education after pandemic in the philippines essay

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Original research article, teaching and learning continuity amid and beyond the pandemic.

• Office of the University President, Palompon - Office of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs, Garcia-Center for Research and Development, Olvido - Office of the Board and University Secretary, Cebu, Philippines

The study explored the challenges and issues in teaching and learning continuity of public higher education in the Philippines as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employed the exploratory mixed-method triangulation design and analyzed the data gathered from 3, 989 respondents composed of students and faculty members. It was found out that during school lockdowns, the teachers made adjustments in teaching and learning designs guided by the policies implemented by the institution. Most of the students had difficulty complying with the learning activities and requirements due to limited or no internet connectivity. Emerging themes were identified from the qualitative responses to include the trajectory for flexible learning delivery, the role of technology, the teaching and learning environment, and the prioritization of safety and security. Scenario analysis provided the contextual basis for strategic actions amid and beyond the pandemic. To ensure teaching and learning continuity, it is concluded that higher education institutions have to migrate to flexible teaching and learning modality recalibrate the curriculum, capacitate the faculty, upgrade the infrastructure, implement a strategic plan and assess all aspects of the plan.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges economically, socially, and politically across the globe. More than just a health crisis, it has resulted in an educational crisis. During lockdowns and quarantines, 87% of the world’s student population was affected and 1.52 billion learners were out of school and related educational institutions ( UNESCO Learning Portal, 2020 ). The suddenness, uncertainty, and volatility of COVID-19 left the education system in a rush of addressing the changing learning landscape.

The disruption of COVID-19 in the educational system is of great magnitude that universities have to cope with at the soonest possible time. The call is for higher education institutions to develop a resilient learning system using evidence-based and needs-based information so that responsive and proactive measures can be instituted. Coping with the effects of COVID-19 in higher education institutions demands a variety of perspectives among stakeholders. Consultation needs to include the administration who supports the teaching-learning processes, the students who are the core of the system, the faculty members or teachers who perform various academic roles, parents, and guardians who share the responsibility of learning continuity, the community, and the external partners who contribute to the completion of the educational requirements of the students. These complicated identities show that an institution of higher learning has a large number of stakeholders ( Illanes et al., 2020 ; Smalley, 2020 ). In the context of the pandemic, universities have to start understanding and identifying medium-term and long-term implications of this phenomenon on teaching, learning, student experience, infrastructure, operation, and staff. Scenario analysis and understanding of the context of each university are necessary to the current challenges they are confronted with (Frankki et al., 2020). Universities have to be resilient in times of crisis. Resiliency in the educational system is the ability to overcome challenges of all kinds–trauma, tragedy, crises, and bounce back stronger, wiser, and more personally powerful ( Henderson, 2012 ). The educational system must prepare to develop plans to move forward and address the new normal after the crisis. To be resilient, higher education needs to address teaching and learning continuity amid and beyond the pandemic.

Teaching and Learning in Times of Crisis

The teaching and learning process assumes a different shape in times of crisis. When disasters and crises (man-made and natural) occur, schools and colleges need to be resilient and find new ways to continue the teaching–learning activities ( Chang-Richards et al., 2013 ). One emerging reality as a result of the world health crisis is the migration to online learning modalities to mitigate the risk of face-to-face interaction. Universities are forced to migrate from face-to-face delivery to online modality as a result of the pandemic. In the Philippines, most universities including Cebu Normal University have resorted to online learning during school lockdowns. However, this sudden shift has resulted in problems especially for learners without access to technology. When online learning modality is used as a result of the pandemic, the gap between those who have connectivity and those without widened. The continuing academic engagement has been a challenge for teachers and students due to access and internet connectivity.

Considering the limitation on connectivity, the concept of flexible learning emerged as an option for online learning especially in higher institutions in the Philippines. Flexible learning focuses on giving students choice in the pace, place, and mode of students’ learning which can be promoted through appropriate pedagogical practice ( Gordon, 2014 ). The learners are provided with the option on how he/she will continue with his/her studies, where and when he/she can proceed, and in what ways can the learners comply with the requirements and show evidences of learning outcomes. Flexible learning and teaching span a multitude of approaches that can meet the varied needs of diverse learners. These include “independence in terms of time and location of learning, and the availability of some degree of choice in the curriculum (including content, learning strategies, and assessment) and the use of contemporary information and communication technologies to support a range of learning strategies” ( Alexander, 2010 ).

One key component in migrating to flexible modality is to consider how flexibility is integrated into the key dimensions of teaching and learning. One major consideration is leveraging flexibility in the curriculum. The curriculum encompasses the recommended, written, taught or implemented, assessed, and learned curriculum ( Glatthorn, 2000 ). Curriculum pertains to the curricular programs, the teaching, and learning design, learning resources as assessment, and teaching and learning environment. Adjustment on the types of assessment measures is a major factor amid the pandemic. There is a need to limit requirements and focus on the major essential projects that measure the enduring learning outcomes like case scenarios, problem-based activities, and capstone projects. Authentic assessments have to be intensified to ensure that competencies are acquired by the learners. In the process of modifying the curriculum amid the pandemic, it must be remembered that initiatives and evaluation tasks must be anchored on what the learners need including their safety and well-being.

Curriculum recalibration is not just about the content of what is to be learned and taught but how it is to be learned, taught, and assessed in the context of the challenges brought about by the pandemic. A flexible curriculum design should be learner-centered; take into account the demographic profile and circumstances of learners–such as access to technology, technological literacies, different learning styles and capabilities, different knowledge backgrounds and experiences - and ensure varied and flexible forms of assessment ( Ryan and Tilbury, 2013 ; Gachago et al., 2018 ). The challenge during the pandemic is how to create a balance between relevant basic competencies for the students to acquire and the teachers’ desire to achieve the intended outcomes of the curriculum.

The learners’ engagement in the teaching-learning process needs to be taken into consideration in the context of flexibility. This is about the design and development of productive learning experiences so that each learner is exposed to most of the learning opportunities. Considering that face-to-face modality is not feasible during the pandemic, teachers may consider flexible distant learning options like correspondence teaching, module-based learning, project-based, and television broadcast. For learners with internet connectivity, computer-assisted instruction, synchronous online learning, asynchronous online learning, collaborative e-learning may be considered.

The Role of Technology in Learning Continuity

Technology provides innovative and resilient solutions in times of crisis to combat disruption and helps people to communicate and even work virtually without the need for face-to-face interaction. This leads to many system changes in organizations as they adopt new technology for interacting and working ( Mark and Semaan, 2008 ). However, technological challenges like internet connectivity especially for places without signals can be the greatest obstacle in teaching and learning continuity especially for academic institutions who have opted for online learning as a teaching modality. Thus, the alternative models of learning during the pandemic should be supported by a well-designed technical and logistical implementation plan ( Edizon, 2020 ).

The nationwide closure of educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus has impacted 90% of the world’s student population ( UNESCO, 2020 ). It is the intent of this study to look into the challenges in teaching and learning continuity amidst the pandemic. The need to mitigate the immediate impact of school closures on the continuity of learning among learners from their perspectives is an important consideration ( Edizon, 2020 ; Hijazi, 2020 ; UNESCO, 2020 ). Moreover, the teachers' perspectives are equally as important as the learners since they are the ones providing and sustaining the learning process. Teachers should effectively approach these current challenges to facilitate learning among learners, learner differentiation, and learner-centeredness and be ready to assume the role of facilitators on the remote learning platforms ( Chi-Kin Lee, 2020 ; Edizon, 2020 ; Hijazi, 2020 ).

Statement of Objective

This study explores the issues and challenges in teaching and learning amid the pandemic from the lenses of the faculty members and students of a public university in the Philippines as the basis for the development of strategic actions for teaching and learning continuity. Specifically, this study aimed to:

a.1. Preferred flexible learning activities.

a.2. Problems completing Requirements due to ICT Limitation

a.3. Provision of alternative/additional requirement.

a.4. Receipt of learning feedback.

a.5. Learning environment.

Objective 2: determine the profile of faculty and students in terms of online capacity as categorized into:

b.1. Access to Information Technology.

b.2. Access to Internet/Wi-fi.

b.3. Stability of internet connection.

Objective 3: develop emerging themes from the experiences and challenges of teaching and learning amidst the pandemic.

Methodology

The design used in the study is an exploratory mixed-method triangulation design. It was utilized to obtain different information but complementary data on a common topic or intent of the study, bringing together the differing strengths non-overlapping weaknesses of quantitative methods with those of qualitative methods ( Creswell, 2006 ). The use of the mixed method provided the data used as a basis for the analysis and planning perspective of the study.

This study was conducted in the context of a state university funded by the Philippine government whose location was once identified as having one of the highest COVID19 cases in the country. With this incidence, the sudden suspension of classes and the immediate need to shift the learning platform responsive to the needs of the learners lend a significant consideration in this study. This explored the perspectives of the learners in terms of their current capacity and its implications in the learning continuity using online learning. These were explored based on the availability of gadgets, internet connectivity, and their learning experiences with their teachers. These perspectives were also explored on the part of the teachers as they were the ones who provided learning inputs to the students. These are necessary information to identify strategic actions for the teaching and learning continuity plan of the university.

After getting the quantitative and qualitative findings, these data were reviewed to provide a clear understanding of teachers’ and learners’ context and their experiences. From this information, a scenario analysis through scenario building was conducted which led to the development of the strategic actions for teaching and learning continuity. Scenario analysis is a method used in predicting the possible occurrences of consequences of a situation assuming the phenomenon will be continued in the future ( Kishita et al., 2016 ). This approach is considered a useful way for exploring plausible events that may or may not happen in the future ( Bekessy and Selinske, 2017 ). This approach was used to analyze the behavior of both teachers and students as part of the whole system in response to an unexpected event such as the pandemic which creates a theoretical scenario of best -case (optimistic) or worse case (pessimistic) scenario to enable the university to develop a holistic strategic plan for the teaching and learning continuity ( Balaman, 2019 ).

Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used simultaneously. In this study, objectives 1 and 2 require data on the profile of the teachers and learners which can best be acquired using a descriptive quantitative design. This was done through an online structured survey was conducted to identify the challenges in teaching and learning using google forms. Choices were provided in the Google form which the respondents can choose from. The surveys were done by the Cebu Normal University - Center for Research and Development and Federation of Supreme Student Council.

The qualitative approach was utilized to answer objective number 3 which looked into the experiences and challenges of the teachers and the learners. The narratives which the respondents submitted were done through online open-ended questions to allow them to share their experiences and challenges. These were analyzed using a thematic approach to best provide a clear description of the experiences and challenges.

After the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data, the team of researchers developed the possible scenarios that will take place as the basis for the flexible strategic actions that the university will adapt depending on the classification of community quarantine and the health situation of the locale where the university is located. In the analysis of the current status of Cebu Normal University, parameters are reviewed and outcomes are utilized through scenario building. Scenario building provides the contextual basis for the development of the new normal in the university. Scenario building as explained by Wilkinson (1995) is a good strategy to use on how current observations play their role in future situations. Each scenario is constructed about the future, modeling a distinct, plausible world. Scenarios are plausible alternative futures of what might happen under particular assumptions by focusing on key drivers, complex interactions, and irreducible uncertainties ( Polcyznski, 2009 ).

The prospective scenarios created are the best, probable scenarios, and worse scenarios. Current or existing situations/conditions of CNU served as the probable scenario, while the ideal case situation served as the best scenario. From the scenario built, key problems and challenges are developed as a basis for the model developed ( Imperial, 2020 ). This provided the strategic long-term and short-term strategies for CNU’s academic operations. The best scenario is based on the perspective that the university allows limited face-to-face classes in the remaining months of the semester. The probable scenario is with the current enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) status of the city or province where the university is located, at least six (6) months, after, face-to-face interactions will be allowed with the opening of the new school year will. Worse Scenario happens when the locale is placed under sustained community quarantine and face-to-face classes will never be allowed at the start of the new school year. The strategic actions of the university are inclusive of the three (3) scenarios to allow flexibility of the responses of the university in this pandemic.

There were 3,646 student respondents (85% of the student population) and 252 (97% of the teaching personnel) teaching personnel who responded to the survey. To determine accessibility and reach of communication transmission related to the teaching-learning process, the location of the respondents was also identified. The majority of the student respondents (67%) are located in Cebu province; 17% in Cebu City, and 12% in other provinces. The 63% or 157 faculty members are residing in Cebu province while 32% or 81 of them reside in Cebu City; other provinces 5%. Qualitative feedback was also gathered to explore further the challenges experienced and clarify information about open-ended online messaging. Data was gathered from March-April 2020 in a state-funded university in the Philippines with the campus located in the center of the city. To comply with the ethical guidelines, strict adherence to data privacy protocols and data use restrictions were followed. The data were analyzed and were considered in identifying emerging themes scenarios in teaching and learning.

The data gathered were reviewed and analyzed by looking into the challenges that need to be addressed and the ideal perspectives that should have been implemented to generate different scenarios. Scenario building provides the contextual basis for the development of the new normal in the university. Scenario building as explained by Wilkinson (1995) is a good strategy to use on how current observations play their role in future situations. Each scenario is constructed about the future modeling a distinct, plausible world. Scenarios are plausible alternative futures of what might happen under particular assumptions by focusing on key drivers, complex interactions, and irreducible uncertainties ( Polcyznski, 2009 ). The prospective scenarios created are the best and probable scenarios. Current or existing situations/conditions of the university served as the probable scenario, while the ideal case situation served as the best scenario. From the scenario built, key problems and challenges are developed as a basis for the model developed ( Imperial, 2020 ). The model will provide the strategic long-term and short-term strategies for the university’s academic operations Figure 1 .

FIGURE 1 . Schematic diagram of the conceptual analysis.

Results and Discussion

Challenges on teaching and learning amid the pandemic.

In the quantitative data gathered through an online survey, the students reported their concerns related to their learning experiences during the suspension of physical classes. Most of the student respondents reported that adjustments were made by the teachers in terms of course outcomes and syllabi. However, most of them claimed that the learning activities were not flexible enough to be done either offline or online as they could not as shown in Table 1 comply with the requirements within the expected schedule.

TABLE 1 . The profile of flexibility of the learning activities for offline or online learning among students (n = 1,689).

Moreover, as shown in Table 2 , students reported that the majority of them were unable to accomplish the tasks assigned by the teachers due to their inability to access the internet or use suitable gadgets to finish the tasks.

TABLE 2 . Number of students who reported if they have problems. Completing requirements due to ICT limitation (n = 1952).

Part of the survey for students focused on how students reacted to home-based tasks assigned to them to complete the learning competencies of the course. Teachers provided alternative tasks online through electronic mails and an online portal Table 3 .

TABLE 3 . Provision of alternative/additional requirement (n=1952).

Students confirmed that some online classes and additional requirements were still provided to them by the faculty ( Table 4 ) The majority of the students responded that the alternative tasks were adequate. The nature and content of the alternative tasks provided were suited to the remaining concepts to be addressed in their coursework ( Table 4 ). Despite that, several students still reported that these alternative tasks are not sufficient to enable them to acquire the remaining competencies required of them at the end of the semester.

TABLE 4 . Adequacy of alternative tasks for learning attainment (n=74).

Students in one college were surveyed on the receipt of feedback from their respective teachers. A comparable response from students claimed they received and didn’t receive immediate feedback as to whether what they submitted to the professors is okay or what aspect they still need to improve more. As teaching continuity was made possible through online modality and other home-based tasks, they still had difficulty complying with the requirements of the course. The survey included the type of home environment the students have to assess factors that influence their difficulty. Students were asked whether their home learning environment is conducive to learning or not.

Data in Table 5 show that learners believed that their home environment is not conducive for learning when schools were closed and physical contact was discontinued as there were many disruptions including internet connectivity. On the part of the faculty, there were challenges met as evidenced by the feedbacks of the students. The teaching-learning process requires an active engagement of the faculty. They are the drivers of the learning process and the success of the learning outcomes would partially depend on their extent of active participation as facilitators, mentors, or coaches to the learners.

TABLE 5 . Students learning environment.

In the teaching-learning process, students need feedback on the progress of their outputs and whether they did well in their tasks. As shown in Table 6 , the majority of the students reported receiving no feedback from their teachers on the online module while a majority hope to get immediate feedback. Further exploration is required to determine why teachers are unable to provide immediate feedback for students.

TABLE 6 . Feedback from teachers (n = 154).

Faculty and Students’ Access to Technology

One of the modalities in teaching and learning that gained popularity amid COVID-19 was online learning. When classes were suspended, universities migrated from the face to face interaction to the online modality. Hence, this survey was conducted to determine the capability of the students and teachers in terms of available information technology gadgets and connections.

The profile of both the faculty and students’ access to internet-based information showed that the majority can access this information ( Table 7 ). Moreover, the majority of the students (82.61%) and faculty (94.4%) have internet access Table 8 . However, most of them reported unstable internet connections which makes their home environment less conducive to sustain learning facilitated by the online readings and activities given Table 9 . The majority of the students used mobile phones for online learning which is not capable of addressing online tasks and submission of requirements. On top of this, concerns for limited internet access of students and faculty emanate from external service providers most especially when using cellular data in areas where satellite signals are limited.

TABLE 7 . Faculty and students’ access to information technology (n = 4,072).

TABLE 8 . Faculty, staff and students’ access to internet/Wi-fi.

TABLE 9 . Stability of internet connection (n = 1952).

Emerging Themes in Teaching and Learning

A qualitative survey was also conducted to substantiate the quantitative data gathered. The narrative comments of the respondents in the survey were analyzed and were grouped into emerging themes and scenarios of teaching and learning.

The Trajectory Towards Flexibility in Teaching Design, Delivery, and Assessment

The sudden cancellation of classes in the middle of the semester placed both faculty and students unprepared. Questions on how to continue their classes, the learning modality, the appropriate assessment, and access to learning materials were foremost in the mind of both teachers and students. The narratives of the respondents became the basis for identifying the emerging scenarios in teaching and learning amid and beyond the pandemic.

For many years, students have been exposed to traditional, face-to-face classroom-based teaching. Outcomes-based education has been integrated into the curriculum and its implementation, but the learning delivery is still under the actual supervision of teachers. Due to ECQ students have to shift to independent learning through the home-based tasks assigned to them by their teachers. Ordinarily, many students have trouble making the transition to the more independent learning required at university compared with their secondary years .

“It’s very difficult for me to learn on my own in the confines of my home, but I don’t have a choice ,” narrated one student.

This shows that this pandemic has created a new platform in teaching and learning delivery that students are compelled to accept. In this situation, students have to take responsibility for their learning, be more self-directed, make decisions about what they will focus on how much time they will spend on learning outside the classroom ( The Higher Education Academy, 2014 ; Camacho and Legare, 2016 ). In the new setting, students are expected to read, understand and comply with the tasks without the guidance of the teachers. They are forced to assume self-directed independent learning.

The teachers on the other hand affirmed that the use of face-to-face delivery would not work anymore in the new learning environment.

“ One thing that I have learned is to adjust my materials to ensure that learners can still acquire the competencies without the face-to-face interaction with my students ” narrated one teacher.

With the concerns on access to online services, faculty members considered the use of a non-online approach and explored the necessary modifications that can be applied in the future. Hence, in the narrative, several faculty members said they have prepared modules as an option for pure online learning delivery.

Assessment of student learning outcomes is very important. A concern on how to assess learning outcomes and how to answer assessment tasks emerged as a major concern as reflected in the narratives of the teacher and student respondents. The assessment measures are essential as an assurance that learners have attained various knowledge and skills and that they are ready for employment or further study ( Coates, 2015 ). There is a need to address the teachers’ concern on how to conduct off-classroom performance evaluation and the bulk of submissions that they have to evaluate which are submitted online or offline. The design and planning are important factors to consider not only in the assessment per se but also in the parameters on how students will be graded ( Osborn, 2015 ). For the teachers, the following concerns emerged,

“Difficulty assessing performance-based tasks (RLE) , ” “Difficulty tracking, checking of students’ outputs” and “Concerns on failing due to non-submission of requirements online and low midterm Performance”

In the assessment of learning, the teacher respondents agreed that they have to think of innovative ways of assessing students in the context of their situation and home environment so the outcomes expected of the course will be manifested by the students.

One of the challenges of online or distance learning is the difficulty in participating in groupwork activities. The challenge is how the schedule or availability of group members be accommodated within the group ( Gillett-Swan, 2017 ; Kebritchi, Lipschuetz, and Santiague, 2017 ). More particularly when online assessments are done with certain deadlines or time limits.

“Difficulty complying group activities”

“Time-based online exams”

The challenges seen in this phase are to determine the flexible learning system most applicable for CNU learners, the readiness of the students and faculty to handle the tasks to assign and to be complied by the students, the appropriateness of the learning delivery vis-à-vis learning outcome, and the preparation of the learning materials fit for self-directed independent learning.

In times of disaster, the educational system takes on a different route for effective learning continuity. The learning curriculum requires it to be more responsive to the current needs of the learners and the teachers.

“ Concerns in completing OJT”

“Dissertation/Thesis defense scheduled”

“Concerns on when the academic year ends”

The flexibility that the curriculum has to adopt requires the offering of choices on the current reality of the educational environment and customizing a given course to meet the needs of the learners. It is therefore crucial in considering the provision of the possibility of making learning choices to learners. These learning choices can cover class times, course content, instructional ( Huang et al., n.d. ).

It is a challenge for the university to consider the restructuring of the curriculum to address the gaps in the learning outcomes left when classes were suspended and the re-scheduling of the mid-semester On-the-Job Training of some programs. Amidst this crisis, flexibility in the next academic calendar has to be considered while it is uncertain when the COVID-19 crisis will be contained.

The Role of Technology

In the overall narratives concerning teaching-learning delivery and assessment, the role of information technology particularly on internet connection has been repetitively mentioned by both teachers and students. In the crisis scenario, faculty and students could eventually bounce forward to the usual teaching-learning activities outside the classrooms had this concern been made available to all. Per survey results, most of the students and some faculty members are residing outside the city and are experiencing unstable if no internet connection at all.

“ No internet connectivity/unstable connectivity”

“Occasional power interruptions”

In designing for online or distance learning, there is a need to understand the role of technology to attain the success of the engagement ( Kerka, 2020 ). Internet is not the only factor to consider but also the equipment that is needed for the teachers and the learners to engage effectively. If these are not available, there is a need to evaluate the approach used in the teacher-learner interaction.

“Limited gadgets (one laptop shared with other siblings/no laptop or PC only phone)”

“No printer for completion of a requirement to be submitted”

With the current health crisis with the shifting of learning delivery, the challenge would be on how to provide an inclusive IT infrastructure to provide quality education for all learners ( Internet access and education: Key considerations for policy makers, 2017 ).

The Learner’s and the Teacher’s Learning Environment

In an attempt to address the disruption of classes and promote continuity of learning, teachers immediately resort to online learning as the most workable way of delivery of the lessons. In this new learning setup, students are forced to stay at home and transfer their classrooms to the same location. In most cases, it is often overlooked that learners come from different home settings and have different home arrangements.

“Not appropriate learning environment (congested home setting)”

“Lack of support from parents (assigning home tasks when a student is supposed to be work on learning tasks)”

“Overlapping of home activities and academic activities”

In most cases, families frequently engaged their children in learning activities, however, different patterns were observed across different social groups. Families in low socio-economic position households, and those living in disadvantaged neighborhoods provided fewer learning experiences. This may in part be due to the challenges that families living in socially and economically disadvantaged circumstances face in accessing the financial and social resources needed to provide a rich early home learning environment for learning. The findings reveal that education is still pursued in economically challenging settings but with more challenges. A home learning environment has a positive “direct association” with a child’s academic performance ( Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2015 ). The findings require a three-helix platform in education that is the partnership between academe, industry, and the stakeholders.

Maslow Before Bloom Orientation: Safety and Security

Prevailing sentiments among employees and students are their concern for their safety and security. The basic needs of humans according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs are foremost in the minds of the university’s clients and workers. As reported by the students and employees, their foremost concern is safety and the psychological manifestations of the anxiety of being infected.

“Foremost concern is safety and security even after ECQ is lifted”

“Fear of being infected with COVID”

“With PUI/PUM family members or the students themselves”

“Psychological and emotional reactions (anxiety, panic, fear, loneliness, a feeling of helplessness, mood swings, anger)”

The second category of concerns is on security and the possibility of sustaining their education due to loss of jobs, loss of family members, and the uncertainty of traveling to the university.

“Family financial crisis–no budget to buy loads, sustain needs”

“Unable to go home”

“Transportation concerns”

The concerns raised by the participants of the study require the university to provide access to considerable support to deal with the struggles, challenges, and even trauma because of the pandemic. There is a need to help manage mental health, self-esteem, and relationships after the quarantine which left some of the students isolated for quite a time ( Sweeney, 2020 ). Mental health programs have to be in place in formal learning settings. Because of the unprecedented challenges that students and teachers experienced in the pandemic, the ability to successfully hurdle through formal learning may be limited if the overall well-being is compromised.

Strategic Scenario Analysis

This section presents the analysis of the possible scenarios that might take place in the university based on the following components: the planned curriculum, instruction (teaching-learning process), assessment, student engagement, and technology and infrastructure. The probable scenario is the current enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) status of the City or province where the university is located. During ECQ, no face-to-face interaction is allowed and province-wide lockdowns are implemented. The best scenario allows the limited face-to-face class and the worse scenario happens when the locale is under ECQ and placed on a lockdown due to the increasing COVID-19 cases.

In the area of curriculum and instruction, the action points revolved around the identification of courses that can be flexibly offered, rescheduling offerings when health measures permit it and providing interventions for competencies that were not met. The additional action points would refer to the creation of materials that would meet the needs of the students in the different scenarios and the provision of access to all resources that aid learning. Lastly, plans for assessment delivery are laid out to ensure the validity of means and with consideration to quarantine measures. Laying down the scenarios provide options for the educational institution to be able to meet the demands of the changes enforced by the pandemic to the delivery of learning to students. Reviewing these options reveal that the differences in the plan of action for this area of concern are a matter of granting access to students for resources needed for learning continuity.

The next area of concern is student engagement which reveals the different levels of engagement of parents and guardians, the means of communication with students, and an investment in the capability-building of faculty members to facilitate the teaching-learning process amid the pandemic. The focus on the trainings for the faculty members in the area implies that flexible learning in this health crisis requires a particular skill set to heighten student engagement without diminishing the role of support systems in the students’ homes and the need for appropriate technology to facilitate the needed interactions. This leads to the last area of concern on technology and infrastructure. The University has to take into account and facilitate the provision of needed equipment, materials, systems, software, and physical structures to support flexible learning. The complete scenario matrix is reflected in Table 10 .

TABLE 10 . Scenario matrix.

Migrating to Flexible Teaching and Learning: The University’s Strategic Response for Academic Continuity

After exploring the perspectives of the respondents and the analysis of the emerging scenarios in teaching and learning, the University implemented the proactive response to ensure academic continuity in times of crisis. It is evident that for universities to thrive and lead, the flexible teaching-learning modality needs to be adopted taking into consideration the best and worst-case scenarios. Migrating to flexi learning means recalibrating the written curriculum, capacitating the faculty, and upgrading technological infrastructure to respond to the changing scenarios amid and beyond the pandemic. Outlined in the paragraphs that follow were the ways forward pursued by the university as a response for academic continuity.

Recalibrate the Curriculum

To address the competencies which were left at the time of the class suspension, discipline-based course mapping was conducted. A series of cluster meetings by faculty members teaching similar courses teaching load were done for the revision of the unified syllabus, integration of the outcomes-based teaching and learning strategies using flexible learning platforms such as distance and online learning options, and the learning assessment strategies suitable for individual student needs. A syllabi repurposing is conducted and the revisiting of the syllabi focusing on the essential course outcomes. This strategy enables the faculty to revise the activities/course work/tasks/experiences that can be delivered through blended learning. This also enabled them in designing the instructional strategies, activities, and assessments that will achieve the learning objectives. The modification of the syllabi incorporated the development of modules, assessment tasks that can be delivered using differentiated instruction/in class or off class.

A program-based curriculum review was also conducted to identify courses that would need to be re-scheduled in its offering due to its nature and requirement such as swimming courses. Moreover, On-the- Job (OJT) which was supposedly offered during summer or mid-year was transferred to a later semester as industry partners are limiting its personnel at the height of the pandemic.

Reconfiguring the OJT, practice teaching and Related Learning Experience based on simulation set-up with scenario-based activities with assigned equivalency hours was also developed. The Practice teaching using blended learning or online approach, Nursing used alternative Related learning simulation.

The strategic actions included short-term plans of possible limited physical classes and long-term plans of pure online classes. Embedded in the plans are the in-class and off-class mode, re-structuring and retrofitting requirement for limited face-to-face classes, and the upgrading of internet-based facilities for pure online classes. On top of this, they need to cater to learners who have no access to the internet includes the translation of online learning modules to printed modules.

Capacitate the Faculty

Flexible learning capacitation of faculty was also addressed as online learning was new to the university. The university conducted an upskilling and rewiring through series of online trainings on module development for flexible learning distance education and the use of an online learning management system for faculty members. Reskilling and reconfiguring of faculty through webinar series on laboratory teaching using simulation learning for teachers handling laboratory, RLE, OJT. And a cross-skilling and reimagining using series of online webinars on developing counseling skills of faculty members concerning the COVID crisis. The university initiated the Higher Education Connect webinar series by discipline which served as an avenue of sharing and exchanging best practices during the pandemic-induced suspension of physical classes. The series of online for and webinars provided the teachers’ professional development including information sharing platform, Online learning platform, Hands-on training platform, Repository of web tools, and Laboratory for data analytics.

Safe learning infrastructure for Reframing Teaching and Learning was addressed through Telecounseling Services with mobile hotline numbers to cater to the needs of the clients and Student Communication Center with hotline numbers accessible by phone or online to cater to the academic concerns of the students. The university also initiated the Adopt-a-Student program for stranded students during the Enhanced Community Quarantine and assisted in the process of going back to their provinces.

Upgrade the Infrastructure

The university’s priority is to ensure that technology is sustainable and feasible. The ICT focal persons of the university were mobilized to Determine basic computer configuration and minimum Operating System requirements and provide alternative solutions to learners with technological/location-related challenges. For example, provide small learning activity packages for learners with slow internet connections. Ensure changes to the learning activity that can be made with internal resources. Determine the characteristics, possibilities, and limitations of the learning management system (LMS) to be used and ensure consistency of access across platforms (if applicable).

An Organizational Structures as a support system was also created which was the Center for Innovative Flexible Learning to provide assistance and monitoring so that the existing Information Technology Office of the university will not be overwhelmed.

It is also strategic to develop collaboration with stakeholders (Local Government Units (LGU), Alumni, Partner agencies). The forging of partnerships with LGU provides avenues where students during off-class students will go to the learning hub in the LGU complete with internet connectivity for students to work on their tasks in case they don’t have connectivity at home, so students will not go to the internet café and pay. This will also provide opportunities for resource sharing for the benefit of the students.

ICT Infrastructure in teaching and learning and student services was also addressed through Online enrollment, full utilization of Google Classroom as the learning management system, and the fully online delivery of classes. The university also changed its internet subscription to higher bandwidth and subscription to zoom for online meetings and conferences. Internet Connectivity of faculty members has assisted a monthly internet allowance. Gadget on loan for students in coordination with Student Supreme Council. Library online services through Document Delivery Services (DDS) and Modern Information Assistant in the New Normal Innovative Education.

Implementation and On-Going Assessment of the Strategic Response

The implementation of the strategic response entails the collaborative engagement of all stakeholders in the university. The process requires the involvement of the administration, faculty, staff, students, parents, and other stakeholders that enables the institution to move forward, managing and mitigating risks successfully. Hence, the university is implementing the continuous process of consultation, feedbacking, and intensive monitoring as important ingredients for the plans to be successfully implemented. The regular conduct of dialogues and discussions among stakeholders, capacity building of students and faculty, open communication through hotline centers, and continuous quality assurance monitoring mechanisms enable the university to enhance and implement successfully the strategic programs and activities amid the pandemic.

Anchored on the initial success of the evidenced-based strategic plans, the university at present has institutionalized the flexible learning system with the establishment of the Center for Flexible Learning that manages, capacitates, and assists the students and the faculty members in the continuing implementation of the flexible learning modality. Technology support has been provided by increasing the internet bandwidth to ensure uninterrupted connectivity in the campus and providing internet allowance to the faculty. Students with limited or no connectivity are given printed modules as instructional resources. In anticipation of the limited face-to-face classes as safety and health protocols may allow, the curricular offerings, teaching-learning processes, and assessment tools have been enhanced by applying best practices that maximize quality teaching and learning. On-going trainings and webinars for the faculty, students, and stakeholders to thrive in the new educational landscape have been conducted. The university has also established professional learning communities which become avenues for the sharing of resources and practices that continuously support and enhance teaching and learning continuity amid and beyond the pandemic.

Teaching and learning continuity amid the pandemic requires an analysis of the parameters by which the university operates from the perspective of the stakeholders to include the students, faculty, curriculum, and external stakeholders. Grounded on data, higher education institutions have to conduct strategic scenario analysis for best, possible and worse scenarios in the areas of curriculum and instruction, student engagement, and technology and infrastructure. To ensure teaching and learning continuity amid and beyond the pandemic, higher education institutions need to migrate to flexible teaching and learning modality by recalibrating the curriculum, capacitating the faculty, and upgrading the infrastructure. These strategic actions have to be continuously assessed, modified, and enhanced to respond to the volatile, uncertain, and changing scenarios in times of crisis.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusion of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

FD, DP, LG, and MO contributed to the conception and design of the study. DP and LG organized the data and facilitated the initial analysis. FD and DP wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors wrote sections of the manuscript and contributed to the manuscript revision. MO ran the final plagiarism test and grammar check prior to submission.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: teaching and learning continuity, flexible learning, pandemic, higher education, scenario–analysis

Citation: Dayagbil FT, Palompon DR, Garcia LL and Olvido MMJ (2021) Teaching and Learning Continuity Amid and Beyond the Pandemic. Front. Educ. 6:678692. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.678692

Received: 10 March 2021; Accepted: 06 July 2021; Published: 23 July 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Dayagbil, Palompon, Garcia and Olvido. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Michelle Mae J. Olvido, [email protected]

Mission: Recovering Education in 2021

THE CONTEXT

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused abrupt and profound changes around the world.  This is the worst shock to education systems in decades, with the longest school closures combined with looming recession.  It will set back progress made on global development goals, particularly those focused on education. The economic crises within countries and globally will likely lead to fiscal austerity, increases in poverty, and fewer resources available for investments in public services from both domestic expenditure and development aid. All of this will lead to a crisis in human development that continues long after disease transmission has ended.

Disruptions to education systems over the past year have already driven substantial losses and inequalities in learning. All the efforts to provide remote instruction are laudable, but this has been a very poor substitute for in-person learning.  Even more concerning, many children, particularly girls, may not return to school even when schools reopen. School closures and the resulting disruptions to school participation and learning are projected to amount to losses valued at $10 trillion in terms of affected children’s future earnings.  Schools also play a critical role around the world in ensuring the delivery of essential health services and nutritious meals, protection, and psycho-social support. Thus, school closures have also imperilled children’s overall wellbeing and development, not just their learning.   

It’s not enough for schools to simply reopen their doors after COVID-19. Students will need tailored and sustained support to help them readjust and catch-up after the pandemic. We must help schools prepare to provide that support and meet the enormous challenges of the months ahead. The time to act is now; the future of an entire generation is at stake.

THE MISSION

Mission objective:  To enable all children to return to school and to a supportive learning environment, which also addresses their health and psychosocial well-being and other needs.

Timeframe : By end 2021.

Scope : All countries should reopen schools for complete or partial in-person instruction and keep them open. The Partners - UNESCO , UNICEF , and the World Bank - will join forces to support countries to take all actions possible to plan, prioritize, and ensure that all learners are back in school; that schools take all measures to reopen safely; that students receive effective remedial learning and comprehensive services to help recover learning losses and improve overall welfare; and their teachers are prepared and supported to meet their learning needs. 

Three priorities:

1.    All children and youth are back in school and receive the tailored services needed to meet their learning, health, psychosocial wellbeing, and other needs. 

Challenges : School closures have put children’s learning, nutrition, mental health, and overall development at risk. Closed schools also make screening and delivery for child protection services more difficult. Some students, particularly girls, are at risk of never returning to school. 

Areas of action : The Partners will support the design and implementation of school reopening strategies that include comprehensive services to support children’s education, health, psycho-social wellbeing, and other needs. 

Targets and indicators

2.    All children receive support to catch up on lost learning.

Challenges : Most children have lost substantial instructional time and may not be ready for curricula that were age- and grade- appropriate prior to the pandemic. They will require remedial instruction to get back on track. The pandemic also revealed a stark digital divide that schools can play a role in addressing by ensuring children have digital skills and access.

Areas of action : The Partners will (i) support the design and implementation of large-scale remedial learning at different levels of education, (ii) launch an open-access, adaptable learning assessment tool that measures learning losses and identifies learners’ needs, and (iii) support the design and implementation of digital transformation plans that include components on both infrastructure and ways to use digital technology to accelerate the development of foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Incorporating digital technologies to teach foundational skills could complement teachers’ efforts in the classroom and better prepare children for future digital instruction.   

While incorporating remedial education, social-emotional learning, and digital technology into curricula by the end of 2021 will be a challenge for most countries, the Partners agree that these are aspirational targets that they should be supporting countries to achieve this year and beyond as education systems start to recover from the current crisis.

3.   All teachers are prepared and supported to address learning losses among their students and to incorporate  digital technology into their teaching.

Challenges : Teachers are in an unprecedented situation in which they must make up for substantial loss of instructional time from the previous school year and teach the current year’s curriculum. They must also protect their own health in school. Teachers will need training, coaching, and other means of support to get this done. They will also need to be prioritized for the COVID-19 vaccination, after frontline personnel and high-risk populations.  School closures also demonstrated that in addition to digital skills, teachers may also need support to adapt their pedagogy to deliver instruction remotely. 

Areas of action : The Partners will advocate for teachers to be prioritized in COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, after frontline personnel and high-risk populations, and provide capacity-development on pedagogies for remedial learning and digital and blended teaching approaches. 

Country level actions and global support

UNESCO, UNICEF, and World Bank are joining forces to support countries to achieve the Mission, leveraging their expertise and actions on the ground to support national efforts and domestic funding.

Country Level Action

1.  Mobilize team to support countries in achieving the three priorities

The Partners will collaborate and act at the country level to support governments in accelerating actions to advance the three priorities.

2.  Advocacy to mobilize domestic resources for the three priorities

The Partners will engage with governments and decision-makers to prioritize education financing and mobilize additional domestic resources.

Global level action

1.  Leverage data to inform decision-making

The Partners will join forces to   conduct surveys; collect data; and set-up a global, regional, and national real-time data-warehouse.  The Partners will collect timely data and analytics that provide access to information on school re-openings, learning losses, drop-outs, and transition from school to work, and will make data available to support decision-making and peer-learning.

2.  Promote knowledge sharing and peer-learning in strengthening education recovery

The Partners will join forces in sharing the breadth of international experience and scaling innovations through structured policy dialogue, knowledge sharing, and peer learning actions.

The time to act on these priorities is now. UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank are partnering to help drive that action.

Last Updated: Mar 30, 2021

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• Philippines

The Philippines Still Hasn’t Fully Reopened Its Schools Because of COVID-19. What Is This Doing to Children?

I f 17-year-old Ruzel Delaroso needs to ask her teacher a question, she can’t simply raise her hand, much less fire off an email from the kitchen table. She has to leave the modest shack that her family calls home in Januiay, a farming town in the central Philippines, and head to an area of dense shrubbery, a 10-minute walk away. There, if she’s lucky, she can pick up a phone signal and finally ask about the math problem in the self-learning materials her mother picked up from school.

“We’re so used to our teachers always being around,” Delaroso tells TIME via the same temperamental phone connection. “But now it’s harder to communicate with them.”

Her school, Calmay National High School, is among the tens of thousands of Philippine public schools shuttered since March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Delaroso is one of 1.6 billion children affected by worldwide school closures, according to a UNESCO estimate.

But while other countries have taken the opportunity to resume in-person classes, the Philippines has lagged behind. After 20 months of pandemic prevention measures, amounting to one of the world’s longest lockdowns , only 5,000 students, in just over 100 public schools, have been allowed to go back to class in a two-month trial program—a tiny fraction of the 27 million public school students who enrolled this year. The Philippines must be one of a very few countries, if not the only country, to remain so reliant on distance learning. It has become a vast experiment in life without in-person schooling.

Read More: What It’s Like Being a Teacher During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“[Education secretary Leonor Briones] always reminds us that in the past when there were military sieges, or volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, typhoons, floods, learning continued,” says education undersecretary Diosdado San Antonio.

But has it this time? Educators fear that prolonged closure is having negative effects on students’ ability to learn, impacting their futures just a time when the country needs a young, well-educated workforce to resume the impressive economic growth it was enjoying before the pandemic hit.

Globally, COVID-19 will be impacting the mental health of children and young adolescents for years to come, UNICEF warns. School shutdowns have already been blamed for a rise in dropout rates and decreased literacy, and the World Bank estimates that the number of children aged 10 and below, from low- and middle-income countries, who cannot read simple text has risen from 53% prior to the pandemic to 70% today.

If the pilot resumption of classes passes without incident, there are hopes for a wider reopening of Philippine schools. But without it, there are fears of a lost generation .

How COVID-19 impacted Philippine education

From March 2020 to September 2021, UNICEF tallied 131 million pre-tertiary students from 11 countries who had been trying to learn at home for at least three quarters of the time that they would normally have been in school. Of that number, 66 million came from just two countries where face-to-face classes were almost completely nixed: Bangladesh and the Philippines. (Bangladesh reopened its schools in September.)

Amid the initial COVID-19 surge of March 2020—just weeks shy of the end of the academic year—the Philippines stopped in-person classes for its entire cohort of public education students, which then numbered some 24.9 million according to UNESCO. The start of the new school year in September also got pushed back, as President Rodrigo Duterte imposed a “no vaccine, no classes” policy.

When schooling finally resumed in October 2020, the education department’s solution was a blend of remote-learning options: online platforms, educational TV and radio, and printed modules. But social inequalities and the lack of resources at home to support these approaches have dealt a huge blow to many students and teachers.

A departmental report released in March 2021 found that 99% of public school students got passing marks for the first academic quarter of last year. But other surveys claim that students are being disadvantaged. Over 86% of the 1,299 students polled by the Movement for Safe, Equitable, Quality and Relevant Education said they learned less through the education department’s take-home modules—so did 66% of those using online learning and 74% using a blend of online learning and hard-copy material.

Read More: Angelina Jolie on Why We Can Let COVID-19 Derail Education

Even though she’s an academic topnotcher—getting a weighted grade average of 91 out of 100 last year—Delaroso also feels that remote learning is inferior.

At Delaroso’s high school, teacher Johnnalie Consumo, 25, has detected a lack of eagerness to study, with some parents even filling in worksheets on their child’s behalf—going by the evidence of the handwriting.

“They have a hard time forcing the kid to answer modules because the kid isn’t intimidated by their parents,” she tells TIME. “The way a teacher encourages is very different from how a parent would.”

Consumo sometimes visits the homes of under-performing students and finds that they are out doing farm work—harvesting sugar cane, say, or making charcoal—to augment a family income that has been slashed by a suffering economy and a rising unemployment rate . Exercise books have been turned in blank, she says. Or students appear to pass their modules, only for her to find that they copied the answers. The frustration is enormous.

“It’s hard on our part,” Consumo tells TIME, “because we really try our best.”

Poverty and education in the Philippines

Internet access is a huge challenge. In urban areas, instructors can give lessons over video conferencing platforms, or Facebook Live, but 52.6% of the Philippines’ 110 million people live in rural areas with unreliable connectivity. It doesn’t come cheap either: research from cybersecurity firm SurfShark found that the internet in the Philippines is among the least stable and slowest, yet the most expensive, of 79 countries surveyed.

Internet access assumes, of course, that the user has a device, but in the Philippines that’s not a given. Private polling firm Social Weather Stations found that just over 40% of students did not have any device to help them in distance learning. Of the rest, some 27% were using a device they already owned, and 10% were able to borrow one, but 12% had to buy one, with families spending an average of $172 per learner. To put it into perspective, that’s more than half the average monthly salary in the Philippines.

“Some of them don’t have cell phones,” says Marilyn Tomelden, a teacher in Quezon province, three hours away from the Philippine capital Manila, who first noticed the digital divide when many of her sixth graders were unable to comply with what she thought of as a fun homework assignment: submitting videos of themselves performing dance moves she had demonstrated in an earlier video.

“Because we’re in public school, we cannot demand that they buy phones,” Tomelden says. “They don’t have money to buy their own food, and they’re going to buy their own cell phone for learning? Which is more important to live—to eat or to study?”

Instructors need to be equipped with the right resources too. A study from the National Research Council of the Philippines found that many teachers have had to shell out their own money to support their students in remote learning.

Read More: The Long History of Vaccinating Kids in School

Government agencies do what they can to help. Earlier this year, the customs bureau donated phones and other gadgets it had confiscated to the education department for distribution to needy students. But it’s a drop in the ocean.

“It’s something that is beyond [our] capacity to address—the inequality in terms of availability of resources of learners, depending on the socioeconomic status of families,” says education undersecretary San Antonio.

Some students are so exhausted by the struggle to study remotely that they are calling for long breaks between modules. Many parents and pressure groups are going even further, demanding total academic suspension until a clearer post-pandemic education system is ironed out.

Congresswoman France Castro is a member of ACT Teachers Partylist, a political party representing the education sector. She says a complete freeze would cause more problems than it solves.

“Education is a right,” she tells TIME. “Whatever form it will be, whether blended learning or modular, it’s better to continue it than to stop.”

But in the meantime, with their workloads multiplied, it is students and teachers paying the price. Consumo, the teacher from Januiay, regularly stays up late completing the reams of new paperwork generated by the distance learning system.

“You won’t be able to sleep anymore, just thinking about the deadlines and the work that still needs to be done,” she says. “I cry over that.”

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Assessing the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, shift to online learning, and social media use on the mental health of college students in the Philippines: A mixed-method study protocol

Leonard thomas s. lim.

1 College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines

Zypher Jude G. Regencia

2 Department of Clinical Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines

3 Institute of Clinical Epidemiology, National Institutes of Health, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines

J. Rem C. Dela Cruz

Frances dominique v. ho, marcela s. rodolfo, josefina ly-uson.

4 Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines

Emmanuel S. Baja

Associated data.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic declared by the WHO has affected many countries rendering everyday lives halted. In the Philippines, the lockdown quarantine protocols have shifted the traditional college classes to online. The abrupt transition to online classes may bring psychological effects to college students due to continuous isolation and lack of interaction with fellow students and teachers. Our study aims to assess Filipino college students’ mental health status and to estimate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to online learning, and social media use on mental health. In addition, facilitators or stressors that modified the mental health status of the college students during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning will be investigated.

Methods and analysis

Mixed-method study design will be used, which will involve: (1) an online survey to 2,100 college students across the Philippines; and (2) randomly selected 20–40 key informant interviews (KIIs). Online self-administered questionnaire (SAQ) including Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Brief-COPE will be used. Moreover, socio-demographic factors, social media usage, shift to online learning factors, family history of mental health and COVID-19, and other factors that could affect mental health will also be included in the SAQ. KIIs will explore factors affecting the student’s mental health, behaviors, coping mechanism, current stressors, and other emotional reactions to these stressors. Associations between mental health outcomes and possible risk factors will be estimated using generalized linear models, while a thematic approach will be made for the findings from the KIIs. Results of the study will then be triangulated and summarized.

Ethics and dissemination

Our study has been approved by the University of the Philippines Manila Research Ethics Board (UPMREB 2021-099-01). The results will be actively disseminated through conference presentations, peer-reviewed journals, social media, print and broadcast media, and various stakeholder activities.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak as a global pandemic, and the Philippines is one of the 213 countries affected by the disease [ 1 ]. To reduce the virus’s transmission, the President imposed an enhanced community quarantine in Luzon, the country’s northern and most populous island, on March 16, 2020. This lockdown manifested as curfews, checkpoints, travel restrictions, and suspension of business and school activities [ 2 ]. However, as the virus is yet to be curbed, varying quarantine restrictions are implemented across the country. In addition, schools have shifted to online learning, despite financial and psychological concerns [ 3 ].

Previous outbreaks such as the swine flu crisis adversely influenced the well-being of affected populations, causing them to develop emotional problems and raising the importance of integrating mental health into medical preparedness for similar disasters [ 4 ]. In one study conducted on university students during the swine flu pandemic in 2009, 45% were worried about personally or a family member contracting swine flu, while 10.7% were panicking, feeling depressed, or emotionally disturbed. This study suggests that preventive measures to alleviate distress through health education and promotion are warranted [ 5 ].

During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers worldwide have been churning out studies on its psychological effects on different populations [ 6 – 9 ]. The indirect effects of COVID-19, such as quarantine measures, the infection of family and friends, and the death of loved ones, could worsen the overall mental wellbeing of individuals [ 6 ]. Studies from 2020 to 2021 link the pandemic to emotional disturbances among those in quarantine, even going as far as giving vulnerable populations the inclination to commit suicide [ 7 , 8 ], persistent effect on mood and wellness [ 9 ], and depression and anxiety [ 10 ].

In the Philippines, a survey of 1,879 respondents measuring the psychological effects of COVID-19 during its early phase in 2020 was released. Results showed that one-fourth of respondents reported moderate-to-severe anxiety, while one-sixth reported moderate-to-severe depression [ 11 ]. In addition, other local studies in 2020 examined the mental health of frontline workers such as nurses and physicians—placing emphasis on the importance of psychological support in minimizing anxiety [ 12 , 13 ].

Since the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, risk factors that could affect specific populations’ psychological well-being have been studied [ 14 , 15 ]. A cohort study on 1,773 COVID-19 hospitalized patients in 2021 found that survivors were mainly troubled with fatigue, muscle weakness, sleep difficulties, and depression or anxiety [ 16 ]. Their results usually associate the crisis with fear, anxiety, depression, reduced sleep quality, and distress among the general population.

Moreover, the pandemic also exacerbated the condition of people with pre-existing psychiatric disorders, especially patients that live in high COVID-19 prevalence areas [ 17 ]. People suffering from mood and substance use disorders that have been infected with COVID-19 showed higher suicide risks [ 7 , 18 ]. Furthermore, a study in 2020 cited the following factors contributing to increased suicide risk: social isolation, fear of contagion, anxiety, uncertainty, chronic stress, and economic difficulties [ 19 ].

Globally, multiple studies have shown that mental health disorders among university student populations are prevalent [ 13 , 20 – 22 ]. In a 2007 survey of 2,843 undergraduate and graduate students at a large midwestern public university in the United States, the estimated prevalence of any depressive or anxiety disorder was 15.6% and 13.0% for undergraduate and graduate students, respectively [ 20 ]. Meanwhile, in a 2013 study of 506 students from 4 public universities in Malaysia, 27.5% and 9.7% had moderate and severe or extremely severe depression, respectively; 34% and 29% had moderate and severe or extremely severe anxiety, respectively [ 21 ]. In China, a 2016 meta-analysis aiming to establish the national prevalence of depression among university students analyzed 39 studies from 1995 to 2015; the meta-analysis found that the overall prevalence of depression was 23.8% across all studies that included 32,694 Chinese university students [ 23 ].

A college student’s mental status may be significantly affected by the successful fulfillment of a student’s role. A 2013 study found that acceptable teaching methods can enhance students’ satisfaction and academic performance, both linked to their mental health [ 24 ]. However, online learning poses multiple challenges to these methods [ 3 ]. Furthermore, a 2020 study found that students’ mental status is affected by their social support systems, which, in turn, may be jeopardized by the COVID-19 pandemic and the physical limitations it has imposed. Support accessible to a student through social ties to other individuals, groups, and the greater community is a form of social support; university students may draw social support from family, friends, classmates, teachers, and a significant other [ 25 , 26 ]. Among individuals undergoing social isolation and distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, social support has been found to be inversely related to depression, anxiety, irritability, sleep quality, and loneliness, with higher levels of social support reducing the risk of depression and improving sleep quality [ 27 ]. Lastly, it has been shown in a 2020 study that social support builds resilience, a protective factor against depression, anxiety, and stress [ 28 ]. Therefore, given the protective effects of social support on psychological health, a supportive environment should be maintained in the classroom. Online learning must be perceived as an inclusive community and a safe space for peer-to-peer interactions [ 29 ]. This is echoed in another study in 2019 on depressed students who narrated their need to see themselves reflected on others [ 30 ]. Whether or not online learning currently implemented has successfully transitioned remains to be seen.

The effect of social media on students’ mental health has been a topic of interest even before the pandemic [ 31 , 32 ]. A systematic review published in 2020 found that social media use is responsible for aggravating mental health problems and that prominent risk factors for depression and anxiety include time spent, activity, and addiction to social media [ 31 ]. Another systematic review published in 2016 argues that the nature of online social networking use may be more important in influencing the symptoms of depression than the duration or frequency of the engagement—suggesting that social rumination and comparison are likely to be candidate mediators in the relationship between depression and social media [ 33 ]. However, their findings also suggest that the relationship between depression and online social networking is complex and necessitates further research to determine the impact of moderators and mediators that underly the positive and negative impact of online social networking on wellbeing [ 33 ].

Despite existing studies already painting a picture of the psychological effects of COVID-19 in the Philippines, to our knowledge, there are still no local studies contextualized to college students living in different regions of the country. Therefore, it is crucial to elicit the reasons and risk factors for depression, stress, and anxiety and determine the potential impact that online learning and social media use may have on the mental health of the said population. In turn, the findings would allow the creation of more context-specific and regionalized interventions that can promote mental wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Materials and methods

The study’s general objective is to assess the mental health status of college students and determine the different factors that influenced them during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, it aims:

• To describe the study population’s characteristics, categorized by their mental health status, which includes depression, anxiety, and stress.
• To determine the prevalence and risk factors of depression, anxiety, and stress among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning.
• To estimate the effect of social media use on depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategies towards stress among college students and examine whether participant characteristics modified these associations.
• To estimate the effect of online learning shift on depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategies towards stress among college students and examine whether participant characteristics modified these associations.
• To determine the facilitators or stressors among college students that modified their mental health status during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning.

Study design

A mixed-method study design will be used to address the study’s objectives, which will include Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and an online survey. During the quarantine period of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines from April to November 2021, the study shall occur with the population amid community quarantine and an abrupt transition to online classes. Since this is the Philippines’ first study that will look at the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning, the online survey will be utilized for the quantitative part of the study design. For the qualitative component of the study design, KIIs will determine facilitators or stressors among college students that modified their mental health status during the quarantine period.

Study population

The Red Cross Youth (RCY), one of the Philippine Red Cross’s significant services, is a network of youth volunteers that spans the entire country, having active members in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. The group is clustered into different age ranges, with the College Red Cross Youth (18–25 years old) being the study’s population of interest. The RCY has over 26,060 students spread across 20 chapters located all over the country’s three major island groups. The RCY is heterogeneously composed, with some members classified as college students and some as out-of-school youth. Given their nationwide scope, disseminating information from the national to the local level is already in place; this is done primarily through email, social media platforms, and text blasts. The research team will leverage these platforms to distribute the online survey questionnaire.

In addition, the online survey will also be open to non-members of the RCY. It will be disseminated through social media and engagements with different university administrators in the country. Stratified random sampling will be done for the KIIs. The KII participants will be equally coming from the country’s four (4) primary areas: 5–10 each from the national capital region (NCR), Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, including members and non-members of the RCY.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The inclusion criteria for the online survey will include those who are 18–25 years old, currently enrolled in a university, can provide consent for the study, and are proficient in English or Filipino. The exclusion criteria will consist of those enrolled in graduate-level programs (e.g., MD, JD, Master’s, Doctorate), out-of-school youth, and those whose current curricula involve going on duty (e.g., MDs, nursing students, allied medical professions, etc.). The inclusion criteria for the KIIs will include online survey participants who are 18–25 years old, can provide consent for the study, are proficient in English or Filipino, and have access to the internet.

Sample size

A continuity correction method developed by Fleiss et al. (2013) was used to calculate the sample size needed [ 34 ]. For a two-sided confidence level of 95%, with 80% power and the least extreme odds ratio to be detected at 1.4, the computed sample size was 1890. With an adjustment for an estimated response rate of 90%, the total sample size needed for the study was 2,100. To achieve saturation for the qualitative part of the study, 20 to 40 participants will be randomly sampled for the KIIs using the respondents who participated in the online survey [ 35 ].

Study procedure

Self-Administered questionnaire

The study will involve creating, testing, and distributing a self-administered questionnaire (SAQ). All eligible study participants will answer the SAQ on socio-demographic factors such as age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, residence, household income, socioeconomic status, smoking status, family history of mental health, and COVID-19 sickness of immediate family members or friends. The two validated survey tools, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Brief-COPE, will be used for the mental health outcome assessment [ 36 – 39 ]. The DASS-21 will measure the negative emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress [ 40 ], while the Brief-COPE will measure the students’ coping strategies [ 41 ].

For the exposure assessment of the students to social media and shift to online learning, the total time spent on social media (TSSM) per day will be ascertained by querying the participants to provide an estimated time spent daily on social media during and after their online classes. In addition, students will be asked to report their use of the eight commonly used social media sites identified at the start of the study. These sites include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and social messaging sites Viber/WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with response choices coded as "(1) never," "(2) less often," "(3) every few weeks," "(4) a few times a week," and “(5) daily” [ 42 – 44 ]. Furthermore, a global frequency score will be calculated by adding the response scores from the eight social media sites. The global frequency score will be used as an additional exposure marker of students to social media [ 45 ]. The shift to online learning will be assessed using questions that will determine the participants’ satisfaction with online learning. This assessment is comprised of 8 items in which participants will be asked to respond on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree.’

The online survey will be virtually distributed in English using the Qualtrics XM™ platform. Informed consent detailing the purpose, risks, benefits, methods, psychological referrals, and other ethical considerations will be included before the participants are allowed to answer the survey. Before administering the online survey, the SAQ shall undergo pilot testing among twenty (20) college students not involved with the study. It aims to measure total test-taking time, respondent satisfaction, and understandability of questions. The survey shall be edited according to the pilot test participant’s responses. Moreover, according to the Philippines’ Data Privacy Act, all the answers will be accessible and used only for research purposes.

Key informant interviews

The research team shall develop the KII concept note, focusing on the extraneous factors affecting the student’s mental health, behaviors, and coping mechanism. Some salient topics will include current stressors (e.g., personal, academic, social), emotional reactions to these stressors, and how they wish to receive support in response to these stressors. The KII will be facilitated by a certified psychologist/psychiatrist/social scientist and research assistants using various online video conferencing software such as Google Meet, Skype, or Zoom. All the KIIs will be recorded and transcribed for analysis. Furthermore, there will be a debriefing session post-KII to address the psychological needs of the participants. Fig 1 presents the diagrammatic flowchart of the study.

Data analyses

Quantitative data.

Descriptive statistics will be calculated, including the prevalence of mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategies. In addition, correlation coefficients will be estimated to assess the relations among the different mental health outcomes, covariates, and possible risk factors.

Associations between mental health outcomes and possible risk factors will be estimated using generalized linear models, a standard method for analyzing data in cross-sectional studies. Depending on how rare or common the mental health outcomes are, generalized linear models with either a Poisson distribution and log link function with a robust variance estimator or a Binomial distribution and logit link function will be used to estimate either the adjusted prevalence ratios (PRs) or odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), respectively [ 46 – 49 ]. Separate single-mental health outcome models will be evaluated, and the models will consider the general form:

where Y i will be the mental health outcome (depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategy) status of subject i and covariates for subject i will be denoted by X 1i to X ri as the possible exposure risk factors (i.e., social media use and shift to online learning) and confounding factors (i.e., age, sex, gender, smoking status, family income, etc.). In addition, we will control for the covariates chosen a priori as potentially important predictors of mental health outcomes in all the models.

Several study characteristics as effect modifiers will also be assessed, including sex, gender, sexual orientation, family income, smoking status, family history of mental health, and Covid-19. We will include interaction terms between the dichotomized modifier variable and markers of social media use (total TSSM and global frequency score) and shift to online learning in the models. The significance of the interaction terms will be evaluated using the likelihood ratio test. All the regression analyses will be done in R ( http://www.r-project.org ). P values ≤ 0.05 will be considered statistically significant.

Qualitative data

After transcribing the interviews, the data transcripts will be analyzed using NVivo 1.4.1 software [ 50 ] by three research team members independently using the inductive logic approach in thematic analysis: familiarizing with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing the themes, defining and naming the themes, and producing the report [ 51 ]. Data familiarization will consist of reading and re-reading the data while noting initial ideas. Additionally, coding interesting features of the data will follow systematically across the entire dataset while collating data relevant to each code. Moreover, the open coding of the data will be performed to describe the data into concepts and themes, which will be further categorized to identify distinct concepts and themes [ 52 ].

The three researchers will discuss the results of their thematic analyses. They will compare and contrast the three analyses in order to come up with a thematic map. The final thematic map of the analysis will be generated after checking if the identified themes work in relation to the extracts and the entire dataset. In addition, the selection of clear, persuasive extract examples that will connect the analysis to the research question and literature will be reviewed before producing a scholarly report of the analysis. Additionally, the themes and sub-themes generated will be assessed and discussed in relevance to the study’s objectives. Furthermore, the gathering and analyzing of the data will continue until saturation is reached. Finally, pseudonyms will be used to present quotes from qualitative data.

Data triangulation

Data triangulation using the two different data sources will be conducted to examine the various aspects of the research and will be compared for convergence. This part of the analysis will require listing all the relevant topics or findings from each component of the study and considering where each method’s results converge, offer complementary information on the same issue, or appear to contradict each other. It is crucial to explicitly look for disagreements between findings from different data collection methods because exploration of any apparent inter-method discrepancy may lead to a better understanding of the research question [ 53 , 54 ].

Data management plan

The Project Leader will be responsible for overall quality assurance, with research associates and assistants undertaking specific activities to ensure quality control. Quality will be assured through routine monitoring by the Project Leader and periodic cross-checks against the protocols by the research assistants. Transcribed KIIs and the online survey questionnaire will be used for recording data for each participant in the study. The project leader will be responsible for ensuring the accuracy, completeness, legibility, and timeliness of the data captured in all the forms. Data captured from the online survey or KIIs should be consistent, clarified, and corrected. Each participant will have complete source documentation of records. Study staff will prepare appropriate source documents and make them available to the Project Leader upon request for review. In addition, study staff will extract all data collected in the KII notes or survey forms. These data will be secured and kept in a place accessible to the Project Leader. Data entry and cleaning will be conducted, and final data cleaning, data freezing, and data analysis will be performed. Key informant interviews will always involve two researchers. Where appropriate, quality control for the qualitative data collection will be assured through refresher KII training during research design workshops. The Project Leader will check through each transcript for consistency with agreed standards. Where translations are undertaken, the quality will be assured by one other researcher fluent in that language checking against the original recording or notes.

Ethics approval

The study shall abide by the Principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (2013). It will be conducted along with the Guidelines of the International Conference on Harmonization-Good Clinical Practice (ICH-GCP), E6 (R2), and other ICH-GCP 6 (as amended); National Ethical Guidelines for Health and Health-Related Research (NEGHHRR) of 2017. This protocol has been approved by the University of the Philippines Manila Research Ethics Board (UPMREB 2021-099-01 dated March 25, 2021).

The main concerns for ethics were consent, data privacy, and subject confidentiality. The risks, benefits, and conflicts of interest are discussed in this section from an ethical standpoint.

Recruitment

The participants will be recruited to answer the online SAQ voluntarily. The recruitment of participants for the KIIs will be chosen through stratified random sampling using a list of those who answered the online SAQ; this will minimize the risk of sampling bias. In addition, none of the participants in the study will have prior contact or association with the researchers. Moreover, power dynamics will not be contacted to recruit respondents. The research objectives, methods, risks, benefits, voluntary participation, withdrawal, and respondents’ rights will be discussed with the respondents in the consent form before KII.

Informed consent will be signified by the potential respondent ticking a box in the online informed consent form and the voluntary participation of the potential respondent to the study after a thorough discussion of the research details. The participant’s consent is voluntary and may be recanted by the participant any time s/he chooses.

Data privacy

All digital data will be stored in a cloud drive accessible only to the researchers. Subject confidentiality will be upheld through the assignment of control numbers and not requiring participants to divulge the name, address, and other identifying factors not necessary for analysis.

Compensation

No monetary compensation will be given to the participants, but several tokens will be raffled to all the participants who answered the online survey and did the KIIs.

This research will pose risks to data privacy, as discussed and addressed above. In addition, there will be a risk of social exclusion should data leaks arise due to the stigma against mental health. This risk will be mitigated by properly executing the data collection and analysis plan, excluding personal details and tight data privacy measures. Moreover, there is a risk of psychological distress among the participants due to the sensitive information. This risk will be addressed by subjecting the SAQ and the KII guidelines to the project team’s psychiatrist’s approval, ensuring proper communication with the participants. The KII will also be facilitated by registered clinical psychologists/psychiatrists/social scientists to ensure the participants’ appropriate handling; there will be a briefing and debriefing of the participants before and after the KII proper.

Participation in this study will entail health education and a voluntary referral to a study-affiliated psychiatrist, discussed in previous sections. Moreover, this would contribute to modifications in targeted mental-health campaigns for the 18–25 age group. Summarized findings and recommendations will be channeled to stakeholders for their perusal.

Dissemination

The results will be actively disseminated through conference presentations, peer-reviewed journals, social media, print and broadcast media, and various stakeholder activities.

This study protocol rationalizes the examination of the mental health of the college students in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic as the traditional face-to-face classes transitioned to online and modular classes. The pandemic that started in March 2020 is now stretching for more than a year in which prolonged lockdown brings people to experience social isolation and disruption of everyday lifestyle. There is an urgent need to study the psychosocial aspects, particularly those populations that are vulnerable to mental health instability. In the Philippines, where community quarantine is still being imposed across the country, college students face several challenges amidst this pandemic. The pandemic continues to escalate, which may lead to fear and a spectrum of psychological consequences. Universities and colleges play an essential role in supporting college students in their academic, safety, and social needs. The courses of activities implemented by the different universities and colleges may significantly affect their mental well-being status. Our study is particularly interested in the effect of online classes on college students nationwide during the pandemic. The study will estimate this effect on their mental wellbeing since this abrupt transition can lead to depression, stress, or anxiety for some students due to insufficient time to adjust to the new learning environment. The role of social media is also an important exposure to some college students [ 55 , 56 ]. Social media exposure to COVID-19 may be considered a contributing factor to college students’ mental well-being, particularly their stress, depression, and anxiety [ 57 , 58 ]. Despite these known facts, little is known about the effect of transitioning to online learning and social media exposure on the mental health of college students during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines. To our knowledge, this is the first study in the Philippines that will use a mixed-method study design to examine the mental health of college students in the entire country. The online survey is a powerful platform to employ our methods.

Additionally, our study will also utilize a qualitative assessment of the college students, which may give significant insights or findings of the experiences of the college students during these trying times that cannot be captured on our online survey. The thematic findings or narratives from the qualitative part of our study will be triangulated with the quantitative analysis for a more robust synthesis. The results will be used to draw conclusions about the mental health status among college students during the pandemic in the country, which will eventually be used to implement key interventions if deemed necessary. A cross-sectional study design for the online survey is one of our study’s limitations in which contrasts will be mainly between participants at a given point of time. In addition, bias arising from residual or unmeasured confounding factors cannot be ruled out.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying effects will persistently affect the mental wellbeing of college students. Mental health services must be delivered to combat mental instability. In addition, universities and colleges should create an environment that will foster mental health awareness among Filipino college students. The results of our study will tailor the possible coping strategies to meet the specific needs of college students nationwide, thereby promoting psychological resilience.

Acknowledgments

The researchers would like to extend their gratitude to the executives of the Philippine Red Cross, notably Senator Richard J. Gordon (Chairman), Ms. Elizabeth S. Zavalla (Secretary-General), and Ms. Maria Theresa S. Bongiad (Manager, Red Cross Youth), for making this project a reality. We also would like to thank all Red Cross Youth Chapters in the Philippines for helping in the pre-implementation stage of the project.

Funding Statement

This project is being supported by the American Red Cross through the Philippine Red Cross and Red Cross Youth. The funder will not have a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

• PLoS One. 2022; 17(5): e0267555.

Decision Letter 0

PONE-D-21-17998Assessing the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Shift to Online Learning, and Social Media Use on Mental Health Among College Students in the Philippines: A Mixed-Method Study ProtocolPLOS ONE

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Reviewer #1: This study protocol aims to access the psychological effects among college students (18-25 years old) in the Philippines from the global pandemic, COVID-19, shift to online learning, and social media usage. The objectives of the study protocol address using a mixed-method study design that utilizes the quantitative and qualitative components. For the quantitative analysis, the authors propose sending an online self-administered questionnaire to the eligible participants to answer on socio-demographic factors. Based on the information provided, mental health outcomes will be assessed using two validated survey tools, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Brief-COPE. Additionally, the authors propose estimating the association between mental health outcomes and possible risk factors by using generalized linear models. Key informant interviews, a part of the qualitative component that addresses the stressors affecting the student’s mental health and behavior during the quarantine period. Finally, the authors suggest evaluating the data from quantitative and qualitative sources by using Data triangulation, which analyzes multiple sources of data to enhance the credibility of a research study.

The careful methodology provided in this study protocol will allow other researchers to apply this design to their studies. The validation of this study should provide a roadmap to study the effect of the pandemic on students in other countries.

The design of the study is very detailed for the most part. The authors have provided the necessary information about how the study population would be recruited and provided a justification for the sample size (quantitative data) that would be included in the study by providing relevant power calculations. However, for the qualitative study increasing the number of participants from different areas of the country would improve the quality of the outcome. Also, I would like to ask if any of the authors are Psychologists? If not, please acknowledge the Psychologists if the authors received any help in designing the study.

Also, the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study population could be explained in more detail. It is not clear if only currently enrolled students would be included in the study. It would be important to justify the exclusion criteria.

Acknowledging similar studies (Copeland et al., 2021 and Fawaz et al., 2021) would help readers with a greater context. I would like to suggest the authors to cite the peer-reviewed version of the article titled “Barriers to online learning in the time of COVID-19: A national survey of medical students in the Philippines”. Also, I would like to ask the authors to change the references according to the journal requirements and have a uniform style.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review the study protocol. The protocol is for a mixed-methods study looking at the impact of COVID19 and the subsequent shift to quarantine (stay at home), the implementation of online learning formats, and social media use on college students mental health. The study will provide insight into factors impacting mental health of college students. There are some issues with the study protocol that should be addressed.

Paragraph 2.

• If you refer to SARS-CoV-2 as COVID-19, please include swine flu when referring to H1N1.

Paragraph 3.

• It is not clear which pandemic the authors are referring to.

• Include reference examples for the first sentence. P

• rovide examples of how infection and death have "adversely affected" mental health.

• How many people responded to the survey measuring the psychological effects of COVID19 in the Philippines?

Paragraph 4.

• Provide references for the first three sentences.

• Provide details of the studies you reference.

• Final sentence is conflating being infected by COVID19 and suffering from mood and substance disorders - please clarify exactly what is meant.

Paragraph 5.

• University students are not generally accepted as a vulnerable population. Please provide a reference that supports this statement.

• Second sentence - provide the references for the multiple studies.

• Are Chinese university students similar to Filipino college students? Surely there are other studies from other countries that can be included here. Or is the social, cultural, and political situation similar between the Philippines and China?

Paragraph 6.

• Second sentence is not clear. Do you mean that academic performance is associated with student mental health? If so, just say that.

• What is "this" in the sentence: "Online learning poses multiple challenges to this".

• Provide an example of "Students’ various social support systems" that have to adapt.

• In this sentence: "These challenges are alarming because social support has been noted as a critical aspect of mediating acute distress disorder" it's not clear if the statement refers to students or some other population.

• References are needed for the following sentences: "In addition, loneliness has been rising for the past six years amongst this vulnerable demographic. One study showed that being a student is a risk factor for loneliness, exacerbated during the pandemic." Furthermore, please provide greater clarity around the population being discussed.

• The following sentence does not follow the logic from the preceding sentences: "Therefore, online learning must be perceived as an inclusive community and a safe space for peer-to-peer interactions (18)."

Paragraph 7.

• The following sentence needs a reference: "One research recommends clear and focused design elements on accommodating students living with depression."

• The argument presented in this paragraph is not clear.

Paragraph 8

• The first three sentences need references.

• The argument for examining the effect of social media on students mental health is weak and is only presented in the second to last paragraph.

Paragraph 9

• There is no inclusion of social media in this paragraph.

• This paragraph should present a strong argument for the study, including all the factors that are to be included in the study.

Study aim –

• Aims 1 and 2 are very similar. Aim 1 suggests you are going to describe the sample according to the categories of mental health. This is quite unusual and makes me think that maybe 'stratified is not the correct word for this aim. Perhaps what is meant is that the study aims to describe the characteristics of the sample population including mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety, stress)

• Aim 2 it is not clear if the determination of prevalence is before or post, the subsequent shift to online learning. Please clarify.

• Aim 3. It is not clear what the aim is. Please simplify. It might require breaking this one aim up into 2 or 3.

• Aim 4 Is similar to the last aspect of aim 3.

• Furthermore, the phrase "during the COVID-19 pandemic, quarantine, and subsequent shift to online learning." Is confusing - COVID 19 is current, it's not clear whether all or some of the students are in quarantine, and presumably, they have shifted to online learning (past). Please clarify the state in which the study will be conducted.

• When is the quarantine period. Please provide dates?

• Population RCY seems like a great way to recruit participants. However, this population may not reflect all college students as RCY are volunteers. Students who volunteer may have different values and attitudes towards mental health, and social justice and adapting to change. The authors must account for this in their study and ensure there are no differences between their RCY participants and the non-member RCY participants on critical factors (e.g., mental health etc).

• It is not clear how random sampling for the KII will be achieved. The reported sampling method reads more like stratified sampling.

Inclusion exclusion criteria

• It is not clear why those who identify as non-binary genders are not included. Why is gender an inclusion/ exclusion criterion?

• The sample size calculation - how was the number of KIIs determined? how data saturation will be determined

• It's not clear how the demographic factors will be collected.

• Variables are not clear (e.g., sickness of loved ones) - do you mean family members? friends? pets? do you mean chronic illness or acute illness?

• What other factors that could affect mental health are you going to measure?

• This statement is not accurate: "The DASS-21 will measure the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress-related issues affecting daily life (28)" please correct to more accurately describe the DASS.

• It is not clear how this variable will be measured: "the total time spent on social media (TSSM) per day will be ascertained by querying the participants to provide an estimated time spent daily on social media during and after their online classes." is it the total time in one day, or only during and after class. Why not all day? or why is it only during and after of interest? The assumption is that they will increase their use of social media, but what if their use of social media is the same or less than before the shift to online learning?

• Regarding the KII, it may be country-specific, but it's not clear how social scientists and research assistants facilitation of interviews will be the same quality as psychologists and psychiatrists. How will the difference in skills in interviewing be overcome?

• Will the results of the survey be used to develop interview questions?

Data Analysis

• Given that all the variables are known, the quantitative analysis could be clearer with examples of what the authors mean by 'covariate' and 'possible risk factors.

• Will the analyses be explorational? the literature review implies that some hypotheses may be developed. If so, the analyses should be designed to test those hypotheses.

• How will p-values be adjusted to account for the multiple analyse?

• Will the themes be developed independently by researchers? how many researchers will be involved in the coding? It is not clear from the description how will triangulation be established. Will multiple authors do the coding of the interview transcripts - independently? Will the results of the survey be used to inform the coding of the interviews?

• It is still not clear how random sampling will be achieved by the authors for recruitment for KII.

• What will the researchers do if a participants response to the DASS indicates they have clinical levels of Depression, Anxiety or Stress?

• References are needed throughout the discussion. For example, "The role of social media is also an important exposure to some college students. Social media exposure to COVID-19 may be considered a contributing factor to college students’ mental well-being, particularly their stress, depression, and anxiety."

Reviewer #3: The title of the protocol is timely and well presented. However, I don't agree on publishing protocols for cross-sectional studies. However, the results of this protocol are expected to add great value for public health.

Reviewer #4: This is just a proposal stage. Some part of the methods section is not well defined. Without any results, it is not suitable for a scientific publication yet.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Author response to Decision Letter 0

16 Jan 2022

Reviewer No. 1:

This study protocol aims to assess the psychological effects among college students (18-25 years old) in the Philippines from the global pandemic, COVID-19, shift to online learning, and social media usage. The objectives of the study protocol address using a mixed-method study design that utilizes the quantitative and qualitative components. For the quantitative analysis, the authors propose sending an online self-administered questionnaire to the eligible participants to answer on socio-demographic factors. Based on the information provided, mental health outcomes will be assessed using two validated survey tools, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Brief-COPE. Additionally, the authors propose estimating the association between mental health outcomes and possible risk factors by using generalized linear models. Key informant interviews, a part of the qualitative component that addresses the stressors affecting the student’s mental health and behavior during the quarantine period. Finally, the authors suggest evaluating the data from quantitative and qualitative sources by using data triangulation, which analyzes multiple sources of data to enhance the credibility of a research study.

The design of the study is very detailed for the most part. The authors have provided the necessary information about how the study population would be recruited and provided a justification for the sample size (quantitative data) that would be included in the study by providing relevant power calculations. However, for the qualitative study, increasing the number of participants from different areas of the country would improve the quality of the outcome. Also, I would like to ask if any of the authors are Psychologists? If not, please acknowledge the Psychologists if the authors received any help in designing the study.

Response: One of the authors is a senior consultant psychiatrist, Dr. Josefina T. Ly-Uson. She helped in the design of the study.

Response: The inclusion criteria now included “currently enrolled college students.” The exclusion criteria included those students in graduate-level programs and those whose current curricula involve going on duty. We purposely chose to exclude those students because they have a different set of schooling conditions compared to the rest of the regular college students.

Acknowledging similar studies (Copeland et al., 2021 and Fawaz et al., 2021) would help readers with a greater context. I would like to suggest the authors cite the peer-reviewed version of the article titled “Barriers to online learning in the time of COVID-19: A national survey of medical students in the Philippines”. Also, I would like to ask the authors to change the references according to the journal requirements and have a uniform style.

Response: Thank you for the suggestion. This comment is noted, and revisions have been made.

Reviewer No. 2

Thank you for the opportunity to review the study protocol. The protocol is for a mixed-methods study looking at the impact of COVID19 and the subsequent shift to quarantine (stay at home), the implementation of online learning formats, and social media use on college students’ mental health. The study will provide insight into factors impacting mental health of college students. There are some issues with the study protocol that should be addressed.

Response: This is noted, and revisions have been made.

• Include reference examples for the first sentence.

• Provide examples of how infection and death have "adversely affected" mental health.

Response: This is noted, and the statement was deleted.

Response: This is noted, and revisions have been made. We cited prevalence rates from three different countries (USA, Malaysia, and China).

Response: This is noted and revisions have been made.

Response: This is noted, and references have been added.

• The argument for examining the effect of social media on students' mental health is weak and is only presented in the second to last paragraph.

• Aims 1 and 2 are very similar. Aim 1 suggests you are going to describe the sample according to the categories of mental health. This is quite unusual and makes me think that maybe 'stratified' is not the correct word for this aim. Perhaps what is meant is that the study aims to describe the characteristics of the sample population including mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety, stress)

Response: This is noted. We replaced the word stratified with categorized. Aims 1 and 2 are not similar. The first aim will present the characteristics of the population, while the second aim will present the prevalence and risk factors.

Response: Aim 2 will determine the prevalence after the subsequent shift to online learning. We will not determine the pre-shift to online learning prevalence because there was an abrupt transition to online learning in the Philippines, which limits our time frame to collect data before the shift to online learning.

Response: Aim 3 was split into 2 aims. The first aim will be looking at the effect of social media use on markers of mental health (depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategies towards stress). At the same time, the second aim will look at the effect of online learning shift on markers of mental health (depression, anxiety, stress, and coping strategies towards stress).

Response: Aim 4 is very different from Aim 3 because Aim 4 is the qualitative part of the study which will use key informant interviews to explore facilitators or stressors that modified the mental health status of the participants while Aim 3 is the quantitative part.

Response: Currently, the Philippines is still in quarantine due to COVID-19 and all classes made a shift to online learning and no face-to-face classes are allowed.

• When is the quarantine period? Please provide dates?

Response: Currently, the Philippines is still in quarantine. We opted to use April to November 2021 as the study period.

Response: RCY is connected with the majority of the universities and colleges in the Philippines. RCY will spearhead the distribution of the questionnaires to universities and colleges in the Philippines. Therefore, non-RCY volunteers are also encouraged and recruited to participate in the study. We will account for the differences between RCY and non-RCY volunteers by adding an indicator variable in our statistical models.

Response: Yes, it is a stratified random sampling using 4 major regions of the country. We have revised the section.

Response: Gender is not an exclusion/inclusion criterion. Revisions have been made.

Response: The saturation will be achieved once almost all of the interview transcripts have been generating no new information. We added the reference Hagaman and Wutich as basis for the KII sample size.

Response: Demographic factors will be collected using the SAQ we developed.

Response: We deleted “other factors that could affect mental health”.

• It is not clear how this variable will be measured: "the total time spent on social media (TSSM) per day will be ascertained by querying the participants to provide an estimated time spent daily on social media during and after their online classes." is it the total time in one day, or only during and after class. Why not all day? or why is it only during and after interest? The assumption is that they will increase their use of social media, but what if their use of social media is the same or less than before the shift to online learning?

Response: We will measure the social media during and outside online class hours. TSSM will measure the total time spent per day on social media. We will not account for the TSSM before shifting to online learning. Our objective is to measure their TSSM during and outside of class hours that is happening in a quarantine period.

Response: Dr. Uson, our board-certified psychiatrist, trained the research assistants to facilitate KIIs. She will also be present during the KII. In the Philippines, training of the research assistants to facilitate KII is done in order for them to learn and be adequately trained for future research. Research assistants may someday be the research primary investigators.

Response: The results of the survey will not be used to develop interview questions. But we will use the answers of the KII participants in the survey as a guide during the interviews of the KII participants.

Response: Yes, all the possible variables that will be used in the data analysis have been identified a priori as confounding factor covariates and risk factors.

• Will the analyses be explorational? The literature review implies that some hypotheses may be developed. If so, the analyses should be designed to test those hypotheses.

Response: The analysis will not be explorational. Important possible risk factors (exposures) and covariates (confounding factors) were chosen a priori and will be used for the multivariable generalized linear models.

• How will p-values be adjusted to account for the multiple analyses?

Response: We will not use a correction method to adjust the p-values, since our statistical analyses will be not that many to warrant an adjustment. Possible adjustments of p-values are for microarray datasets to correct the occurrence of false positives in the multiple analyses.

• Will the themes be developed independently by researchers? How many researchers will be involved in the coding? It is not clear from the description how triangulation will be established. Will multiple authors do the coding of the interview transcripts - independently? Will the results of the survey be used to inform the coding of the interviews?

Response: This is noted, and revisions have been made. The description of the triangulation was described in the “data triangulation” section and references have been updated to include the “comparison of datasets for convergence”. As mentioned earlier, the results of the survey will not be used to develop interview questions. But we will use their answers in the survey as a guide during the interview.

Response: From the pool of participants per area, using a software, we will randomly choose prospective KII participants and contact them if they are willing to participate. If they opted not to participate, we will randomly choose participants again from the pool of respondents per area.

• What will the researchers do if a participant's response to the DASS indicates they have clinical levels of Depression, Anxiety or Stress?

Response: It is our ethical duty to assist the participants if they have been screened to have high clinical levels of depression, anxiety, or stress. We will refer them to a tertiary government hospital for further evaluation, or treatment if needed.

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Decision Letter 1

15 Feb 2022

PONE-D-21-17998R1Assessing the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Shift to Online Learning, and Social Media Use on the Mental Health of College Students in the Philippines: A Mixed-Method Study ProtocolPLOS ONE

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

 Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 31 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at  gro.solp@enosolp . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Jianhong Zhou

Associate Editor

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #1: Appreciate the authors' efforts, they addressed all the concerns adequately.

However, I suggest authors to cite the peer-reviewed version of the article instead of medRxiv.

Good luck with your publication.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this protocol. The authors have made considerable changes to the protocol in response to reviewer comments. There are just a couple of minor points to be addressed.

Paragraph 6 – please include the years that these studies were conducted. Also, as these studies are cross-sectional, it is not entirely accurate to say that there is a growing prevalence (which you could do if there were similar studies conducted years apart on the same population, or a longitudinal study. But these are separate populations and the years have not been presented to the reader). Perhaps just delete ‘growing’

Qualitative data – paragraph 1- The description of the qualitative data is missing some information. For example, at what point will the three qualitative analysts discuss the themes? Will the three analysts do all of the transcripts or will they do a sample to establish consistency before dividing the transcripts? Please confirm whether inductive or deductive logic to the coding approach.

Reviewer #4: -The study is proposed to explore the effect of social media use, online learning upon mental health. It is hard to differentiate wither the effect is due to social media or online learning. (aim 3 and aim 4).

- The study participants (inclusion criteria) also include out-of-school youth as they are including all RCY who agreed.

Author response to Decision Letter 1

23 Feb 2022

RESPONSE TO REVIEWERS

PONE-D-21-17998: Assessing the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Shift to Online Learning, and Social Media Use on Mental Health Among College Students in the Philippines: A Mixed-Method Study Protocol

Reviewer #1: Appreciate the authors' efforts, they addressed all the concerns adequately. However, I suggest authors cite the peer-reviewed version of the article instead of medRxiv.

Response: We have removed the medRxiv references.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this protocol. The authors have made considerable changes to the protocol in response to reviewer comments. There are just a couple of minor points to be addressed.

Response: We have deleted the word “growing.”

Response: The qualitative data description was added with information regarding the discussion of thematic analysis of the three researchers. To ensure consistency, KII training, including transcription and quality assurance, will be done with the research team members as detailed in the Data Management Plan Section. Moreover, an inductive logic approach to coding will be conducted. All of these are reflected in the revised manuscript.

Reviewer #4: -The study is proposed to explore the effect of social media use, online learning on mental health. It is hard to differentiate whether the effect is due to social media or online learning. (Aim 3 and Aim 4).

Response: Generalized linear model using Poisson regression will be done to independently analyze the effect of social media usage or online learning on the participants' mental health. Thus, social media usage and online learning will be treated as two exposures independently.

Response: We have revised the inclusion and exclusion criteria. “Out-of-school youth” classification is now included in the exclusion criteria. Moreover, current enrollment in a university is part of the inclusion criteria.

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_Round 2_Plos One 22022022.docx

Decision Letter 2

12 Apr 2022

Assessing the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Shift to Online Learning, and Social Media Use on the Mental Health of College Students in the Philippines: A Mixed-Method Study Protocol

PONE-D-21-17998R2

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ , click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at gro.solp@gnillibrohtua .

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact gro.solp@sserpeno .

Elisa Panada

Staff Editor

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewer #1: I am satisfied with the revisions that were made to the manuscript. I endorse this manuscript for publication.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript provides a valid rationale for the proposed study and the study is technically sound. The methodology is feasible and described in detail.

Acceptance letter

21 Apr 2022

Dear Dr. Baja:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact gro.solp@sserpeno .

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A Better Education for All During—and After—the COVID-19 Pandemic

Research from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and its partners shows how to help children learn amid erratic access to schools during a pandemic, and how those solutions may make progress toward the Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring a quality education for all by 2030.

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By Radhika Bhula & John Floretta Oct. 16, 2020

Five years into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world is nowhere near to ensuring a quality education for all by 2030. Impressive gains in enrollment and attendance over recent decades have not translated into corresponding gains in learning. The World Bank’s metric of "learning poverty," which refers to children who cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10, is a staggering 80 percent in low-income countries .

The COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating this learning crisis. As many as 94 percent of children across the world have been out of school due to closures. Learning losses from school shutdowns are further compounded by inequities , particularly for students who were already left behind by education systems. Many countries and schools have shifted to online learning during school closures as a stop-gap measure. However, this is not possible in many places, as less than half of households in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have internet access.  

Many education systems around the world are now reopening fully, partially, or in a hybrid format, leaving millions of children to face a radically transformed educational experience. As COVID-19 cases rise and fall during the months ahead, the chaos will likely continue, with schools shutting down and reopening as needed to balance educational needs with protecting the health of students, teachers, and families. Parents, schools, and entire education systems—especially in LMICs—will need to play new roles to support student learning as the situation remains in flux, perhaps permanently. As they adjust to this new reality, research conducted by more than 220 professors affiliated with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and innovations from J-PAL's partners provide three insights into supporting immediate and long-term goals for educating children.

1. Support caregivers at home to help children learn while schools are closed . With nearly 1.6 billion children out of school at the peak of the pandemic, many parents or caregivers, especially with young children, have taken on new roles to help with at-home learning. To support them and remote education efforts, many LMICs have used SMS, phone calls, and other widely accessible, affordable, and low-technology methods of information delivery. While such methods are imperfect substitutes for schooling, research suggests they can help engage parents in their child’s education and contribute to learning , perhaps even after schools reopen.

Preliminary results from an ongoing program and randomized evaluation in Botswana show the promise of parental support combined with low-technology curriculum delivery. When the pandemic hit, the NGO Young 1ove was working with Botswana's Ministry of Education to scale up the  Teaching at the Right Level approach to primary schools in multiple districts. After collecting student, parent, and teacher phone numbers, the NGO devised two strategies to deliver educational support. The first strategy sent SMS texts to households with a series of numeracy “problems of the week.” The second sent the same texts combined with 20-minute phone calls with Young 1ove staff members, who walked parents and students through the problems. Over four to five weeks, both interventions significantly improved learning . They halved the number of children who could not do basic mathematical operations like subtraction and division. Parents became more engaged with their children's education and had a better understanding of their learning levels. Young 1ove is now evaluating the impact of SMS texts and phone calls that are tailored to students’ numeracy levels.

In another example, the NGO Educate! reoriented its in-school youth skills model to be delivered through radio, SMS, and phone calls in response to school closures in East Africa. To encourage greater participation, Educate! called the students' caregivers to tell them about the program. Their internal analysis indicates that households that received such encouragement calls had a 29 percent increase in youth participation compared to those that did not receive the communication.

In several Latin American countries , researchers are evaluating the impact of sending SMS texts to parents on how to support their young children who have transitioned to distance-learning programs. Similar efforts to support parents and evaluate the effects are underway in Peru . Both will contribute to a better understanding of how to help caregivers support their child’s education using affordable and accessible technology.

Other governments and organizations in areas where internet access is limited are also experimenting with radio and TV to support parents and augment student learning. The Côte d’Ivoire government created a radio program on math and French for children in grades one to five. It involved hundreds of short lessons. The Indian NGO Pratham collaborated with the Bihar state government and a television channel to produce 10 hours of learning programming per week, creating more than 100 episodes to date. Past randomized evaluations of such “edutainment” programs from other sectors in Nigeria , Rwanda , and Uganda suggest the potential of delivering content and influencing behavior through mass media, though context is important, and more rigorous research is needed to understand the impact of such programs on learning.

2. As schools reopen, educators should use low-stakes assessments to identify learning gaps. As of September 1, schools in more than 75 countries were open to some degree. Many governments need to be prepared for the vast majority of children to be significantly behind in their educations as they return—a factor exacerbated by the low pre-pandemic learning levels, particularly in LMICs . Rather than jumping straight into grade-level curriculum, primary schools in LMICs should quickly assess learning levels to understand what children know (or don’t) and devise strategic responses. They can do so by using simple tools to frequently assess students, rather than focusing solely on high-stakes exams, which may significantly influence a child’s future by, for example, determining grade promotion.

Orally administered assessments—such as ASER , ICAN , and Uwezo —are simple, fast, inexpensive, and effective. The ASER math tool, for example, has just four elements: single-digit number recognition, double-digit number recognition, two-digit subtraction, and simple division. A similar tool exists for assessing foundational reading abilities. Tests like these don’t affect a child’s grades or promotion, help teachers to get frequent and clear views into learning levels, and can enable schools to devise plans to help children master the basics.

3. Tailor children's instruction to help them master foundational skills once learning gaps are identified. Given low learning levels before the pandemic and recent learning loss due to school disruptions, it is important to focus on basic skills as schools reopen to ensure children maintain and build a foundation for a lifetime of learning. Decades of research from Chile, India, Kenya, Ghana, and the United States shows that tailoring instruction to children’s’ education levels increases learning. For example, the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach, pioneered by Indian NGO Pratham and evaluated in partnership with J-PAL researchers through six randomized evaluations over the last 20 years, focuses on foundational literacy and numeracy skills through interactive activities for a portion of the day rather than solely on the curriculum. It involves regular assessments of students' progress and is reaching more than 60 million children in India and several African countries .

Toward Universal Quality Education

As countries rebuild and reinvent themselves in response to COVID-19, there is an opportunity to accelerate the thinking on how to best support quality education for all. In the months and years ahead, coalitions of evidence-to-policy organizations, implementation partners, researchers, donors, and governments should build on their experiences to develop education-for-all strategies that use expansive research from J-PAL and similar organizations. In the long term, evidence-informed decisions and programs that account for country-specific conditions have the potential to improve pedagogy, support teachers, motivate students, improve school governance, and address many other aspects of the learning experience. Perhaps one positive outcome of the pandemic is that it will push us to overcome the many remaining global educational challenges sooner than any of us expect. We hope that we do.

Support  SSIR ’s coverage of cross-sector solutions to global challenges.  Help us further the reach of innovative ideas.  Donate today .

Read more stories by Radhika Bhula & John Floretta .

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Addressing the Philippine education crisis

Human Side Of Economics

By Bernardo M. Villegas

E ven before the pandemic, there were worrying signs of an education crisis in the Philippines. The most widely disseminated news about the crisis came from a report of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2018 which showed Filipino students ranking the lowest among 79 countries in mathematics, science, and reading. In math and science Filipino 15-year-old students obtained 353 points and 357 points, respectively, against the 489 OECD average for both categories. The OECD 2018 PISA Country Note for the Philippines stated: “Fifteen-year-old students in the Philippines scored lower in reading, mathematics, and science than those in most of the countries and economies that participated in PISA 2018… No country scored lower than the Philippines and the Dominican Republic… Over 80% of students in the Philippines did not reach a minimum level of proficiency in reading, which is one of the largest shares of low performers amongst all PISA-participating countries and economies.” These tests started to be administered in 2000 and are repeated every three years. In the 2018 tests, the Philippines ranked second to the last (Dominican Republic) in math and science. In reading it ranked last.

In another international test, the 2019 report of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), our Grade 4 students obtained the lowest scores in mathematics and science among the 58 countries involved in the study. There was a clear deterioration from 2013 to 2019. The Philippines scores decreased by 61 points (from 358 in 2003 to 297) and by 83 points (from 332 in 2003 to 249) in mathematics and science achievement, respectively. A third international test, the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) Program 2019 Main Regional Report revealed that only 10% of our Grade 5 students met the proficiency standards of reading, 2% writing, and 17% in mathematics. The same report showed that more than half of our Grade 5 students are taught by teachers who got training in the language of instruction from in-service trainings or none at all.

It is reasonable to expect that this poor performance of Filipino students will be exacerbated as a result of the public health emergency during the ongoing pandemic. Under the new normal, the many lockdowns have resulted in zero face-to-face interaction, and students have been forced to rely on learning materials to continue their education. This has resulted in a learning crisis in which poor content quality in modules and distance learning materials are prevalent. Because of widespread loss of employment and decreased incomes, especially among the C, D, and E households, some 2.7 million pupils have dropped out of school. Among those who have managed to continue schooling, a big number have no access to learning devices necessary for online instruction. To make matters worse, public expenditures on education and training have suffered budget cuts as these compete with health needs.

In a report to a joint committee of members of the Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) and some legislators, former Secretary of Education Armin Luistro painted a bleak picture of our pupils enrolled in basic education. Among learners, 52% are in poor health, 44% suffer from insufficient nutrition, and 37% lack sleep. In September 2020, during the height of the pandemic, 30.7% suffered from hunger. There are 1.9 million pupils who are wasted and 309,000 severely wasted. Among the learners, 65% are bullied, 26% are lonely, and 20% are unsafe. As regards the quality of teaching, 40% are absent teachers and 35 to 60% delay their classes. Because of paucity of learning materials, 20% of the pupils have to share textbooks.

These serious challenges to learning among our youth can be partly explained by the inadequacy of public expenditures on education. PISA estimates that government spending per learner in the Philippines is just 10% of the OECD average. In 2020, spending on education was 13.5% of the government budget, down from 17% in 2017. The ideal percentage is 20%. Among our peers, such as Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia, the equivalent percentage is over 20%. As regards spending on education as a percentage of GDP, the Philippines also lags behind our East Asian neighbors which spend five to 10% of GDP on public education, compared to our 3%. It is hoped that the increase in the incomes of the LGU units of some P225 billion in 2022 as a result of the Mandanas ruling will be substantially channeled to public education.

To be realistic, it will take herculean efforts for the Government to reach levels of expenditures on public education that approximate those of developed countries and even our East Asian peers. After all, quality education is just fourth in priority among the so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The first is No Poverty. The second is Zero Hunger. The third is Good Health and Well Being.

Quality Education is fourth.

It is understandable that more of the government’s limited budget will go to address the first three priorities. The most direct solution to poverty is investing more in agricultural and rural development, which also addresses the No Hunger goal if agricultural productivity is increased significantly through providing small farmers with more farm-to-market roads, irrigation systems, post-harvest facilities, and all the resources they need to get more productivity from their small holdings. Because of the experiences during the pandemic, it is reasonable to expect that expenditures on health will for the immediate future be given priority over education. It is, therefore, imperative that the Government mobilize the private sector to invest heavily in education.

What the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) just did through RR 5021 is manifestly counterproductive. I fully agree with Senators Sonny Angara and Ralph Recto that the BIR made an erroneous interpretation of the CREATE bill by increasing the income tax rate on so-called propriety educational institutions that are run by stock corporations to 25% from the current 10%.

Private educational institutions, whether not-for-profit or for-profit, are providing what is known in economic parlance as a “public good.” When they educate an individual, they are not just benefiting the pupil or student but the whole of society. Education has significant external economies, that is, benefits to the entire society over and above the good done to the individual consumer of the service. In the language of the millennials today, we should consider an educational institution organized for profit as a “social enterprise.” Those who put up a for-profit educational institution are benefiting society in the same say that a non-profit school or university is doing. The only difference is that the former has a more practical way of sustaining its existence by generating some profit.

Those of us who put up not-for-profit schools have to be forever begging and soliciting donations, which eventually will cut down the taxes collected by the Government since most of these donations are tax deductible. There is also no guarantee that the not-for-profit institutions can sustain their operations by being completely dependent on the generosity of donors. The for-profit educational institutions make a significant contribution to society by delivering a public good in a sustainable way. They do this by generating some profits for the stockholders. In a society like the Philippines in which the Government is always short of funds to deliver public goods like public works, public health, and public education, the finance authorities should refrain from taxing schools organized for profit. In fact, I would even extend this reasoning to for-profit hospitals and other medical facilities, especially if they devote part of their facility to charity wards. These social enterprises are just taking the place of the Government that is unable to deliver all the public goods it has the obligation to provide to the general population.

To be continued.

Bernardo M. Villegas has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and a Visiting Professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was a   member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.

bernardo.villegas @uap.asia

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Reopening schools safely in the philippines, without urgent action, the learning crisis could turn into a learning catastrophe.

Schools in the Philippines have been closed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Philippines also had one of the longest school breaks in the world, without any type of formal classes from March 2020 to October 2020. Although basic education enrolment for 2021-2022 is at 100.3% compared to the previous schoolyear (as of 15 September 2021), an estimated 27 million students in the Philippines have lost more than a year of in-person learning.

On 20 September 2021, the Philippine Government approved a pilot run of limited in-person schooling in low-risk areas. As some schools are set to reopen on a small scale, public health and safety measures are also important to keep every child and every teacher safe.

UNICEF is working closely with the Department of Education and Department of Health to support the planning and preparation for safe in-person learning, beginning with the pilot schools.  

What are the negative effects of prolonged school closures on children?

• The lack of in-person interaction with peers tremendously impacts children’s emotional and cognitive development. The missed opportunity for immediate teacher-learner interaction on the lessons delays competency development of the learner and has serious impact on quality learning.
• Children’s ability to read, write and do basic mathematics suffer, and the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century economy have been diminished.
• The longer children are out of school, the less likely they are to return. Out-of-school children are more vulnerable to early marriage, teenage pregnancy and child labour.
• Their physical and mental health, development, safety and well-being are at risk.
• More screen time and time spent online has increased the risks of online violence and abuse.
• Without the safety net that school often provides, they are more vulnerable to abuse, gender-based violence including sexual exploitation and child marriage, and child labour that they may experience at home, especially in the stressful context of the pandemic.
• Children miss out on the mental health, psychosocial support, and health and nutrition services offered by schools.

Distance learning is not a replacement for in-person classes

Children are learning less under distance learning modalities. According to a UNICEF-SWS survey in May 2021, most parents (84%) observed that, despite spending more time guiding them, their children were learning less in distance learning than in traditional in-person learning.

Parents need to be highly involved in distance learning. Parents who may not have enough background, time or resources to assist in distance learning face difficulties providing the needed support to their children. 

Is it safe for children to go back to school?

Global data shows that schools are not main drivers of COVID-19 transmission (UNICEF and UNESCO, 2020). Globally, children account for a very small proportion of confirmed COVID-19 cases. They have milder symptoms compared to adults, and they have not contributed significantly to the proportion of hospitalized cases or reported deaths (WHO-UNICEF, 2021).

Children of primary school age and younger appear to be less likely infected and less likely to pass on the infection to others (WHO-UNICEF, 2021).

In the Philippines, children and adolescents comprise a very small proportion (9%) of total reported cases (PIDSP, 2021). Children and schools are unlikely to be the main drivers of COVID-19 transmission, when community transmission is low.

Children have the right to education. The vaccination of teachers and students should not be a prerequisite for schools to reopen.

How can schools reopen safely?

UNICEF is supporting the Department of Education and Department of Health in planning for the phased, voluntary and safe reopening of schools in pilot low-risk areas in the Philippines. Low-risk areas are municipalities with less than 1 COVID-19 case per 100,000 population and negative growth rate in the last 2 weeks.

To ensure the safety of children who will be attending in-person classes, all possible steps to mitigate virus transmission in school must be taken including:

• Mask, face shield and other PPE policies for teachers, school staff and students in accordance with national and local guidelines
• Enhanced hygiene measures and adequate handwashing facilities
• Frequent cleaning of surfaces and shared objects
• Adequate and appropriate ventilation
• Cohorting and alternating physical presence to maintain physical distancing and small groups
• Information-sharing mechanisms with parents, students and teachers
• Setting criteria and mandatory procedures for temporary school closure in the event of a COVID-19 outbreak in the area

Framework for School Reopening

UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP and the World Bank have issued a Framework for School Reopening to provide practical and flexible advice for national and local governments and aid their efforts to return students to in-person learning.

While not a prerequisite to reopen schools, teachers should be prioritised for COVID-19 vaccination, after frontline health workers and those most at risk, to help protect them from community transmission.

Continued support to enhance distance learning

Distance learning modalities should not leave any child behind. For those who are unable to attend in-person classes, distance learning modalities have to be strengthened to ensure that children are learning effectively. Online learning delivery platforms have to be improved. Investments must be made to close the digital divide. Teachers must be trained to effectively design and conduct lessons remotely.

Reimagining a better future for children

Without urgent action and increased investment, the COVID-19 and pre-existing learning crisis could turn into a learning catastrophe.

If schools continue to be closed, more children and young people, especially the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, will stop schooling altogether. Without access to quality remote learning, children from the most marginalized communities pay the heaviest price, affecting their future and fueling inequality.

Resources for parents

• 5 ways to help keep children learning during the COVID-19 pandemic  
• What will a return to school during COVID-19 look like?
• How to support your child through reopening: tips for guiding your child through transitions from family life under COVID-19 restrictions
• How to keep your child safe online while stuck at home during the COVID-19 outbreak
• Supporting your child’s mental health during COVID-19 school returns

Resources for children and adolescents

• Paano ko aalagaan ang aking mental health sa panahon ng COVID-19? 
• How to stay safe online

Related links

Un, unicef and who applaud the government’s approval for a pilot run of limited in-person schooling in low-risk areas.

Filipino children continue missing education opportunities in another year of school closure

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After 2 years of distance learning, PH schools return to face-to-face classes

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

BACK IN THE CLASSROOM. Three days before the formal opening of school year 2022-2023, a dry run for the start of classes is conducted at Lakandula Elementary School in Tondo, Manila, on August 19, 2022.

MANILA, Philippines – After two years of implementing distance learning due to the pandemic, schools in the Philippines are set to return to face-to-face classes on Monday, August 22.

Not all schools will resume lessons in physical classrooms – 1,004 schools are still implementing remote classes for the meantime.

In a press briefing on Friday, August 19, Department of Education (DepEd) spokesman Michael Poa said a total of 24,175 schools will implement five days of face-to-face classes and 29,721 schools will hold classes through blended learning.

“Some schools will be in person, five days. Some schools will be blended. But let’s not forget that blended learning also has in-person classes for three days [in a week]. And then there’s full distance learning. So we are not expecting all of our schools to go to in-person immediately but we’re expecting that on Monday, most of our public schools will definitely go to-in person, five days,” Poa said in a Rappler Talk interview on Friday.

Poa said schools holding classes through distance learning are those that were affected by calamities, such as the magnitude 7 earthquake in Abra in July that affected other provinces as well. But these schools should transition to five days of face-to-face classes later on.

In her first order as DepEd chief, Vice President Sara Duterte ordered all schools to return to face-to-face classes on November 2, although exemptions can be given to very “specific areas.”

As of Saturday, August 20, a total of 27,691,191 students have enrolled for school year 2022-2023 – more than the previous school year’s 26.3 million students. The DepEd is aiming to enroll 28.6 million students for this school year .

“A bulk of our parents tend to enroll towards the end, because we Filipinos like doing everything during the last day. So that’s why hindi tayo tumitigil sa paghikayat sa ating mga magulang (we continue to urge parents) to please, let’s enroll our learners,” Poa said.

The return to in-person classes comes as the country is dealing with a fresh surge in COVID-19 infections and recorded monkeypox cases. COVID-19 infections this time are generally mild, thanks to vaccination.

Vaccination not required

There are no government-set preconditions for the return of students to the traditional mode of learning. They do not need to be vaccinated against the deadly virus that has so far infected over 3.8 million and killed 60,000 individuals in the Philippines.

Poa said there is no discrimination between vaccinated and unvaccinated students, as COVID-19 vaccination is not mandatory in the Philippines. Based on DepEd data, 92% of its teaching and non-teaching staff have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Meanwhile, 19% of enrolled students have received their second dose of the vaccine.

Although vaccination is not a requirement, the DepEd has partnered with the Department of Health and local government units in holding counseling sessions to reach the unvaccinated.

There was also no class size set for each classroom. Duterte said physical distancing will be implemented “whenever possible.”

Classroom shortages have been a problem even before the pandemic. For instance, some  50 to 60 students were packed  into one classroom supposedly meant for only 40. To make up for the lack of classrooms, class shifting has been implemented to accommodate enrollees every year. (READ: Classroom shortages greet teachers, students in opening of classes )

Though physical distancing will not be enforced, Duterte said the government will build more classrooms to address overcrowded classrooms. As a quick fix, shifting and temporary learning spaces were put up. Based on DepEd data, the Philippines lacks 91,000 classrooms for this school year.

Rising prices major concern for parents

While most parents favor the return to in-person classes, rising prices of basic commodities have become a major consideration for financially struggling families.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the country’s inflation rate jumped to 6.4% in July. Inflation refers to the rate of increase in the prices of goods.

National Statistician Dennis Mapa said the purchasing power of the Philippine peso  has declined. P1 in 2018 was worth just P0.87 in June 2022. (READ:  IN CHARTS: This is how inflation ruined Filipinos’ budget in June 2022 )

Parents worry about costs of returning to face-to-face classes amid rising prices

High time to return to in-person classes

The return to face-to-face classes in the Philippines is long overdue, considering the country’s education system that is largely unprepared for distance learning. (READ:  Distance learning in the Philippines: A year of hits and misses )

Studies showed students were “learning less” under the distance learning setup. Experts and lawmakers were alarmed by the learning losses brought by the pandemic.

According to a World Bank report, 9 in 10 Filipino students aged 10 struggle to read simple text.

While it is high time for Philippine schools to return to face-to-face classes, Duterte’s order drew criticism for the supposed lack of health protocols in place.

But for the Vice President, Filipinos are more than prepared now since it has been over two years since the pandemic began. – Rappler.com

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The Fried Chicken Is in New York. The Cashier Is in the Philippines.

A few New York City restaurants are experimenting with virtual staff members, who greet customers onscreen via Zoom from the Philippines.

By Stefanos Chen

At Sansan Chicken in Long Island City, Queens, the cashier beamed a wide smile and recommended the fried chicken sandwich.

Or maybe she suggested the tonkatsu — it was hard to tell, because the internet connection from her home in the Philippines was spotty.

Romy, who declined to give her last name, is one of 12 virtual assistants greeting customers at a handful of restaurants in New York City, from halfway across the world.

The virtual hosts could be the vanguard of a rapidly changing restaurant industry, as small-business owners seek relief from rising commercial rents and high inflation. Others see a model ripe for abuse: The remote workers are paid $3 an hour, according to their management company, while the minimum wage in the city is $16.

The workers, all based in the Philippines and projected onto flat-screen monitors via Zoom, are summoned when an often unwitting customer approaches. Despite a 12-hour time difference with the New York lunch crowd, they offer warm greetings, explain the menu and beckon guests inside.

But skeptical customers said they were not eager to join this particular Zoom meeting.

“You hear ‘hello’ and you say, ‘What the hell is that?’” Shania Ortiz, 25, recalled of a recent trip to Sansan Ramen, a neighboring Japanese restaurant that had a gold-framed, flat-screen monitor set up in the foyer with a surveillance camera trained on guests. “I never engage,” she said.

The service is the brainchild of Chi Zhang, 34, the founder of Happy Cashier, a virtual-assistant company that was thrust into the spotlight last week, when a social media post about the overseas workers went viral.

He was caught off guard. The program has been quietly tested since October, but the company’s website has not yet been set up. The technology is already available in stores in Queens, Manhattan and Jersey City, N.J., including at Sansan Ramen, its sister store, Sansan Chicken, and Yaso Kitchen, a Chinese soup dumpling spot. Two other Chinese restaurants using the service on Long Island asked not to be named, he said.

Mr. Zhang is a former owner of Yaso Tangbao , a Shanghainese restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn that closed during the coronavirus pandemic. He said the experience reinforced the idea that restaurants were being squeezed by high rents and inflation, and that a virtual-assistant model, somewhat akin to that employed by overseas call centers, could help maximize small retail spaces and improve store efficiency.

When the virtual assistants are not helping customers, they coordinate food delivery orders, take phone calls and oversee the restaurants’ online review pages, Mr. Zhang said. They can take food orders, but they can’t manage cash transactions.

The workers are employees of Happy Cashier, not the restaurants. And Mr. Zhang said that their $3-an-hour wage was roughly double what similar roles paid in the Philippines.

Tipping policy is set by the restaurants, he said, with one giving its virtual greeters 30 percent of the pooled total each day.

The restaurant industry has long been an entry point for immigrants, and a hotbed for labor violations like wage theft.

But the Happy Cashier model is legal and minimum wage laws extend only to workers “who are physically present within the state’s geographical limits,” according to a spokesman for the New York State Department of Labor.

Mr. Zhang said he expected to quickly scale up by placing virtual assistants in more than 100 restaurants in the state by the end of the year.

The prospect is alarming, said Teófilo Reyes, the chief of staff at Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a nonprofit labor group that has pushed for a higher minimum wage in New York.

“The fact that they have found a way to outsource work to another country is extremely troubling, because it’s going to dramatically put downward pressure on wages in the industry,” he said.

The fast-food work force is already shrinking, and new technology could further transform the industry, said Jonathan Bowles, the executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a public policy think tank.

Fast-food restaurants in New York City had an average of 8.5 employees in 2022, he said, down from 9.23 in 2019, before the pandemic.

Virtual assistants have become common in customer service and corporate settings, but are rare in the hands-on restaurant business.

One recent exception came from Freshii, a Canadian restaurant brand that faced a backlash in 2022 over claims of outsourcing jobs, after partnering with a virtual cashier business called Percy.

Mr. Zhang said his business was different. “It’s a service, we are providing a tool. It’s up to them how to use this,” he said of his restaurant clients.

Brett Goldstein, 33, a founder of an artificial intelligence company who made the viral post about the virtual workers, said some commenters had described the model as dystopian while many others had been intrigued.

At the Sansan Chicken in Manhattan’s East Village, Rosy Tang, 30, a manager, praised the service.

“This is a way for small businesses to survive,” she said, adding that the cost and space savings it provided could allow her to add a small coffee stall to the store.

In practice, however, quirks with the model abound.

At the Sansan Chicken in Queens, the virtual assistant couldn’t help a reporter order a sandwich without cheese on a touch pad menu. The assistant said the reporter should order from the in-person staff members at the Sansan Ramen next door, which shares a kitchen with the chicken restaurant.

Will Jang, 30, an associate at Goldman Sachs, had lunch on Wednesday at the Yaso Kitchen in Jersey City — and completely ignored his virtual hostess, Amber.

“I thought it was some advertisement,” like the prerecorded videos in taxi cabs, he said.

Amber, who did not give her last name, took it in stride. After studying business administration in college, she said she worked in-person at a fast-food restaurant. She started this virtual job three months ago.

“It’s my first time to work in a work-from-home setup,” she said in front of a virtual backdrop emblazoned with mustachioed cartoon dumplings.

When asked where home was, she demurred.

“I’m sorry, I cannot share any more personal details with you,” she said. “Can I take your order?”

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s economy. He previously covered real estate in the city for over a decade. More about Stefanos Chen