Original Research Article

The Effects of COVID-19 on Education, with a Focus on “Distance Education”: A Preliminary Study

Karagiannis Georgios

Diploma in School of Finance and Statistics of the University of Piraeus, Department of Statistics and Insur-ance Science and Master Programme in Harokopio University of Athens

E-mail: georgkar87@yahoo.com

Received: 26 October 2022  I  Accepted: 27 November 2022  I  Published: 30 November 2022  I  Article ID: MRJER22025
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This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to briefly outline the characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic and its course in Greece in the last three semesters (2020-2021). Questions regarding the effects of COVID-19 are posed, with an emphasis on epistemological issues such as the relationships between students and University, students and professors, and students and their fellow students. The paper focuses on the established system of “distance education” and the students’ attitudes towards it, while also examining the psychological effects of the pandemic on students. We conducted a field study in order to fully substantiate the issue. We first read and assessed recent literature, such as the study conducted by the Department of Medicine of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) in collaboration with the World Psychiatric Association (March 2020 – April 2021) on the effects of the quarantine; the COVID 19 Mental Health International for the General Population (COMET-G) study; the study by the University of California (UC) San Diego School of Medicine, published in the “Journal of Clinical Psychiatry”; the study on the changes brought on by the pandemic in Crete; the AUTH study, conducted by the HERACLES research team, regarding the nightmare scenario of projections for this coronavirus; the daily surveillance reports on COVID-19 by the National Public Health Organization (NPHO) of Greece. We then moved to our own research into the subject by sending out our questionnaires in electronic form.

Keywords: Covid-19, Distance education, Pandemic