“Online education that leaves almost everybody behind except for highly motivated students, to me, can’t be a viable path to education” – Sebastian Thrun
Productivity is a vital aspect of a student’s being. It is a necessary attribute for a student to produce beneficial outcomes that would satisfy the requirements set by the school administration or their own personal goals. It is a key factor for the students to acquire quality education which serves as a basic right. Productivity, however, could be affected by various factors.
The crisis brought by the Coronavirus pandemic has forced most of the population to stay inside their homes while also affecting different sectors of the society. One of the heavily affected sectors is education. Because of this, the Department of Education (DepEd), along with the different schools, has conducted distance online learning to cater the educational needs of the students despite being restricted from face-to-face interactions.
The set-up in the traditional face-to-face classes is that students physically gather in a classroom that is designed for learning. But the sudden shift to the set-up of online distance learning has also presented a new environment to which the students are required to adjust. Each environment differs from one student to another.
In relation to the quote by Sebastian Thrun, the difference in the environment brought by the online set-up could have different effects on the students; those who have poor environmental factors could be left behind in their classes. If that would be the case, then online learning would not be suitable for providing education.
The pandemic has caused a lot of changes to the society, particularly in the sector of education. The traditional face-to-face classes where students and instructors gather inside a physical room has shifted to distance online learning wherein students and instructors gather in a virtual room through the use of various applications. The students, as well as the instructors, are required to adjust to the new setting.
Mother of Divine Providence School (MDPS) believes that serving quality education to the students must continue irrespective of the situation. Due to this, MDPS has also adapted online distance learning through the use of the Mother of Divine Providence School Curricular Alternative Resources and E-learning System (MDPS CARES). Student instruction in MDPS CARES is divided into two forms: synchronous and asynchronous sessions. Synchronous online sessions are scheduled for each subject, during which the teacher and students interact in real time using Zoom software. There are three (3) scheduled synchronous online sessions each day for the Junior High School students while (4) synchronous online sessions are scheduled for the Senior High School students. Asynchronous sessions are allotted for the students to accomplish the tasks given by their instructors coursed through the school’s learning management system (LMS) named Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE). For the Junior High School, synchronous and asynchronous sessions are scheduled alternately. For the Senior High School, synchronous online sessions are scheduled consecutively in the morning while the consecutive asynchronous sessions take place right after the last synchronous online session in the afternoon.
The transition from face-to-face learning to online distance learning has presented new environments to the students to which they are required to adjust. However, within these environments are other potential factors that could have an impact on the well-being of the students, particularly their academic productivity. These environmental factors could be classified into two: home environmental factors and learning environmental factors. Home environmental factors are domestic aspects of a person’s life which contributes to their living conditions. It mainly focuses on the environmental factors that could be found at home, from family relations to physical facilities. Learning environmental factors mainly pertains to the resources, modes of teaching, modes of learning, and connections to societal context.
The current environment differs from one student to another which also implies that each student has a different set of environmental factors that could potentially affect them. It is in this aspect that the researchers would like to find out if there is a significant correlation between home and learning environmental factors and academic productivity.
The purpose of this quantitative study is to determine the relationship of the environmental factors to the academic productivity of the online learning of the junior high school and senior high school students of Mother of Divine Providence School during the school year 2021-2022. Environmental factors are defined as any causes that affect an individual’s way of living. Academic productivity is a measure of how efficiently resources are used and is defined in terms of the quantity of output produced by students. Specifically, the study aims to answer the following:
Through the findings of study, we will be able to help the students to get information on how their environment factors could possibly affect their academic productivity. The students will be able to know and be aware that they will be able to find out a way to handle the environmental factors in order to improve their productivity.
The parents will be informed and will be able to confront the difficulties faced by their children in terms of environmental factors through the study. The parents’ understanding of the study will give the time and information that will be needed to support their child in finding a way to improve their productivity from the environmental factors affecting it.
The study would give more information regarding the students’ environment and how it affects their productivity which the guidance department could use in their counseling sessions with the students. This allows the guidance department to further understand the environment of the students and devise an approach from the information.
This would present a deeper understanding regarding the relationship between environmental factors and productivity. This information could aid the school administration in understanding the state of the students regarding their productivity in relation to their home environment. It could also help the school administration to take appropriate actions based on the curriculum to reduce the problems encountered by students regarding their home environment.
For future researchers, this study could help provide additional information that can be used as a guide for similar studies. This can also enhance and improve their ideas with relation to the study.
This study will investigate the correlation between the environmental factors and the academic productivity of the students during online distance learning. This study will take place in Mother of Divine Providence School in the whole school year 2021 – 2022.. The participants involved would be the students of Mother of Divine Providence from junior high school to senior high school.
The environmental factors to be considered are limited to home environmental factors, which include family interactions at home, physical facilities at home, and self-esteem from their family’s perspectives, and learning environmental factors, which include perspectives on teaching approaches, academic expectations, and the availability of learning resources. On the other hand, productivity would be limited to motivation and student achievement as measurements. This is for the reason that considering the limited amount of time, investigating other factors and measurements would consume more resources and time which presents the possibility of not finishing the research within the given duration.