ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicHealth and Psychological Adaptations to Life Challenges and Stressful Conditions - Volume IIView all 13 articles
University students' thriving during remote and in-person instruction in the COVID-19 pandemic: longitudinal evidence from two academic years
Provisionally accepted
- Leibniz Universitat Hannover, Hanover, Germany
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A substantial body of research has demonstrated the negative repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on university students' mental health and well-being. Less is known about university students' thriving, defined as a specific sense of personal growth encompassing experiences of vitality and learning. Using a longitudinal dataset (N = 431) from a large public university in Germany, we examined how students' thriving developed over the course of two academic years, including five time points from June/July 2020 to February 2022, during which remote instruction (T1–T3), in-person instruction (T4) and, again, remote instruction (T5) were carried out. During the period of remote instruction, we found intraindividual decreases in students' thriving toward T2 in winter 2020/2021. When universities had resumed in-person instruction in winter 2021/2022 (T4), we found intraindividual increases in students' vitality and learning. Intraindividual changes in thriving toward all later time points did not differ by gender or by college generation status. We discuss our findings against the background of the study-related stressors that students faced during remote and in-person instruction, as well as the instructional measures implemented by the respective university over the course of the pandemic.
Keywords: thriving, higher education, remote/in-person instruction, gender, college generationstatus
Received: 30 May 2025; Accepted: 04 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Haase and Zander. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jannika Haase, jannika.haase@iew.uni-hannover.de
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