During the COVID-19 pandemic, university students in Japan were subjected to a nationwide survey to determine the nature and level of stress, as well as their perspectives on online learning. In July 2021, a questionnaire survey of undergraduate and graduate students was conducted online, and 2,096 responses were received. Regarding the general stress experienced by university students, factors I (depression and anxiety) and III (apathy) were higher for overall respondents and male students. In contrast, all three investigated factors, factors I (depression and anxiety), II (moodiness and anger), and III (apathy), were higher for female students than they had been in a previous study. Regarding specific stress factors, the most common response was a lack of foresight regarding the future, such as employment and career prospects. Only 5.4% of respondents identified online education as the primary source of stress. Regarding university students’ evaluations of online learning, those who gave a positive review (53.5%) greatly exceeded those who gave a negative review (17.7%). Although the ease of understanding digital materials was not seen to be much of a problem, a substantial number of surveyed students did remark that the difficulty of remotely asking teachers and friends questions made online learning challenging. From the analysis of the 900 free text responses, ‘daily life’ and ‘academic life’ were extracted as the two broad categories that were of most concern to students. A further issue identified was that unlike regular classes, various types of hands-on activities and research activities has been significantly impeded during the pandemic period.
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