Abstract
Due to the closure of universities worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching methods were suddenly transformed to an emergency remote teaching (ERT) modality. Due to the practical nature of STEM courses, students cannot participate in activities in which manipulating objects is necessary for accomplishing learning objectives. In this study, we analyze the relation among STEM students learning beliefs at the beginning of ERT (T1) with their Learning Management systems (LMS) time-on-task and their final academic performance (T2) during the first semester of ERT. We used a prospective longitudinal design. 2063 students (32.3% females) from a university in Chile participated, where the academic year starts in March and finishes in December 2020. We assessed their learning and performance beliefs through an online questionnaire answered at the beginning of the academic period (T1). Then, using learning analytics, time invested in the CANVAS LMS and the academic performance achieved by students at the end of the semester (T2) were assessed. The results show that students mainly stated negative beliefs about learning opportunities during ERT (n = 1,396; 67.7%). In addition, 48.5% (n = 1,000) of students stated beliefs of “medium” academic performance for the first semester (T1). Students with lower learning beliefs at T1 spent less time in the LMS during the semester and had a lower academic performance at T2 than students who had higher learning beliefs at T1. The implications of these findings on the role of instructors and institutions of higher education are discussed.
Highlights
It is expected that the demand for professionals in STEM careers will increase in the coming years (Avendaño Rodríguez and Magaña Medina, 2018; UNESCO, 2019)
Our objective is to evaluate the relation among STEM students learning beliefs at the beginning of the emergency remote teaching (ERT) (T1) with their Learning Management systems (LMS) time-on-task during the first semester of the ERT and their final academic performance (T2)
The goal of this study was to analyze learning beliefs during online education (T1) and their link with the time invested by students in the LMS and with the academic performance achieved at the end of the semester (T2) in the context of the ERT 2020
Summary
It is expected that the demand for professionals in STEM careers will increase in the coming years (Avendaño Rodríguez and Magaña Medina, 2018; UNESCO, 2019). Active learning strategies consider students the main responsible for their education by realizing meaningful activities in which the teacher acts as a facilitator or guide during the learning process (Hernández-De-Menéndez et al, 2019) In this context, research on how to improve STEM students’ teaching and learning is relevant (Hou et al, 2021). The sudden change of teaching modality that all students worldwide suffered due to the pandemic is known as emergency remote teaching (ERT; Bozkurt and Sharma, 2020; Bustamante, 2020) This denomination is because the conditions of online education created during COVID-19 were not planned as expected in other scenarios (Pappas and Giannakos, 2021). The improvisation and ingenuity of many instructors, who were not prepared for such a drastic change of teaching modality, prevailed (Hodges et al, 2020; Lobos Peña et al, 2021)
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