Students’ spiritual well-being in the context of digitalization

The aim of the research is to explore the dimensions of students’ spirituality in post-pandemic in the digital learning environment. The authors analyse a spiritual well-being of students during the post-pandemic by suggesting coping strategies and sources of resilience. The topicality of the spiritual dimension in students’ life during and after the pandemic is one of the discussed issues in the contemporary research. Every educational institution is trying to do their best in addressing such challenges of increased workloads that threatens spiritual and emotional well-being of teachers and students. The research question relates to the study of spiritual well-being in the context of digitalization. Which factors foster students’ spiritual well-being? The methodology applied in this study was Fisher’s scale of life orientations called SHALOM (SWBQ) that reflects five dimensions of person’s life: personal, communal, environmental and transcendental and global domains. The participants were two hundred university students from all higher institutions of Latvia. For the purpose of this study the authors have applied a factor analyses, by identifying five factor structure of students’ spiritual wellbeing, such as personal relationships with God/Divine (transcendental dimension); relationship towards oneself (personal dimension); relationships with others (communal dimension), relationships with nature (environmental dimension), and the dimension of personal integrity. The authors have outlined the potential solutions that help students to maintain their emotional and spiritual well-being. It was concluded that while being emersed in the digital environment, spiritual well-being plays important role in overcoming students’ anxiety and stress and helps them to find peace and resilience in nature, in the community with their family members and in search for the transcendental. The authors of this article evaluate critically how to maintain spiritual well-being by accepting new conditions and rules of a remote learning by overcoming stress in maintaining their spiritual well-being.