Mental Health and Time Management Behavior among Students During COVID-19 Pandemic: Towards Persuasive Technology Design

Abstract

The study explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' mental health in higher education while capturing their perceptions and attitudes towards time management. The aim was to examine relationships between stress, anxiety, and specific time management related factors. Considering possible differences between genders and degree levels, we developed five structural equation models (SEMs) to delineate these relationships. Results of a large-scale study of 502 participants show that students suffered from stress and two types of COVID-19-related anxiety: disease and consequences. Students' preference for organization was the only factor that significantly promoted their perceived control over time, which contributes to reducing stress, hence, anxiety. However, female students reported higher stress and anxiety levels than male students. Graduate students reported higher anxiety levels related to the consequences of the pandemic compared to undergrads. To promote students' preference for organization, we map the three categories of organization to corresponding persuasive strategies which could be used in the design of persuasive interventions. This creates an opportunity for developing technological interventions to improve students' perceived control over time, thus, reduce stress and anxiety.

Socially-Oriented Persuasive Game to Promote Disease Awareness and Prevention

“…Research has suggested that the effectiveness of persuasive strategies and the resulting intervention may vary across problem domains [43,44]. Research has also shown that the COVID-19 and associated precautionary measures took a toll on people's mental health [45] and games provided "dreamlands for the players to temporally escape from the cruel reality" and "a perfect social platform to keep social interaction with others to get rid of the loneliness" [46]. Therefore, this study focuses on designing and evaluating COVID-Pacman-C, a competition-based persuasive game for creating awareness motivating people to adhere to the COVID-19 precautionary measures.…”

The Effect of Perceived Vaccination on Students’ Online Learning Intentions: A Moderated Mediation Model

“…COVID-19 has swept the globe, forcing half of the world's population to close down by April 2020 [1], and the impact of this pandemic can be observed throughout many industries, including education [2][3][4][5][6][7]. Since the outbreak of this coronavirus, containment measures have been taken quickly by numerous countries in order to limit community transmission, with a view to bringing the disease under control gradually [8].…”