ONLINE LEARNING AND ACADEMIC ANXIETY AMONG ADOLESCENTS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN

COVID-19 created a global pandemic leading to shutting down of educational institutions and forcing students to stay at home and learn online from their homes.  This led to virtual contact and no physical meeting with friends, classmates and teachers. Classes were taken up online and examinations were online or got postponed or cancelled, which made the leaners concerned about their learning process and their future with regard to educational objectives. Online teaching-learning was a new setting for most of the adolescents as well as teachers.  These circumstances created a state of dilemma and stress among adolescent learners about their academic perspectives to adjust and prove themselves. Thus, the present study attempted to study the academic anxiety among adolescents in online learning during COVID-19 pandemic. The study employed quantitative descriptive survey method. A questionnaire comprising 24 items on a Likert scale was administered on a sample of 178 adolescents through snow-ball non-probability sampling technique, and data was collected from different school/colleges from three districts of Himachal Pradesh,

India. It was observed that 43.82% adolescents felt anxious; 29.77% felt isolated; 44.94% felt stressful; 62.92% felt lazier during online classes. 48.67% adolescents responded that online education created health problems.  The study concluded that the students observed online learning as a good substitute to carry on their education when there was no other option of education in the lockdown time during COVID-19 pandemic, but it created stress and academic anxiety among them with regard to their academics due to the lack of digital skills as well as their newness to the online learning environment. Further, the study suggests that the online methodology needs to be strengthened for all the students for increased availability and accessibility to innovative teaching learnings with quality in future.