Why did French students disengage online in COVID?
Emergency online learning stripped away everyday campus constraints and recognition that many students needed to stay engaged.
Source
"I'm not listening to my teacher, I'm listening to my computer": online learning, disengagement, and the impact of COVID-19 on French university students
What they did
Researchers conducted long semi-structured interviews in French with university students from varied disciplines and backgrounds, plus teaching and administrative staff, between January and April 2021. They analysed transcripts with an evolving coding scheme to trace how students entered higher education, how lockdown online teaching disrupted routines, and what helped them reattach to study.
What they found
Students often arrived at university by default, seeking status, or aiming to professionalise, and those motives shaped how they experienced online study. When spatial routines, interaction, and recognition disappeared, disadvantaged students especially lost motivation and meaning. Individual resilience strategies rarely restored engagement; social recognition, care, and some restored institutional structure did more to pull students back.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is a qualitative case study at French universities during pandemic lockdowns, not a causal test of a specific online pedagogy. Findings may not generalise to well-resourced online programmes designed for distance learning. The authors also note they could not fully capture the intensive support work of many teachers and staff.
Key terms
- Disengagement
- Withdrawal of attention, attendance, or investment in studying, ranging from quiet drifting to feeling like a 'ghost student'.
- Institutional constraints
- Everyday structures such as schedules, monitoring, spaces, and interactions that organise student life even in relatively 'weak' universities.
- Recognition
- Being seen as a legitimate learner whose work and presence matter to teachers and peers.
- Deschooling
- A shift from highly structured secondary schooling to a university setting that expects autonomy with fewer explicit supports.
- Emergency online learning
- Rapid move to remote teaching during crisis, often without prior online infrastructure or pedagogical redesign.
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What was the main empirical approach of this study?
Common questions
Was online learning itself the only problem?
Not exactly—the authors argue online teaching exposed how much students had relied on mundane campus interactions and care that vanished suddenly.
Who struggled most?
Students already seeking legitimacy or attending 'by default,' often from more disadvantaged backgrounds, were especially vulnerable when recognition and structure disappeared.
What helped students re-engage?
Care, social recognition, and restoring some institutional constraints worked better than telling students to be individually resilient.
Did staff matter in the analysis?
Yes—interviews with teaching and administrative staff provided institutional context for students' situations.
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