WORRIES AS SIGNALS OF COMMITMENT: Reflections from University of Luxembourg Students in the Time of COVID-19

INTRODUCTION: Worries, typically inspire and signal negative emotions at best, or dread, panic, and fear at their worst. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and Deci 2000), I explore how worries expressed by students via a brief online questionnaire at the University of Luxembourg (UL), communicated a sense of academic commitment and wellbeing. Coincidently, commits, committed, and commitment, are all but a few of the words used in the Charte Pédagogique, a document that outlines the ULs dedication to meeting the needs of its students and larger community of learners. These words were put to a test during the COVID-19 crisis as the university scrambled to meet and honor its commitment to its primary constituents. METHODOLOGY: The main goal of the questionnaire was to learn directly from students how the crisis was affecting their educational progress and academic wellbeing to help guide and facilitate the faculty's interventions. To minimize response burden, the total number of questions were kept to a minimum, approximately 10 items. The faculty settled on questions focusing on the amount and kinds of instructions received by the students about how to proceed with courses and assignments; about their social relations with instructors, classmates and non-university personal friendships; the reliability of their computer and internet access; and of course, their assessment of the faculty's overall quality of teaching over the COVID-19 crisis situation. The questionnaire also included two open-text questions that asked about the students most pressing academic worry as they looked forward to the rest of the semester; and of course, the questionnaire afforded the respondent an opportunity to share any additional suggestions or comments. RESULTS: The preliminary quantitative results suggest a clear relationship between connectedness (measured by the amount of expressed communication between student and course/instructor) is positively associated with overall wellbeing and satisfaction with the faculty's response and level of commitment. In the remainder of the paper, I unpack this basic finding by exploring the qualitative data, as expressed by students through the open-text responses to provide a more nuanced understanding of the connection between Self-Determination Theory, worries, and academic wellbeing in a time of crisis. In effect, we find among students a commitment to succeed, to strive forth, despite the uncertainty around them.