Abstract
Institutions across the world transitioned abruptly to remote learning in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This rapid transition to remote learning has generally been predicted to negatively affect students, particularly those marginalized due to their race, socioeconomic class, or gender identity. In this study, we examined the impact of this transition in the Spring 2020 semester on the grades of students enrolled in the in-person biology program at a large university in Southwestern United States as compared to the grades earned by students in the fully online biology program at the same institution. We also surveyed in-person instructors to understand changes in assessment practices as a result of the transition to remote learning during the pandemic. Finally, we surveyed students in the in-person program to learn about their perceptions of the impacts of this transition. We found that both online and in-person students received a similar small increase in grades in Spring 2020 compared to Spring 2018 and 2019. We also found no evidence of disproportionately negative impacts on grades received by students marginalized due to their race, socioeconomic class, or gender in either modality. Focusing on in-person courses, we documented that instructors made changes to their courses when they transitioned to remote learning, which may have offset some of the potential negative impacts on course grades. However, despite receiving higher grades, in-person students reported negative impacts on their learning, interactions with peers and instructors, feeling part of the campus community, and career preparation. Women reported a more negative impact on their learning and career preparation compared to men. This work provides insights into students’ perceptions of how they were disadvantaged as a result of the transition to remote instruction and illuminates potential actions that instructors can take to create more inclusive education moving forward.
Highlights
In the early months of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented disruption of the normal mode instruction across most institutions of higher education
Transition to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020 did not have a negative effect on student grades and instead had a small positive effect across demographic groups among students enrolled in the inperson and online biology degree programs
Our instructor surveys showed that instructors who had to transition to remote learning increased flexibility and made several other changes in assessment practices that might have contributed to the slight increase in student grades in the in-person courses
Summary
In the early months of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented disruption of the normal mode instruction across most institutions of higher education. Syllabi, teaching approaches, and assessments had to be modified to account for this altered mode of learning; most instructors only had one to two weeks to redesign their courses before remote instruction began. This abrupt shift to remote learning has been distinguished from online learning in general (Hodges et al, 2020) and it is commonly assumed that this abrupt shift adversely affected student learning (Kimble-Hill et al, 2020; Gin et al, 2021). There are many factors directly associated with the shift to remote learning that could have affected student learning (Hodges et al, 2020; Gin et al, 2021), which are in addition to the stress experienced by students in other aspects of their lives affected by the pandemic (e.g., health, employment, isolation, issues of societal inequalities)
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