Quality of Study Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic of UPLB Students

The University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) met an unprecedented health crisis as it faced the global COVID-19 pandemic. Academic institutions including UPLB were forced to adjust to a sudden change in the mode of learning through a remote distance learning (RDL) setup. This study, guided by the Four Pillars of Supporting Student Success framework (Roddy et al., 2017), aimed to investigate the remote learning experiences of UPLB students to recommend gender-sensitive policies. A total of 350 randomly selected UPLB students were surveyed on the challenges, coping mechanisms, and views on RDL. Similarities and differences were observed in several areas. It is worth noting that, regardless of sex, most of the respondents felt uncertain about the future and that they needed information and services that could help them cope with these feelings of uncertainty. Both male and female respondents thought that counseling could help but only female respondents were willing to attend counseling sessions. Respondents reported academics as their main source of stress with workload and lack of consideration by the professors as the main issues. Most respondents indicated the need for orientations about academic and library services. There was a strong association between sex and feeling comfortable with remote learning as female respondents were more comfortable with the RDL setup compared to the male respondents.