Online teaching, procrastination and student achievement

Maria De Paola (), Francesca Gioia and Vincenzo Scoppa ()

Economics of Education Review, 2023, vol. 94, issue C

Abstract: Despite growing consensus in the public debate that self-discipline is key to succeeding in an online learning environment, the evidence available is very limited. We investigate the role of procrastination as a moderator of the impact of online teaching on student performance. We take advantage of the forced transition from traditional class-based to online teaching induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and adopt a difference-in-differences strategy using administrative data of four cohorts of students enrolled in an Italian University. We find that online teaching has reduced student performance by about 1.4 credits per semester on average (0.11 Standard Deviations). However, this aggregate effect masks great heterogeneity as the negative influence on performance varies significantly according to student tendency to procrastinate with online teaching being particularly detrimental for students affected by present-bias problems. The total negative effect for procrastinators amounts to more than 18% of the workload for a semester, so implying a potential delay of approximately two semesters in the expected date of graduation for students following an online as opposed to a face-to-face five-year Degree course.

Keywords: Online teaching; Procrastination; Students’ performance; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 I21 I23 I28 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:94:y:2023:i:c:s0272775723000250

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102378

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