Students During Pandemic. Time Spent Studying and Courses

Abstract

A great percentage of 94% of students were out of school world­wide during the peak of school closings, in April 2020, according to the World Bank. The pandemic year of Covid-19 posed education all over the world in a context of huge uncertainty. Students and schools had to navigate through op­tions of either hybrid, remote learning, or no schooling at all. For the families, 2020 was a year with great stress and panic. Lockdowns changed people’s life­styles, so they moved to a new set of habits and consumer behavior. This research aims to investigate students’ behavior during 2020 regarding the variables: level of professional knowledge gained during 2020, the need for courses other than the academic ones, how many courses were taken as a re­sponse to the need and the number of hours dedicated to studying compared to the amount of time spent before 2020. An online survey was conducted among students of higher education institu­tions, in Albania, which shows that more than 47.2% of the respondents have spent fewer hours studying during 2020 compared to the time they used to study before the pandemic. Regarding other courses taken during this peri­od, considering to add value to their professional career, more than 60% of respondents declared that they did not take any additional courses, even though when asked about the need to attend these courses they answered with a mean of 3.68 in a scale (1 to 5, where 1 is not at all and 5 is too much).