Educational and Psychological Impacts of Corona-phobia and Movement Control Order

Abstract

Covid19's pandemic outbreak has dwarfed the global community to its knees so that the world was enveloped by panic, uncertainty and confusion. The quest for measures to control the plague has remained a challenging priority for each nation. Some of the world's most popular measures include restricting the movement of peoples, social distancing and isolation. Such tactics have created a great deal of mayhem, crises, and ultimately influence all social life interests including schooling, economy, religion and others. This study seeks to examine the educational and psychological impacts of Corona-phobia and the Movement Control Order (MCO) rule on Nigerian graduate students in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). The study was quantitative, consisting as its population of all 380 postgraduate students. A sample of 191 participants was randomly selected with reference to guidelines from Krejcie and Morgan. Also developed and distributed among the respondents was a questionnaire whose validity and reliability were 0.7 and 0.8 respectively. Findings revealed that Corona-phobia and Movement Control Order developed fear, hopelessness and stigmatization coupled with denial of access to physical library, laboratory facilities, academic consultations, and conducting excursion functions. It is recommended among other things that the UTM authorities should introduce online services, academic activities and programmes to enable E-lectures, E-exams, E-supervision, E-submission of thesis, E-proposal defense, E-viva presentation, E-approvals, E-corrections, E-visa renewal, and E-visa cancellation etcetera. These will ensure continuity of the educational programmes during the pandemic period and will reduce the boredom, anxiety and depression among students.