Socio-emotional and academic impact of confinement on first-year students of careers of the Faculty of Sciences of the Universidad de Valparaíso

Abstract

In the present study we dig into those post-confinement socioemotional factors that affect the academic competencies of students to the Science Faculty of the Universidad de Valparaíso. Learning conditions of these students in the previous years of their university life were completely online, interrupting normal socialization, at a key age of their neurodevelopment. A self-perception survey was applied to identify those factors that currently affect the students’ socioemotional processes with special attention on those related with academic performance. This is a quantitative study with a correlational descriptive scope. The study population consisted of 150 individuals admitted in 2021 and 2022. For the analysis of the results obtained from the survey on a Likert scale, associations were made according to the results of the Pearson correlation matrix. To the open questions, a NLP (Natural Language Processing) analysis was implemented, which consisted of counting words. Following the results of the survey, changes in teaching and learning strategies were implemented, which allowed improving the socioemotional gaps detected among students, improving their academic performance and perception of the contents addressed by the academics of the different subjects. Results drove us to the design of opportune academic strategies which tried to facilitate the transit to face-to-face learning and university life, safeguarding the students’ proper training process.

Keywords

• Confinement
• socioemotional
• students
• face-to-face teaching
• self-perception
• depressive symptoms