TY - JOUR
T1 - Predicting student mental wellbeing and loneliness and the importance of digital skills
AU - Dinu, Larisa
AU - Byrom, Nicola
AU - Mehta, Kosha
AU - Everett, Sally
AU - Foster, Juliet
AU - Dommett, Ellie
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a King’s Together Award Awarded to EJD, NCB, SE and JLHF. NBC is partially supported by the ESRC, ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, University of Southampton ES/S00324X/1. The authors would like to thank JISC for permission to use their digital capabilities framework (http://bit.ly/JiscDigiCapFramework).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - COVID-19 forced a rapid migration to online education and many institutions will continue with some online education post-pandemic. Here, we examined digital capabilities, measuring abilities and confidence, which are critical for online learning. We also examined social identity and connectedness which may be impacted by online study and considered whether these factors, along with digital capabilities, predict variance in student mental wellbeing and loneliness. Data were collected from 417 students at a large London university during the first U.K. lockdown. Students showed high digital abilities and confidence but there were individual differences in some digital domains determined, in part, by demographic and study factors. A significant proportion of variance in loneliness ratings could be explained by demographic factors, connection to the university and digital confidence. Significant predictors of wellbeing included loneliness, digital confidence, connectedness, social identity and a suitable study space. Based on these results we suggest that universities should consider how to improve digital confidence and ensure access to study spaces to support students in future online learning.
AB - COVID-19 forced a rapid migration to online education and many institutions will continue with some online education post-pandemic. Here, we examined digital capabilities, measuring abilities and confidence, which are critical for online learning. We also examined social identity and connectedness which may be impacted by online study and considered whether these factors, along with digital capabilities, predict variance in student mental wellbeing and loneliness. Data were collected from 417 students at a large London university during the first U.K. lockdown. Students showed high digital abilities and confidence but there were individual differences in some digital domains determined, in part, by demographic and study factors. A significant proportion of variance in loneliness ratings could be explained by demographic factors, connection to the university and digital confidence. Significant predictors of wellbeing included loneliness, digital confidence, connectedness, social identity and a suitable study space. Based on these results we suggest that universities should consider how to improve digital confidence and ensure access to study spaces to support students in future online learning.
UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0309877X.2022.2038780
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126435817&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2022.2038780
DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2022.2038780
M3 - Article
SN - 0309-877X
VL - 46
SP - 1040
EP - 1053
JO - JOURNAL OF FURTHER AND HIGHER EDUCATION
JF - JOURNAL OF FURTHER AND HIGHER EDUCATION
IS - 8
ER -