Understanding student experiences in remote learning setup: Qualitative analysis of causes and coping mechanisms for workload, stress and fatigue

This paper explores the factors contributing to students’ perceived workload, stress and fatigue in the remote learning setup and their coping mechanisms. A semester-long study was conducted during the remote learning setup in the University of the Philippines Diliman where 66 third year Industrial Engineering students participated. A total of 17 weekly online surveys were administered to measure students’ perceived workload, stress and fatigue, as well as open-ended items asking what contributed to their experiences and how they coped. This paper reports on the qualitative data collected in the longitudinal study. Simple descriptive analytics methods were used to analyze the qualitative data. Initial results showed that the top most frequent factors that affect workload and stress revolve around the given academic requirements as well as external events such as the national elections. As for fatigue, factors that were cited by students was lack of sleep. There were also observed trends on the responses – such that during the first few weeks, students were more concerned with student organizational work and completing their internships. Afterwards, these factors tend to decrease. Towards the end of the study period, the academic requirements, exams, and finals week factors were observed to be increasing.