.