Back to School: COVID-19 Post-Lockdown Classroom Anxiety

Abstract

Student psychopathology has been a topic of increasing concern globally in recent years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students’ lives were heavily disrupted due to the change to remote learning. Now that learning is returning to normal, the turbulent changes students have experienced over the past few years may have impacted their mental health. The purpose of this study was to investigate COVID-19-related anxiety and stress levels in students shortly after the resumption of on-campus classes at a private university in Saudi Arabia. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey design was used. Three hundred twenty-six participants were a part of the study. Results indicated that a significant number of students reported being occupied with worry and stress related to COVID-19 and that it negatively affected their comfort while on-campus, in their classroom participation, in their social interactions and in their overall university experience. The findings from this study may be valuable to higher education institutions, academic administrators, lecturers and students themselves in helping to minimize friction during the process of students’ return to campus.

Keywords

• post-lockdown
• classroom anxiety
• COVID-19
• higher education
• social anxiety