Being a first-year student during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Starting with the summer term of 2020, most higher education programmes in Germany could only be offered digitally due to the Corona pandemic. For some students, this situation can be problematic for various reasons such as technical problems or psychosocial challenges. So first-year students in particular need to be generally supported in coping with the challenges of HE and especially for the challenges of teaching online. Self-efficacy is an important personal resource that helps people to manage subjective stress and to deal with challenges that arise from a situation such as distance learning. In this context, the effectiveness of a social-cognitive intervention to increase self-efficacy in a distance setting was tested. The intervention is intended to influence the assessment process of challenging situations.