Academic Burnout Experiences of Students in Online Distance Learning: A Phenomenology of Fortitude

: This study was conducted to determine the lived experiences of students who experienced academic burnout during online distance learning. Academic burnout is the most critical issue students face as it is linked to detrimental consequences on teenagers' mentality. The evidence was gathered and conducted last January 2022. Students from Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Colleges Marbel, Incorporated who experienced academic burnout during online distance learning the previous academic year 2020-2021 were the participants—using Phenomenology, which aims to grasp participants' experiences via qualitative research. The study uncovered the underlying cause of their burnout during online distance learning. Nervousness and pressure from the heavy tasks to be completed impacted their education by increasing the prevalence of psychological and physical issues such as depression, anxiety, fear, and stress-related ailments. The study revealed the participants' underlying coping mechanisms throughout online distance learning; despite the hurdles, the participants exhibited their creativity via online distance learning. Finally, based on findings of the study, it is recommended for the school to create a plan to sustain the best approaches used by teachers to avoid problems causing burnout about several desirable and necessary skills. This is for the students to address their anxiety as it will become adequate student support for their students to tailor the burnout and possibly reduce it.


INTRODUCTION
Academic burnout has increased over the past few years, there are examinations, assignments, different levels of tasks and many other activities that a student has to shuffle through which increases stress (Jain, 2018).According to the study of  academic burnout refers to exhaustion due to high academic requirements and demands, which makes learners develop negative attitudes and pessimistic feelings about assignments. Operationally, academic burnout is characterized by inadequacy and reduced competence, resulting in poor academic performance.
Academic burnout effects are psychological and physical like depression, and anxiety, which can affect their academic results (Thakkar, 2018).Several students especially in tertiary education who entered the school in the major era of online distance learning modality are exposed to academic burnout during the strain of Corona Virus Disease 2019.Furthermore, in a study conducted by Salgado (2021), the issue of burnout is becoming more common among Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The study emphasized that the well-being of students may suffer as a result of burnout, which may even cause them to stop studying.
Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Colleges-Marbel, Inc., underwent a flexible learning modality at the height of the pandemic to cater to the needs of the students as per the mandate of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for safe and inclusive education. In line of this mode of learning, several students of institutions are experiencing burnout, anxiety, lack of time management, and even educational technology related problems.
With this mentioned gap the researcher was inspired to conduct the study about the phenomenon fortitude regarding academic burnout of students in the context of distance learning in an online modality.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
This study aimed to systematically investigate the resilience methods for combating academic burnout. Resilience is the capacity to withstand adversity and upheaval while growing more potent in the face of adversity. Resilience may help people cope with stress and achieve success at work and in life, as there are several ways to consider the relationship between academic burnout and resilience (Janatolmakan et al., 2021). Thinking models, as well as emotional and sensory responses, are all ISSN: 0976-7797 Impact Factor: 4.843 Index Copernicus Value (ICV) = 76. 35 influenced by self-efficacy beliefs. A high level of self-efficacy promotes calm emotions when dealing with tasks and schoolwork. On the other hand, those with poor self-efficacy may find it more challenging to grasp what is happening, exhibit despair and stress, and have little insight into how to approach an issue that affects their academic performance.

METHODOLOGY
The researcher used the phenomenological approach, a type of qualitative research that aims to uncover and define a phenomenon's universal core. The method looks at people's ordinary experiences while suspending the researchers' prior notions about the phenomena. As a result, descriptive qualitative interview questions were used as the design because they were the most effective way to address the what, who, where, and when questions typically out in casual, explanatory, or exploratory studies.
Qualitative data analysis interprets the data, patterns, and themes in textual data and shows how these patterns and themes help answer the specific research questions at hand (Labaree, 2009).
The research study sought to understand the students' academic burnout in online learning to students and their lived experiences. To listen to participants, and with the use of open-ended questions are employed. There was a focus as well on the context of the participants to best understand the "historical and cultural settings" from which they may derive their perceptions (Creswell, 2009). The goal of the research, as identified by the descriptive qualitative research design, was to rely upon the participants' views and opinions.
The interviewee allowed educators to have the venue to share their own stories, perceptions, experiences, and insight and have an opportunity to voice their perceptions and life experiences.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The following are the tables that shows the result of data analysis

Heavy Workload
According to Thakkar (2018), academic stress is experienced by several students due to various stressors such as too many academic requirements or tasks, exams, and the inability to understand a subject. It may have an impact on their academic performance by increasing the prevalence of psychological and physical conditions such anxiety, nervousness, and stress-related ailments. Moreover, a heavy workload is a usual profound and immeasurable number of tasks given to a particular person.

Student-Teacher Communication Gap
In times of complex management, there is an essential need for technical support for and teachers.
In addition, the lack of student engagement in online media and being tech-savvy can affect a student mentally (Lai et al., 2016). The student-teacher communication gap between the teachers creates ISSN: 0976-7797 Impact Factor: 4.843 Index Copernicus Value (ICV) = 76.35 miscommunication and misperception during learning, especially during online distance learning; this emphasizes the inability to create rapport between the teacher and students.

Ineffective Teaching Approach
According to Lynch (2021), lousy teaching approach can cause a student or class to experience significant setbacks. Moreover, it can cultivate an atmosphere with so much indiscipline and chaos, thus developing an intricate pattern to break. Lastly, they can destroy the morale and self-confidence of a student. When students receive something from their instructor due to a good teaching style, it causes turmoil and challenging times for them. On the other hand, learners are angry and unable to learn as much as possible since they have enough resources. In an unusual scenario, the perception of the ineffective teaching approach as the participants are experiencing no interaction due to teachers' inadequate knowledge of the topic, lack of motivation, and no interaction with the student.

Inadequate Teacher Consideration
A good teacher will think before acting, even when emotions or stressors run high (Meador, 2011). Inadequate consideration from a teacher is the need for the student to work independently. It can be extensive and cannot assist students in developing cognitive ideas. In addition, misunderstandings about teaching all students according to today's standards, especially during the midst of a pandemic, will lead students to mental discomfort; one response from the participant yielded a deeper reason why they got burnout.

Beating the Deadlines
Exams and deadlines are making their conditions worse, according to a study from the Institute for Public Policy Research, which found that five times as many students have admitted that they had a mental health issue to their university instructors and supervisors since 2009 (Williams, 2019). Working and beating under tight deadlines can be extremely stressful, and when that pressure is applied frequently or extended, it can become overwhelming.

Connectivity Problems
Since the Philippines is still one of the nations in Asia with sluggish internet, internet connection is a common concern raised by instructors and students. Another issue is wireless access, as the country has seen on television or reads in news articles about instructors and kids climbing up hillside or mountain slopes to acquire Wi-Fi signals for the internet (Averia, 2020). Connectivity problems in online distance learning may result in missing out on crucial information in education. Participants shared

Insufficient Learning Resources
According to Medina (2018), materials for learning online suffice for students not to learn as there are possibilities that some students need help to afford to buy their own high-specific technology medium of learning like phones, laptops, and computers. Even if highly qualified instructors taught them, a student who does not come from a family with access to resources like the availability of gadgets experiences difficulty in learning, especially in online distance modality.

Financial Woes
Low-income students were particularly affected, demonstrating that low-income students in the City University of New York system were more likely to experience stress and challenges with online learning. Surveying students across seven U.S. universities found that many students lacked motivation, anxiety, stress, and isolation (Planas, 2020). Financial woes refer to an inability to pay short or long-term obligations. Online distance learning makes financial management more difficult and restricts learning.

Power Interruption
The number of teaching tools and classroom supplies is down when there is no access to energy.
With power, instructors may connect to the Internet to look up activities or resources online or generate copies of homework assignments (Staff, 2013). Power outages may be highly disruptive to students' way of learning during online distance learning. Power interruption causes data loss, productivity, security, and even motivation for students to learn.

Dilemma Brought by Distance
According to Sabir et al. (2013), in the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in Pakistan, seventy percent of the students are registered privately or through distance education programs offered by different universities. Due to their distance from study or testing facilities, students who enrolled in distance education also need help attending seminars and tutorials. While studying online, there are several opportunities to engage in school; the dilemma brought by the distance is learning residing in a far-flung area, whereas areas distract learners.

Nuisance and Distractions
According to a research, some human activities that cause noise pollution include permanent sources like power plants, oil refineries, industrial facilities, and factories as well as mobile ones like vehicles, buses, aircraft, trucks, and trains. With time, several such human activities, especially in the cities such as Dar es Salaam have been affecting proper teaching and learning through increasing tension, causing mental disturbances and social anxiety among teachers and students in schools (WHO, 2015).
Many students find that taking lessons online causes them to stay focused, which causes a nuisance.
Distraction and nuisance are a variety of circumstances that might lead to a lack of attention on students in online distance learning.

Unfamiliar with Technological Trends
Alayne et al. (2019) explained that it must examine all significant barriers to distance learning, such as teacher shortages, the need for teacher and student training and expertise in the use of the internet, and the absence of technical support at some universities is essential. Besides, this new idea is adaptable; however, it is not easy to grasp as deficiencies are present and inevitable since we cannot please technology to give us the best performance out of their services.

Inadequate Support System
According to Jones et al. (2021), globally, due to the epidemic, teenagers from all socioeconomic levels have greater rates of anxiety, sadness, and stress. Furthermore, without social support, positive coping skills, home quarantining, and parent-child discussions seem to impact adolescent mental health during this crisis positively. However, inadequate support systems or lack of parental support throughout the education of learners to higher levels creates depressive symptoms and chronic health diseases.

Keeping Inspired
Accomplishment motivation energizes and guides behavior toward achievement and consequently is acknowledged to be a critical factor in academic performance. Goals, task values, motivational beliefs, and accomplishment motivations are a few diverse structures that makeup achievement motivation, which is not a single construct in and of itself (Wigfield et al., 2016). Keeping inspired provides tools to drive, excel, be creative, achieve our objectives, learn from others, and improve our overall well-being.

Holding on to Faith
Spirituality and religiosity are positive predictors of subjective well-being, even if results are inconsistent across studies. Different factors, such as personality traits that distinguish between happy and sad individuals, ideals people believe are significant and worthwhile pursuing in life or meeting social requirements, may impact and contribute to how people evaluate the numerous dimensions of their lives (Sortheixet. al., 2018). It is critical to have faith in such times; however, keeping the faith that instructs us to hang in there will help us calm, keep our strength, and patiently wait for better times. Even the most horrible occurrences always include something beneficial we cannot recognize.

Loving Thyself
According to Yeager et al. (2012), a growth mindset is a student's resilience, which is an individual's capacity to cope with adversity. In the face of social hardship, growth mindset treatments have increased students' resilience and reduced negative feelings. In addition to reducing stress and burnout, loving oneself causes lovely sentiments that cause the brain to link pleasure with completing an activity or reaching a goal, increasing the likelihood that you will do it again in the future difficulties that helps a person ease burnout. Trust, and the trusted person will root for someone who faces difficulties and is encouraged to attain greater heights when the time comes.

Time on Target
According to Sayari (2017), time management is critical for many reasons. Everyone uses time in everyday activities; thus, managing time is necessary to finish the day with accomplishments, as time must be continued or reversed. Time management is crucial for raising student success and performance level. They added that every student should have time management to effectively organize their activities, set goals, and prioritize those that require immediate attention.

Triggers Psycho-emotional Distress
According to Leiter (2016), burnout is a psychiatric illness that develops as a protracted reaction to ongoing interpersonal pressures at work. It outlines the three main factors, which are extreme weariness, emotions of cynicism and disengagement from work, as well as a sense of inefficiency and lack of achievement. Psycho-emotional Distress is an emotional reaction to an event, occurrence, pattern of events, or situation. The symptoms of emotional discomfort may typically be in students during learning.

Difficulty in Juggling Responsibilities
According to Prout (2021), "It is challenging for students to pace themselves in a remote learning setting because they lack the friendships and peer support that would enable them to concentrate in class, according to Prout (2021), who also notes that "Time management is linked to better academic achievement and decreased levels of anxiety in pupils", according to Prout (2021 dissatisfaction with life as a student. It can even affect our health if left "untreated," like stress and burnout.

Physiological Decline and Disregard
Academic burnout is a feeling of exhaustion due to high academic requirements and demands, which makes learners develop negative attitudes and pessimistic feelings about assignments. Moreover, academic inefficacy, the final stage of academic burnout, is characterized by a sense of inadequacy and reduced competence, resulting in poor academic performance (Schaufeli, 2020). When you are putting too much pressure on yourself without even recognizing it, it is called Physiological Decline and Disregard.
You may experience emotional and physical stress if you are too hard on yourself. Negative self-talk and sleeping problems are two symptoms on this case.

Consistent Academic Downturn
According to Busari (2011), college students experience loneliness, anxiety, depression, and disorientation. Additionally, prior research has demonstrated that individuals with specific personality types and poor coping mechanisms may experience increased stress, resulting in negative behavior patterns, psychosomatic symptoms, and poor academic performance. A lack of enthusiasm for learning, lack of desire for learning, lack of interest in learning, a weak inclination to study, and poor learning attitude are all characteristics of students who perform poorly academically.

Adjustment and Coping Struggles
Increased stress from the crisis may inhibit self-control reducing peoples' ability to select and execute appropriate coping strategies. Due to the novel context, the open-ended qualitative measure could be an essential first step toward understanding coping responses and problems during the pandemic (Wasil et al., 2012). Adjustment and coping struggles affect the two significant changes to online learning.

Losing Faith with the Learning Method
According to Maffea (2020), the lack of resources is evident not only in high-poverty areas but also in middle-class areas. It is hard for schools to afford brand-new laptops for each student, so the teachers in the classrooms must devise a way to compensate for that. Losing faith in the learning method, students cannot learn the value of altering the approaches to different assignments or tasks by using strategies that do not foster them to be flexible thinkers.

Fading Interest and Sense of Purpose
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted various organizations, sectors, and populations globally.
College students, for instance, have been impacted by school closings, a move toward online education, and the removal of networking and social possibilities. Early studies suggest that the associated lack of routine and isolation have increased mental health problems among a vulnerable population (Anderson et al., 2020). Fading interest and a sense of purpose cannot elicit personal benefit, especially in learning. It will demotivate, and it will decrease self-worth.

Perceived Causes of Academic Burnout of the Student in Online Distance Learning
This study drawn out several reasons for the student's academic burnout during online distance learning as perceived by the participants. One of these is the numerous requirements, a bundle of tasks, and limited time to comply with the set deadlines to beat because participants burn out during online distance learning. This study reveals that overburdened students with heavy workloads have greater stress levels and more physical issues such as headaches, tiredness, and sleeping problems. A study by Ayere et al. (2016) explains that academic burnout may provide insight into the link between academic performance and burnout. However, lacking that results in burnout because of the perceived workload and meaninglessness of academic activities that initiate a lack of enthusiasm in students.
Students typically arrive at a course expecting one type of learning experience, while instructors expect and prepare for another, (Zimmerman et al., 2014). This disconnect in expectations can cause students to become disengaged, lose motivation and self-efficacy, and create less-than-ideal learning environments for both students and instructors. It explains the student and teacher communication gap. When synchronous classes create miscommunication and misperceptions during learning, rapport is not readily available as it signals to participants that it interests them little. It loses the power to hold onto their attention for them to grasp the lesson. Instead, it stresses them out on how to build bridges with the teacher to have a connection. The factors of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms was associated to education during online distance learning. It instills fear, pressure, and tension and is linked to the participants' and students' learning processes. Online learning presents huge hurdles for participants as we work to manage the COVID-19 infection. The participants' experiences give insight into mental health and co-occurring problems that lead to burnout.

Coping Mechanism in Facing Academic Burnout
The study presented the underlying coping mechanism of the participants during online distance learning. These participants get burnout exhibited and develop a positive mindset with creativity. The start of the Corona Virus recalibrates traditional learning to a new mode of learning, causing pressure and stress in the educational scheme of the nation. Burnout is inevitable during that time. However, these tormenting problems, particularly those affecting participants during online distance learning, display an optimistic outlook throughout the new form of learning; despite obstacles and problems, the participants demonstrate how creative they are during online distance learning.
Interestingly, in the most uncertain events for the participants, their faith drives them to be optimistic and fire their vision. Due to academic burnout, the participants' battling spirit became more vital, substantial, and robust. They developed great confidence in online distance learning with God, the most outstanding provider. Burnout is inevitable, but the participants believe it can be exterminated by praying and keeping their faith in God.
Lastly, students expressed worries about learning and evaluation techniques, an overwhelming task load, and technological challenges. Students actively coped with these issues by seeking aid from their professors and families and participating in leisure activities. Carter, who studied pupils' selfregulation skills, agreed with these active-oriented coping mechanisms (Fawaz et al., 2021).

Online Distance Learning Affects the Academic Learning of the Students
The study also determined why they are burned out during online distance learning; in detail, they believe that they are anxious and under pressure from the things that need to be accomplished and sustained on time, affecting their academic learning. Bloom (2018) conducted a study about High School Student Burnout which associated empathic concern, and emotional exhaustion is in line with recent literature that identifies affective empathy as a possible risk factor for burnout. High levels of empathic concern may be linked to a higher sensitivity to emotional stresses related to education, such as feeling overburdened by one's schoolwork or being unable to keep up with the many demands of school. On the other side of the table, participants expressed their feelings that they experience difficulty in juggling and managing school task responsibilities. It affects students in a consistent academic downturn. Students who usually perform poorly in school experience academic downturn effects, such as a loss of enthusiasm to learn, a lack of desire to learn, a lack of interest to learn, a weak readiness to study, a negative learning attitude, and losing faith in the learning method.
As anticipated, physiological decline and disregard are two signs that you are punishing yourself too much, which results in academic burnout. Participants who experienced burnout during online distance learning due to the strain of the pandemic faded their interest and a sense of purpose in learning. It demotivates them to decrease their self-worth. It also exhibits physical effects of emotional stress on the participants, such as the feelings of being unmotivated and unable to finish specific tasks, often leading to an emotional breakdown. Moreover, some participants need more interest and a sense of purpose to attend online school.

CONCLUSION
The participants, feel great pressure/stress from performing homework and projects, attempting to maintain good marks, studying excessively, and other school-related activities. Academic burnout, often known as study burnout, implies that this is a term that describes this phenomenon. The change to online education has made it clear how important one is. It has been uncovered that online distance learning impacts participants'/students' academic development, triggering psycho-emotional discomfort and making it harder to juggle duties. This discovery realized that online distance learning is more challenging than prior preparations. In addition, academic burnout negatively influences efficacy, which is a barrier to academic success.
On the other side , students experience downturns and burnout during the new learning mode.
However, they must cope with much creativity to deal with the problem. Moreover, one method to cope with stressful situations is to engage in creative activity that helps develops resiliency in the face of adversity. Administrators should ensure that learners emerge from this period with healthy physical and mental health. Parents and teachers should be proactive as more knowledge concerning the negative impacts of online learning.

Implication for Practice
This phenomenological study on understanding academic burnout as a phenomenon discloses the lived experiences of burnout students during online distance learning. These implications could serve as a basis to acknowledge academic burnout, specifically in the school. It will influence and help teachers for future references to assess the problem within his/her student's anon.
Furthermore, providers of knowledge, training, and learnings to students and the school's administration can be informed through this study about the reasons and effects of academic burnout brought by online distance learning to students. Significantly, this study will help the researcher understand how students behave when they are burnout. As such, it can also help the researcher as a future educator create a repertory to cope with the unexpected, detect issues, and inform the students' progress when teaching. Cultivating a research-based approach to academic burnout during online distance learning helps improve the profession and gives evidence and the need to make changes in the classroom and school.
In addition, the role of this study constructs a process as it provides indications to the researchers regarding several desirable and necessary skills for students who may need to have to address their anxiety of the students. Hence, educators must have plans for adequate student support to tailor burnout and possibly diminish it. The results suggest that these study constructs help aid process interpretation in cases where depicted processes are pretty complex but not where the processes are straightforward for future educators.
In conclusion, this study could leverage these insights by developing a staged approach for academic burnout students' usage dependent on process complexity. For instance, future teachers and the researchers in charge of teaching conventions can be used the findings of this study to define a restricted set of processes to improve the level of understanding of academic burnout during online distance learning.

Implications for Future Research
This study on understanding the life experiences of academically burnout students is a phenomenon that was exploratory and interpretative. It also speaks that there is a need for future researchers to recognize and analyze the various aspects of academic stressors for teachers, especially since they are now in a new online distance learning model. Hence, the future researcher should raise These include a decline in motivation and lack of learning which is a level of study readiness resulting in learning badly, and a loss of faith in the teaching approach, which prevents students from understanding the importance of adapting new methods so they can understand the lessons being taught to them. Therefore, there are chances for a colleague academic to investigate various semantic and syntactic features of process models and the effects these features may have on the capacity of students suffering from burnout during online distance learning.
Other research could extend our approach to measuring process model interpretability and will enhance new researchers' experience. This research focused on individuals' experiences of academic burnout during online distance learning, which is fundamental to faithfully and efficiently interpreting their life experiences. However, to deepen the research, it must have a depth and seek excavation with the help of professional help of a psychologist for the research to be more competent and reliable. Future work could extend this work and examine the problem-solving performance for academic burnout during online distance learning, elucidating the corners that the future researcher still needs to uncover.