The rapid and unplanned change to teaching and learning in the online format brought by COVID-19 has likely impacted many, if not all, aspects of university students' lives worldwide. To contribute to the investigation of this change, this study focuses on the impact of the pandemic on student well-being, which has been found to be as important to student lifelong success as their academic achievement. Student well-being has been linked to their engagement and performance in curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities, (...) intrinsic motivation, satisfaction, meaning making, and mental health. The purpose of this study was to examine how student perceptions of their degree completion and future job prospects during the pandemic impact their well-being and what role university support plays in this relationship. We used the conservation of resources theory to frame our study and to develop five hypotheses that were later tested via structural equation modeling. Data were collected from 2,707 university students in France, Germany, Russia, and UK via an online survey. The results showed that university support provided by instructors and administration plays a mediating role in the relationship between the perceived impact of COVID-19 on degree completion and future job prospects and levels of student well-being. Student well-being is decreased by their concerns for their degree completion but not by their concerns for future job prospects. In turn, concerns for future job prospects affect student well-being over time. These results suggest that in a “new normal,” universities could increase student well-being by making support to student studies a priority, especially for undergraduates. Also, universities should be aware of the students' changing emotional responses to crisis and ensure visibility and accessibility of student support. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Amusement, Delight, and Whimsy: Humor Has Its Reasons that Reason Cannot Ignore” by Edith K. Ackermann. Upshot: Ackermann tackles “humor” as an agentive participant in the process of knowledge construction. Performing her thesis in her writing, she give a reflective account of how oblique ways of knowing have always been present in debates concerning epistemology, albeit not given equal status as rational ones. As such, her endeavors in this text are geared towards lifting up (...) the position of “humor” to a much deserved higher level in educational and learning practices. Consequently, our endeavors in this commentary are targeted towards a little more in this direction by focusing on how “humor” becomes a way of accessing the process of knowledge construction and of unraveling its significance. (shrink)

Israel Scheffler's ground-breaking essay, On Human Potential, deserves to be more widely known among educational policy analysts, especially in light of the popularity in educationist circles of W.E. Deming's organizational philosophy known as Total Quality Management . In what follows,I argue that the heuristical value of Deming's perscriptions are entailed in Scheffler's On Human Potential. More importantly, I argue, where Deming's work falls short, especially in being naive about the human condition, Scheffler's analysis provides a foundation for management theory in (...) education that insures the flourishing of an optimal number of contributing participants. In fashioning these ideas, Scheffler brings pioneering thinking to the emerging fields of management studies generally and educational policy specifically. (shrink)