From Face-to-Face to Face-to-Screen: A Correlational Analysis of Psychological Impacts and Perception of Achievement of Ibn Tofail University Students during COVID-19 Times

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, unfolding in early 2020, undoubtedly will bring many additional challenges and new insights as societies come to grips with its social, cultural, and health consequences. This study aimed to verify whether there were significant differences between the aggregate construct of COVID-19 psychological perceived impact factors and the aggregate construct of academic achievement factors during the academic year of 2021. A total of 297 students from the school of Languages, Lettres, and Arts, Ibn Tofail University participated by filling out validated a survey during the months from July to October 2021. Using both descriptive and inferential statistics, the results showed that students’ achievement is affected by all the factors composing the bio-ecological environment typically the factors: microsystem and macrosystem. As to the COVID-19 psychological perceived impact factors, it was found a plethora of risk factors affecting the students’ life. Moreover, the association between the two constructs has revealed that these are statistically and strongly correlated. From these results, implications for specific guidance were drawn as to the existence of a monotonic relationship between how students felt during COVID-19 times and their bio-ecological environment.

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly unprecedently affected all spheres of life including school life. The educational institutions’ closure and the necessary gradual move to the online means of instructing inevitably impacted scholastic achievement. Many of these institutions all around the world still grapple with how and when to make informed decisions about when to return to in-person courses. Studies on how and how much COVID-19 impacted students learning would serve as a backdrop against which balanced decisions about jeopardies associated with the teaching staff and students would be taken.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a state of health emergency and the kingdom has taken drastic measures to prevent its expansion. The Ministry of National Education, Vocational Training, Higher Education, and Scientific Research took decisions to maintain the continuity of school life all along the educational year and decided to stop in-present education in all sectors including higher education levels. Courageous preventive measures were immediately taken and other decisions to adopt online courses and move to distance learning and teaching were also made. Many questions were raised related to teachers’ readiness, ability, and aptitude to use information and communication technologies (ICTs), students’ availability and ability to be online every time situations call for it, and the abrupt impact that technology could produce while moving from face-to-face to face-to-monitor.

Amidst all this unclarity and uncertainty about how much COVID-19 impacted scholastic achievement, there is growing consensus that this novel virus lockdown closures had negative effects on students’ learning. However, the elucidation of this situation comes from the fact that after a year there is ample data in hand to go beyond prophetic measures and begin the testing of this data. Schools have endured the effects and are now after a year can measure the post-COVID-19 pandemic consequences.

For more than 15 years, the Ministry of National Education has introduced the teaching of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the benefit of university students (ICT module for students of semester 5). A large number of teachers in the school have benefited from continuing training provided within the framework of the strategy of the GENIE program (Generalization of information and communication technologies in education in Morocco) and by the Moroccan-Korean Training Center [1].

For the first time in 2005, the Moroccan government adopted a new ICTs program under the appellation, GENIE, as one way of operationally implementing the national strategy of digitizing the public education sector and enabling students in primary, secondary, and tertiary levels to benefit from four components: infrastructure, teacher training, digital resources, and development of uses. This ICTs’ generalization strategy, launched in 2006 and revised in 2009, has set a basis for the equipment of schools with Internet-connected ends with rich digital resources. Encouragement of creation and innovation of these resources as well as support to users was enhanced beside training modules for all stakeholders to guarantee good use and usage. By and large, the main objectives set by the GENIE strategy in 2006 were to convince teachers to accept and to stop resist and to actively involve them in to integrate ICT in their teaching and to contribute to the improvement of the quality of teaching and learning through the use of ICT. However, it is noteworthy to mention here that many teachers did not participate as the training was optional and many of them choose to resist and not to drop in and only some, the motivated, expressed their interest. Some of these were motivated by the awards the ministry granted [1].

The primary focus of this study is to determine whether the students of the faculty of Languages, Lettres, and Arts, Ibn Tofail University suffer psychologically under the influence of the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from hundreds of students, 297 participants, these research questions are set forth for the present study:

1. Is students’ perceived scholastic achievement affected by COVID-19 pandemic conditions?

2. What are the impacts of the psychological risk factors on our respondents?

3. Is there any association between the impacts of the psychological risk factors and perception of achievement factors?

The hypotheses emanating from the above research questions are:

1. The students’ perceived scholastic achievement is affected by COVID-19 pandemic conditions.

2. The psychological risk factors impact our respondents greatly.

3. The impacts of the psychological risk factors are significantly associated with the perception of achievement factors.

2. Review of the literature

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedentedly considerable repercussions on human life in every aspect and the education sector is no exception to this devastating contagion. Against this backdrop, governments were quick in responding to this devastating contamination as educational institutions halted every aspect of contact and were forced to shift to online classes. This novel virus that was declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, has spread speedily ravaging peoples’ lives and turning them upside down, school life was no exception. The outbreak of this pandemic pushed several if not all scientists to try their best to study its ramifications and effects at various levels, particularly at the educational level.

In this regard, in the educational context, the devastating impacts were also felt [2]. Several concurring factors have converged to make the COVID-19 pandemic a worldwide catastrophe without precedent on school life and hence produced great psychological sufferings [3]. Therefore, there are different types of the risk factors related to COVID-19 psychological perceived impact. Prabhakar, Kapoor, and Mahajan [4]. Stress the fact that the crisis created by the pandemic is cruel to school children as it can lead to stress, mental illnesses, and various psychological problems such as lack of coping skills and even enhanced self-harm behaviors. In the same vein, Handayani & Sri Sumartiningsih [5] claim that like any other pandemic, COVID-19 had diverse effects on different groups with different degrees of impact. University students are a vulnerable group that suffered directly from stress, depression, and anxiety effects due to disruption or cancelation of usual life events like final in-present final exams and/or graduation ceremonies.

Empirically and in a study on stressors, coping strategies, and mental health impacts of COVID-19 in international students studying abroad led by [6], the team discovered that more than 80% of the students had moderate-to-high perceived stress. Exhaustively, in the sample studied, they found that stress related to academics, health, and lack of social support were predictive of higher perceived stress levels and more severe anxiety and depression symptoms. In another study conducted by [7, 8], these scholars have found that the risk impact factors differ according to social groups to which students pertain. Those emanating from financially disadvantaged backgrounds and in developing countries found themselves forced to quit school and give a hand to their breadwinners who already lost their jobs. They also found themselves disadvantaged insofar as the availability of online teaching and learning means and hence cause unwillingness and feeling of bitterness not to pursue their studies online like others where internet connectivity is better.

Extra variables that impacted students’ academic achievement, as well as life, can be explained through the learning theories that marked the history of humans as to their learning and environment with particular focus on the bioecological systems theory. The behaviorists with their revolutionizing of our understanding by advancing the principle of operant conditioning trial and error and reinforcement or punishment. Later came the social learning theory by Albert Bandura who elaborated on the behaviorist theory but considered humans as thinking beings who anticipate, punish themselves, and are capable of storing information for later use. The cognitive-developmental theory of the Swiss Linguist Jean Piaget followed strongly later. The theory emphasized the importance of ‘constructing’ an advanced mode of thinking through a mechanism of combining maturation and experience. Other views of cognitive development along with that of Piaget’s were very influential too, the reference here is to Vygotsky’s sociocultural and the informative-processing perspectives. The theory adopted here insofar as the academic achievement of our respondents is the Bioecological systems theory by [9].

This persuasive model lays the ground for another deeper understanding of human development in relation to the changing environment and its effects on academic achievement. The system theories postulate that this development is impacted by an interplay between the changing context and the changing environment where one affects the other and where they are joined at the hip units [10]. The complex mutual impacts are seen as a co-acting process between the two parties which are entangled in a dynamic system. According to Bronfenbrenner’s perspective, there exist five systems that interact with the individual and many bidirectional or reciprocal impacts are at play as is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of individual development. (Adopted from Sigelman & Rider [10], p. 114).

The first system is the microsystem which is described as the “immediate setting containing that person” [6, p. 514], that is, the direct context in which the person gets in first touch with other people like family, neighbors, and peers. It is the proximal level of context to the individual. The mesosystem is the second layer of the model and is referred to as ‘a system of microsystems’ through which youth’s life is influenced by one or more environments without direct contact with the youth [11]. The macrosystem comprises broad social environments or social beliefs and values that impact the youth incorporating features such as political, religious, and educational values as well as appropriate standards of behavior. The exosystem is described as the system that involves social settings where the individuals do not interact with but can still influence their development [10]. It shows how distal this system is from the individual, however, decisions taken significantly affect him/her. In addition to the nested series of systems, the chronosystem is the last added system to the model and stipulates that the interplay between the environment and the individual change over time and have different ramifications and schemes [12].

The evolutionary, psychoanalytic, learning, cognitive-developmental, and bioecological systems perspectives capture the complexity of human life with its interplay with the environment be it immediate or distant. However, the bioecological systems theory is more probing as to its complete depiction of the whole human development especially when it comes to academic achievement.

3. Method

3.1 Research design

In the literature, the selection of a specific type of case study design is guided by the overall study purpose. Our case study, individual learners of the faculty of Languages, Lettres, and Arts, Ibn Tofail University, is to describe and explore [13, 14]. The research design, therefore, adopted is a single explanatory qualitative case study research design with an ex post facto taste to it as the researcher cannot control the independent variable and the influence of COVID-19 pandemic as it already occurred and is impossible to control. The subjects chosen are supposed to possess the characteristics needed for this piece of research, scholastic achievement perception [15]. The use of this type of case study is justified on the ground that the researcher is seeking to answer a question that requires explaining a presumed causal link between two variables, scholastic achievement and COVID-19 pandemic conditions in our case [16]. Moreover, the type of design adopted herein enables the researcher to closely examine the obtained data and explain deeply the complications of the case context.

3.2 Participants

A total of 297 students from the school of Languages, Lettres, and Arts, Ibn Tofail University provided their consent to participate in the study and answer the online survey deployed for this purpose. Two hundred and nine participants were able to completely fill in the survey with a response rate of 70.37%. Eighty-eight students did not complete enough items for analysis in the present study, resulting in a final sample of 209 participants.

Conclusions from the outputs of the quantitative survey guarantee most of the time the representativeness of the target group sample; however, in our case, a convenience sampling approach which is considered oftentimes the ‘least rigorous technique’ is adopted. Even though the researcher targets the most ‘easily accessible’ respondents, representativeness is guaranteed as the researcher tends to choose easily accessible participants who have experienced the complications of the COVID-19 confinement.

3.3 Measures

In the Autumn of 2021, 209 participants were recruited cross-sectionally from a representative and a targeted sample of 297 participants at Ibn Tofail State University. The obtained cross-sectional data were collected through a web-based questionnaire using representative and convenience sampling to invite students to participate. It was done when most students have become familiar with the coronavirus lockdown and security-related measures were in effect.

Students/participants were asked to respond to questions related to their education following March 2020 school closure. This included asking about which support services they had received (e.g., family counseling, individual counseling, group counseling), engagement with their teacher(s) (e.g., online, in-person, or a mix).

3.4 Sample and sampling procedure

The research design of the present study is a single explanatory qualitative case study research design and the population is all the students of the English studies department at the school of Languages, Lettres, and Arts, Ibn Tofail University. A purposive judgment sample is drawn from this population on the ground that the researcher judgmentally selects participants that conform to the criterion of experience with the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly psychological. After the temporary suspension of in-present studies and the shift to online mode starting from March 2020, almost all students were reached out using an online survey, Google Docs, to fill out.

As to recruitment procedure ethics, approval was obtained from a university deanship and facilitated by the fact that the researcher is an insider in the institution. Students from the English studies department were notified through the school Facebook page announcements via directs e-mails enclosing the study link or directing them to the link on the previously mentioned website page. Students started answering the survey, the first days they received it and those who were reluctant were reminded using a reminder email with the survey link. The data collection stage was along a period of approximately a month, from June to July 2021, and was closed on July 31st.

3.5 Data analysis

Students’ achievement perception is the first co-variable that this study investigated. Therefore, to ascertain the underpinnings of the students’ chronosystem nature that reflects academic achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model was adopted. It is a model that contains five layers: the macrosystem, the exosystem, the mesosystem, the chronosystem, and the microsystem. However, for reasons of time and space, the study shall concentrate only on the overall effect resulting in the aggregate effect of the while model. The four levels of this model range from the most personal related to the factors affecting the child in his immediate environment, to the extremist elements of the child’s life experience [17].

The data collected from our respondents were fed into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, Version 22). Measures were taken to ensure that the data gathered were entered correctly and that there are no missing data.

After having completed the preprocessing of the data obtained from the sample chosen, the data screening, checking data for errors, and fixing or removing these errors, took place and were fed into IBM SPSS software, version 22.0 for statistical analysis. A ten-question survey with two sections has been devised and measured on a Likert scale. In order to assure the reliability as well as the adequacy of the sample of the items/questions included in the questionnaire, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient along with the Principal Component Analysis with equamax rotation (KMO and Bartlett’s Test) were used. The Cronbach’s alpha obtained is 0.83, which indicates a high level of internal consistency among the items for our scale with this specific sample. Additionally, the dimensionality of the scale was investigated through the KMO and Bartlett’s test. From the results in Table 1, the test indicates the data for structure detection is suitable. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy statistic stands at 0.789 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity value (x² = 1287.542; p ≤ 0.005) is significant indicating that factor analysis or principal component analysis is useful with the data of the sample chosen.

	KMO measure of test sampling adequacy	Bartlett’s test of sphericity
Construct		Chi-square value	df	Sig. (p)
Questionnaire	0.789	1287.542	645	0.000

Table 1.

KMO and Bartlett’s test for the questionnaire.

The microsystem is the first level in Bronfenbrenner’s theory and contains subcategories such as family, school, peer group, neighborhood, and teachers which are elements in the immediate environment of the child. The individual in this system is influenced by and influences the surrounding. The interactions within microsystems are often very personal and impactful in the sense that if the individual finds a fostering, caring context he/she is positively affected, and if the opposite happens, a negative impact might occur.

As to the mesosystem, it is a system regarding the connections that exists between the components comprised in the microsystem. It is a system that governs the interactions between the immediate environments of the student and epitomizes the type of influences produced-mutual influences. Fundamentally, a mesosystem is a system of microsystems.

If the mesosystem incorporates and typifies the type of influence relationships that exist between the elements composing the microsystem, the exosystem in the ecological systems theory combines other formal and informal social structures that are liable to influence the students from outside his microsystem. Examples of exosystem components include the neighborhood, parent’s workplaces, parent’s friends, and the mass media. These are contexts where the student gets affected by any external factor, and in our case herein could be COVID-19 pandemic experience.

The macrosystem is the fourth component of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory that focuses on the larger cultural context. The cultural elements of the students as well as other cultures affect how the students/child perceives life. The socioeconomic status, wealth, poverty, region, languages, ideology, and ethnicity are broader factors that underlie the structural fabric of the established cultures the students live in.

Finally, the chronosystem is the fifth level of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. This system involves all of the patterns of environmental events and transitions throughout the child/student’s life. These patterns include the normative life transitions such as school history as well others that occur in parallel and include examples like getting married at an early age or being in charge of a mature man/woman mission like what happens in some African clans.

4. Results

4.1 Data processing and analysis

4.1.1 Descriptive statistics

The first part of the analysis then examines student achievement factors that make up each level of Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model. The factors that impact each level are explained and supported by frequencies and percentages.

Microsystem factors (N = 91) accounted for the most frequent response, while the second most frequent response was the macrosystem (N = 72). At third place, came the chronosystem (N = 25), the mesosystem (N = 14) in the fourth place, and the exosystem came last (N = 09).

Table 2 displays a juxtaposing comparison of the descriptive statistics for the five numeric variables. This allows us to quickly make the following observations about the data: the maximum (83.76) observed here is used to identify a possible outlier or a data-entry error. On assessing the spread of our data by comparing the minimum (53.67) and maximum (83.76), it seems that the spread of the data between the two extremes is compact and is therefore suggestive of the fact that the students’ achievement is affected by all the factors composing his/her bio-ecological environment typically the factors: microsystem and macrosystem. This means that the impact is an aggregate of both micro-related to the immediate environment and macro-related to external factors.

The mean as a standard measure of the center of the distribution of the data of this group of participants is (M = 62.761). It is clear from the results in Table 3 that three factors are above the mean except for exosystem (M = 58.258) and chronosystem (M = 60.123) factors. This adds up to the result of the min and max as the microsystem and the macrosystem factors proved to be effective in determining the nature of the students’ achievement during COVID-19 times.

	N	Min	Max	Max/ Min	Mean	Std.
	Statistic	Statistic	Statistic	Statistic	Statistic	Statistic
Microsystem	201	58.98	108.54	83.76	67.876	8.753
Mesosystem	67	46.68	82.87	64.77	62.984	6.988
Exosystem	55	35.32	72.03	53.67	58.258	5.876
Macrosystem	102	52.40	101.74	77.07	64.342	7.254
Chronosystem	72	48.91	87.67	68.29	60.123	6.789
Valid N (Listwise)	297	48.45	90.57	69.51	62.761	7.132

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics of the participants COVID-19 psychological perceived impact survey items.

Academic Achievement Factors	f	%	Cumulative Percent
Microsystem	91	43.54	43.54
Mesosystem	14	06.69	50.32
Exosystem	09	04.30	54.53
Macrosystem	72	34.44	88.04
Chronosystem	25	11.96	100.0
Total	209	100.0

Table 3.

Overall descriptive statistics of the questions related to achievement factors as perceived by students.

Impact	Survey item	Mean/SD	Range
Worry	“I feel worried all the time during COVID-19 pandemic times”	5.87/1.56	1-Strongly disagree to 7- strongly agree
Time Demand	“COVID-19 pandemic consumes all my thinking time”	5.67/1.43	1-Strongly disagree to 7- strongly agree
Fear	“COVID-19 pandemic makes me feel afraid”	66.48/25.90	0-Not at all to 100- Extremely
Irritation	“I feel irritated when I think about my experience with COVID-19”	55.89/27.87	0-Not at all to 100- Extremely
Sadness	“How sad do you feel when you think about COVID-19?”	60.12/26.99	0-Not at all to 100- Extremely
Preoccupation	“How do you feel when you think about COVID-19?”	57.81/27.23	0-Not at all to 100- Extremely
Stress	“How stressed do you feel when you think about COVID-19?”	62.16/27.01	0-Not at all to 100- Extremely

Table 4.

Descriptive statistics of the participants COVID-19 psychological perceived impact survey items.

			COVID-19 psychological_perceived_impact_factors (Aggregate construct)	Academic_achievement_factors (Aggregate construct)
Spearman’s rho	COVID-19 psychological_perceived_impact_factors (Aggregate construct)	Correlation Coefficient	1.000	0.697**
		Sig. (2-tailed)	.	0.000
		N	209	209
	Academic_achievement_factors (Aggregate construct)	Correlation Coefficient	0.697**	1.000
		Sig. (2-tailed)	0.000	.
		N	209	209

Table 5.

Correlations between COVID-19 psychological perceived impact factors and academic achievement factors.

**

. Correlations significant at the level (2-tailed).

As to the psychological impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on respondents, a battery of items measuring risk factors coronavirus is used (A survey adapted from [18]). Worth noting here is that the survey contains presumably two sections for the same objective, gauging students’ feelings, and perceptions about the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, regarding the first section of the survey, quantitative segment, and eight survey items based on data gathered from close-ended questions that targeted eight different types of themes, worry, time demands, fear, irritation, sadness, preoccupation, guilt, and stress. These concepts are deemed suitable to provide some guidance on what impacts to measure for the impacts of COVID-19 on college students.

Concerning the qualitative segment of the survey, the researcher deemed it appropriate to triangulate results obtained from two diverse data collection instruments by utilizing an open-ended question section that would allow participants to disclose more on the perceived impacts of the phenomenon under study. Also, starting from the conviction that one tool, quantitative measure, is parsimonious in unveiling the broad array of impacts of COVID-19 on students’ academic performance, a qualitative side is added to the survey. Two open questions were asked: “List at least three ways among the five presented, microsystem, exosystem, macrosystem, mesosystem, and chronosystem in which COVID-19 pandemic impacted the way you academically performed during the lockdown?”; “which factors, out of the three chosen, do you think affected most your academic achievement?”. A word of caution here is that these factors of academic achievement were explained to the participants so that they could decide correctly which system is most affecting.

Qualitative data from the first question of the open-ended responses demonstrated therefore a broad array of impacts caused by COVID-19 lockdown on students’ academic achievement. The most common impacts are a decrease in motivation, and even suicidal attempts, feeling of loneliness and isolation, depression, and difficulties to re-socialize with others among others. For example, one of the students commented, “I feel demotivated every day to the extent that I feel hopeless.” Another one reacted to the question saying that “I sometimes [felt] depressed and entertained the idea of suicide which hopefully I was able to fight against”. “I along with my brothers had the difficulty to get connected to people and even felt that we had become some sort of zombies”. These feelings that range from a feeling of mere melancholy to challenges with thoughts of suicide are characteristic of the type of sufferings our respondents were clear about as reflections of parts of their lives during the lethal pandemic. However, a few positive responses were rejected. Some of the respondents reported having the opportunity to sharpen their computer skills; others focused on the idea that they discovered the particularities of online learning and it suited their study skills and even refined others. But the most striking answers were those which expressed liking the experience of being locked and staying away from other people described as intrusive beings.

The quantitative data related to the mean values of the psychological impact survey items are shown in Table 4. The seven risk factors used to test for COVID-19 psychological perceived impact were worry, time demand, fear, irritation, sadness, preoccupation, and stress. The first two ones, worry and time demand were measured on a strongly disagree to strongly agree scale and demonstrated the following means (M = 5.87and M = 5.67, respectively). The two mean values indicate that the respondents scored closely around the mean with substantial feelings of worry and time demand. As to the five remaining risk factors, which were gauged on a different scale, not at all to extremely, three of them: fear, sadness, and stress equal or surpass the main mean value indicating the serious suffering of the respondents with these risks. Furthermore, for the two others, irritation and preoccupation, it seems that they did not score higher than the general average, but the tendency is clearer as to the admittance of undertaking the experience of these risk factors by our respondents even though the impact was not as stronger as the three first ones.

4.1.2 Inferential statistics

The present study investigates the association between risk factors corona virus-related and scholastic/academic achievement factors, a correlational analysis is adopted where each risk factor cluster is equated with a co-variable from the other cluster, academic achievement factors.

Since our correlation that the SPSS statistics generated is not Pearson’s correlation, thus, there is no need that our data passes assumption #3 (no outliers) and assumption #4 (normality), it suffices it to satisfy assumption #2 (linear relationship). Therefore, the correlation which is appropriate here is the Spearman Rank Order Correlation coefficient. As could be deciphered from Table 5, there is a monotonic relationship between the two variables.

The results of the monotonicity between the two co-variables are presented in a matrix such that, as can be seen above (Table 5), the correlations are replicated. Moreover, the table presents Spearman’s correlation, its significance value, and the sample size that the calculation was based on. In this example, we can see that Spearman’s correlation coefficient, Rho, is 0.697 and this is statistically significant at (p = 0.000). That is, the association between the COVID-19 psychological perceived impact factors and academic achievement factors was strong. A positive correlation between them was statistically significant (Rho (209) = 0.697, p = 0.000). We are allowed therefore to safely conclude that from our two-tailed prediction of the studied relationship, the null hypothesis that there is no association between the two co-variables is rejected in favor of the alternative one which states that the students’ perceived scholastic achievement is affected by COVID-19 pandemic conditions.

Consequently, the tendency of the respondents to disclose about the severity of the factors/systems of the bio-ecological environment, mainly microsystem and macrosystem, on their academic achievement during COVID-19 times is evocative of the fact that the impact is an accumulation of both micro-related to the immediate environment and macro-related to external factors. With regard to the COVID-19 psychological perceived impact factors, the qualitative and quantitative results have revealed that the respondents went through a tough experience with severe risk factors condemning their academic lives mainly but with different degrees of impact, worry, time demand, fear; irritation, sadness, preoccupation, and stress. It is noteworthy to mention here the impact of other factors as well, such as feelings that range from mere melancholy to challenges with thoughts of suicide, were discovered through open questions. We can conclude here also that the plethora of psychological risk factors categorically impact our respondents’ psyches greatly. The previously alternative hypothesis that describes the association between the two co-variables is maintained against the null that states that there is no dependency link between them.

As to the correlation that used Spearman’s rho as a popular method for correlating the unvalidated survey instruments or Likert-type survey responses, it was found that there is a strong positive and significant association (Rho (209) = 0.697, p = 0.000) between the COVID-19 psychological perceived impact risk factors and academic achievement factors. Explicitly, it seems that the aggregate construct of COVID-19 psychological perceived impact factors and the aggregate construct of academic achievement factors strongly correlate suggesting that the higher the impact of the coronavirus perceived impact on respondents’ lives the stronger it is also on their academic achievement. The monotonic relationship is ascertained between the two co-variables allowing for the researcher to definitely decide on keeping the alternative hypothesis in favor of the null one.

5. Discussion

It is worth mentioning here that the findings of the study in relation to the first variable, the COVID-19 psychological perceived impact risk factors are corroborated by other studies mentioned in the literature. For instance, the study conducted by [6] confirms the idea that risk perceptions of Italian respondents concerning health during COVID-19 pandemic time have been recorded to revolve around almost all perceived risks encompassing negative affective states of fear, anger and sadness, anxiety, interpersonal, and psychological risks. Association among perceived stress, depression, and anxiety were found in a study conducted by [19]. Chen and Liu [20] add up to the previous results when they quantified the importance of related risk factors on the level of psychological distress and explored the threshold effect of each risk factor on the level of psychological distress. They found that health risk factors were the greatest contributors in predicting the level of psychological distress, with a relative importance of 42.32% among all influential factors.

With respect to academic achievement factors using Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model, the present study revealed a certain taxonomy of effect that situates the microsystem factors which specify the effect of the immediate environment on students’ school life. Haleemunnissa et al. [21] substantiate this result when they found that confinement imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in, especially in conflict-ridden families, augmented symptoms of depression and anxiety. The second in rank was the macrosystem factor that is perceived by our respondents to affect greatly their achievement. The respondents perceive the larger socio-cultural and economic environment to be second in effect as the economic crisis created by the pandemic had its psychological impact and created unease for the respondents. The system ranked third was the chronosystem which is the timeline of change concerning the occurrence of these systems. That is to say the salience of the element of time and history influences and interplay with the individual’s life course, the academic achievement in our case particularly [22]. This rank given to the chronosystem is justified on the ground that the family was an immediate context element that impacted much of our respondents’ scholastic achievement given the confinement and the break from the other people around. Additionally, it seems that our respondents felt second impacts from factors away from home and that do not need necessarily physical contact, the macro, and the chronosystems. Thus, the transition or change over time in the life situation of the participants indicated by the aggregate effect of both macrosystem and chronosystem is manifested in chronosystem. The mesosystem, where the microsystem elements influence the individual without direct contact with him/her such as the parents’ financial situation and workplace difficulties that were indicated by the participants as microsystems that had an impact on their academic achievement as claimed by [23]. As to the exosystem, it is a system that is more distal from the individual’s development and this latter does not interact with the social settings. Our respondents ranked it last as they felt the effect distant from them probably considered high the effect that was micro or internal to them in comparison to that one that is external and the exosystem epitomizes this case as shown by [23]. However, and according to [14], significant research has included the proximal ecological levels of the microsystem and mesosystem partially in contrast to our study. Additionally, the effect of the remaining systems is not that effective, the reference here is to the macrosystem, the exosystem, and the chronosystem which our respondents ranked also as levels of less understanding.

6. Conclusion

No doubt, COVID-19 pandemic confinement had its impact on every sphere of life and education was no exception [24]. A combination of a bio-ecological perspective focusing on academic achievement factors and COVID-19 psychological perceived impact factors perspective is deemed salient in investigating the association between the two variables. This is crucial to consider as besides the focus of the respondents on the choice of two systems, the microsystem and the macrosystem, to be more influential on their achievement, they chose more frequent COVID-19 psychological perceived impact factors that echoed the literature. What is noteworthy here is the existence of a correlation between the two covariables/constructs proving therefore the monotonicity that proves the scenario in which the increased number of psychological risk factors impact the increased perception of academic achievement factors impact is. These results are evocative of the idea that the respondents were overwhelmed by the COVID-19 experience and this latter had them perceive negative effects on their academic achievement as their psychology has been adversely affected as well.

The study has some limitations. First, the research design was a single explanatory qualitative case study research design with an ex post facto perspective. Thus, the absence of variable control and manipulation might have been less rigorous and experimentation could be more scientifically laborious and is highly likely that it would produce more insightful results. Additionally, basing the study only on perceptions mares also the validity of the results, and an experimental design could make up for this inadequacy. Third, the sample is not representative of all Moroccans as it was difficult to get the sampling frame, and therefore it was impossible to opt for a probabilistic type of sampling procedure. Despite these limitations, however, the study revealed some of the psychological states of the Moroccan students during COVID-19 pandemic times and their perceptions on how influential it was on their academic achievement.