Academic Environment from Homogenous to Heterogonous: The effect of Covid-19 on Students’ Performance

Abstract

Covid-19 forced students to leave their educational institutions toward their original living place, and they moved from an undifferentiated environment to a differentiated one. The environmental change due to Covid-19 brought many concerns about learning loss and vulnerable students in distance learning. The study investigates students’ GPA data before and during Covid-19 to see how this environmental change has affected the GPA distribution among college students during Covid-19. The data consists of 537 students from the School of Law at Sultan Qaboos University SQU who attended the Spring 2019 and Spring 2020 semesters before and during the Covid-19 outbreaks. The study reveals that the students’ environmental change during Covid-19 has affected their performance, and several students’ subgroups are more vulnerable than others. The students’ performance differences in distance learning decreased compared to face-to-face learning, revealing a convergence trend in performance. Male students seem to be less vulnerable in distance learning than their female students’ counterparts. Most of the changes in students’ performance during Covid-19 are led by male students, especially in poor and excellent performance categories. Specifying the most susceptible students benefits policymakers in the education field, which precisely aims at helping the most vulnerable students in distance learning.