Pandemic Online Learning Experiences of Graduate Students in Education: Motivations, Hurdles, and Coping Strategies

Abstract

This study describes the graduate students’ experiences amidst the hurdles of a covid-19 pandemic in the Philippines, their coping with the varying demands of full-time teaching in the basic education and higher education, tasks and responsibilities in the family, personal, and graduate schooling.  Thirty-three education graduate students in a prestigious university in the Philippines were surveyed using online questionnaires and were interviewed via online video chat.  These students attended distance online learning classes that were offered in the evenings and weekends beyond office work hours. Manual coding finalized the concepts and themes related to online teaching and learning experience, motivational factors to earn graduate degree and title, perceived academic strengths and values realized in coping with full-time teaching and graduate schooling. The difficulties encountered like attending to immediate needs and concerns,echnological problems like internet connectivity were surpassed with the support from immediate work supervisors, university professors and classmates, and immediate family members and relatives. Findings suggest the interplay of factors like personal and family, work, and the wider community connectedness that leverage the struggles and survival during a trying situation like a pandemic.  Findings suggest further the applicability and consistency of graduate students’ experiences across university cultures and environments using mixed methods cross-case analysis, comparing reflective dialogue before, during, and after a global health-related ordeal that helps in understanding graduate schooling and redesigning graduate programs evaluation approaches.