Effect of Cognitive Learning Strategy on Academic Stress of the University Students in COVID-19 Context

Aims The conscious regulation of learning enables students to cope with academic, social and technological demands in times of COVID-19 pandemic in a positive or negative way. The aim was to explain the influence of cognitive learning strategy on academic stress in university students. Instrument & Methods This quantitative research with basic type a hypothetico-deductive method was performed. The sample of two hundred students (one student calculated through probability sampling) who were administered instruments with content and construct validity, as well as reliability by Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.99 for learning strategies and academic stress. Findings The predominant cognitive strategy was information coding, considered risky because it produces high levels of stress, as well as idiosyncratic underlining, reviewing aloud and repeated review; while applications, metaphors, groupings and concept maps were considered protective, because they do not generate academic stress. Likewise, social interactions had a significant influence on the information processing support strategy. Conclusion The information coding, epigraphy, applications, ‎searching for encodings, and social interactions ‎strategies have the highest effect on cognitive learning, ‎information acquisition indicators, information ‎coding, information retrieval, and processing support, ‎respectively.‎.