Revisiting engineering students’ affective components to online learning during Covid-19: A narrative review

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic which leads to lockdown and social distancing demands, face-to-face classes in most educational institutions worldwide have been ceased. As an alternative, classes have been abruptly shifted to online learning mode. This educational restructuring has impacted almost all students across fields of study, especially those in the engineering quarters whose curricula incorporate both lectures on theories and laboratory experiments which involve essential robust hands-on but can only be carried out on campus. Previous research has reported that with the abrupt shift, engineering students experience setbacks, mental stress and negative emotions. Educational psychologists believe that positive emotions or affective components are essential to students’ learning success. However, literature exploring the affective components that engineering students have exhibited during Covid-19 outbreak is limited. Thus, this narrative review presents the most recent research concerning the affective components adopted by engineering students across higher education institutions globally during the existing pandemic. The affective components are exercising readiness for change, exercising self-motivation, exercising self-efficacy, exercising self-directed learning, getting support and practising self-discipline. The main contribution of this paper is a presentation of a synthesis of research literature on engineering students’ affective components which have been used in surviving online learning so that there are practical insights that engineering students, together with educators and policy makers, can leverage to substantially improve their learning during the pandemic and beyond.