Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns and sudden school closures around the world in spring 2020, significantly impacting the education of students. Here, we investigate how the switch to distance learning affected study activity and performance in an online retrieval practice tool used for language learning in Dutch secondary education. We report insights from a rich data set consisting of over 115 million retrieval practice trials completed by more than 133 thousand students over the course of two consecutive school years. Our findings show that usage of the tool increased substantially at the start of lockdown, with the bulk of study activity occurring on weekday mornings. In general, students’ progress through the material was largely unaffected by lockdown, although students from the highest educational track were somewhat more likely to be on or ahead of schedule than students from lower tracks, compared to the previous year. Performance on individual study trials was generally stable, but accuracy and response time on open answer questions went up, perhaps as a result of students being more focused at home. These encouraging findings contribute to a growing literature on the educational ramifications of distance learning during lockdown.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to school closures around the world
We studied the use of online learning tools in secondary education in the Netherlands during the spring 2020 school closures
We recorded the online retrieval practice activity of a large sample of secondary education students in the Netherlands during two consecutive school years (18/19 and 19/20; both school years lasting from 1 August to 31 July)
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to school closures around the world. As schools shifted to distance learning in early 2020, teachers were forced to swiftly revise their teaching methods (Hall et al, 2020; Lorente et al, 2020; Mohan et al, 2020). Initial reports have suggested learning decrements Engzell et al (2020), Kuhfeld et al (2020) and adverse mental health effects (Bignardi et al, 2020; Pearcey et al, 2020; Wright et al, 2020) in primary school students, compared to preceding years. The shift to distance learning reinforced existing inequalities: students from disadvantaged backgrounds were found to suffer greater learning setbacks than their more advantaged peers (Alvi and Gupta, 2020; Sevilla et al, 2020; Dietrich et al, 2020; Doyle, 2020; Engzell et al, 2020), and there were reports of disparities in access to resources and Frontiers in Education | www.frontiersin.org van der Velde et al. Lockdown Learning preparedness of instruction materials required for distance learning between educational levels and schools (Bol, 2020; Mohan et al, 2020; van de Werfhorst et al, 2020)
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