The 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic impacted the world in many ways, and higher education institutions were forced to move from the traditional onsite learning to online environments. The challenge affected both actors: professors and students as well. The pandemics slowed down, but the experience and results of such forced educational paradigm left some unanswered questions. This forced attempt produced stress, anxiety, social isolation for professors and students as well. Besides those challenges we take into consideration other psychological and educational performance factors like cognitive ability, productivity, motivation and engagement. The abrupt transition to online learning required universities to maintain student engagement and even now some HEI's are testing the hybrid educational system. The present paper addresses challenging ideas like investigating students' encouragement, motivations, ambitions, new learning habits and self-discipline. The methodology proposed consists of a Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), a tool used for assessing students' motivational orientations and use of different learning strategies for their courses. The methodology used will provide important insights into challenges of the eLearning environments, problems, and solutions, and a good overview of what needs to be corrected. Motivation is very important since it is the driver of any educational process, economic decision, career planning and individual development. Data reliability will be computed, and results obtained provide a good insight on students' motivation in the online environment. The subject of the present paper provides valuable insights to major psychological and social faced by students and acknowledged by teachers during the exclusively online education period. Also the research proposed addresses a somehow classical education system, the Romanian system, faced with the challenge of new technologies and new pedagogical approaches.

eLearning, online learning, motivation, education, pandemics