Fatima ezzahrae Boukili Ms.

Roussi

2AP2

Section 1

Group: 2

The Impact of Online Learning on The Students’ Lives

Getting used to online school while maintaining good grades has been a real
struggle for most students due to the sudden change of the educational system that started two
years ago. Online learning has had an immense impact on the students’ lives. COVID-19 was
first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, before spreading globally. It was first considered
a global concern until the world Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a global
pandemic. As a result, all the schools and universities around the world decided to shut down
and use online learning as an alternative tool for the remainder of the school year. Online
learning took a toll on the lives of students. It has seriously impacted their mental health,
caused deepening inequalities between them, and negatively affected their grades.

Online education has undeniably impacted most students psychologically. Within a

short period of time, students started experiencing many mental health problems. Among
those problems we can mention anxiety and fear in the public due to the long period of
isolation while on lockdown and the lack of social interactions. Depression is also a
noteworthy side effect of online learning, as many students all around the world have been
stuck behind a computer screen for a long period of time. Having access to the necessary
equipment and online platforms might have solved one problem, but it has created another.
Students in 2021 are still dealing with the mental health problems caused by learning in
isolation.

Moreover, online schooling has caused deepening inequalities between students.

Using technology devices in online school is a must, and many students are not privileged
enough to have access to them. Thus, they have a much more difficult time accessing learning
materials compared to the others. As a recent study has shown, this category of students is
most likely to suffer during digital learning, less likely to have access to knowledge and more
likely to fail keeping up with the pace of their studies. As a matter of fact, online learning is
believed to be the reason behind most students’ awful grades in the past two years.

Furthermore, online education has negatively impacted the students’ academic

performance. Most of the pre-pandemic research that compared face to face learning with
online courses were conducted in developed countries where technology resources and
infrastructure are available and reliable, which is not the case in most developing countries.
For this purpose, research was conducted in Afghanistan to investigate the effects of COVID-
19 on the students’ academic performance and their level of satisfaction with online teaching.
One thousand two hundred thirty-one students, of which 867 are males and 364 are females,
were included in the study. The research indicated that COVID-19 has negatively affected the
academic performance of Afghan students and they were highly dissatisfied with online
teaching during this crisis.

To conclude, online learning was a life changing experience for students. Distance
education caused inequality globally along mental health problems. Online courses were the
reason for the deteriorating academic performance of students. Unfortunately, online learning
can be said to have been a failure in most countries.