Ontario Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experiences of Ontario First-Year Postsecondary Students in 2020-21

This report was published by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO).

HERE’S HOW THE AUTHORS DESCRIBE THIS REPORT:

The transition from high school to postsecondary education (PSE) is often complicated. Students making that transition in the fall of 2020 did so with the added complication of school closures and remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic — in both their secondary and postsecondary studies. These students were constrained in their ability to interact with or integrate into the PSE community, which previous research shows is key for retention and graduation.

Knowing that disruptions to high school learning will continue to affect future cohorts of PSE students, HEQCO set out to understand and learn from students who entered Ontario PSE from high school in fall 2020. What academic challenges did they encounter? What aspects of the PSE environment enabled their success? We conducted an online survey of 565 students who completed a full year of studies across 22 Ontario colleges and 19 Ontario universities in the 2020-21 school year.

Gallery image

Categorised in: Report