Manuscript received on June 15, 2022; revised July 1, 2022; accepted July 22, 2022.
Abstract—The Coronavirus pandemic has taken the world
hostage. All aspects of society have been affected, including the
education system with the closure of universities and the
adoption of abrupt measures to continue offering university
programs virtually. Unexpectedly, the difficult situation has
continued until at least December 2021. This paper studies the
evolution of the perceived impact of the pandemic on students
over four semesters, from Winter 2020 to Fall 2021. A survey
conducted at the end of each semester captured the evolution of
the impact felt by students. Using Text Mining and Sentiment
Analysis, per semester, per gender and per age category, the
progression of certain sentiments was identified. The study
reveals that the professor’s attitude and support was a key
element at the beginning of the pandemic and for many, it has
been a good learning experience overall. The loss of direct/in
person communication has been strongly felt and it got worse as
time progresses. The level of negative comments seems to
decrease over time for Female students, while for Male students,
it tends to increase. Students from different age groups also
reacted differently. Students in the most prevalent age group
from age 25 to 30 show at first a decline in the proportion of
negative comments followed by an increase, while older
students from the 30 to 35 age group have a steady decrease of
negativity.
Index Terms—Pandemic, online teaching, face-to-face
teaching, text mining, sentiment analysis
D. Morin is with John Molson School of Business at Concordia
University, Montreal, Canada.
S. Hossaini is with Domtar in Montreal, Canada. She is also with
Concordia University, Canada.
*Correspondence: Danielle.Morin@Concordia.ca (D.M.)
Cite: Danielle Morin* and Sara Hossaini, "Evolution of the Perceived Impact of the Pandemic on University Students," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 772-777, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).