Learning during the COVID-19 pandemic: It is not who you teach, but how you teach

George Orlov, Douglas McKee, James Berry, Austin Boyle, Thomas DiCiccio, Tyler Ransom, Alex Rees-Jones and Jörg Stoye

Economics Letters, 2021, vol. 202, issue C

Abstract: We use unique data from seven intermediate economics courses taught at four R1 institutions to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning. Because the same assessments of course knowledge mastery were administered across semesters, we can cleanly infer the impact of the unanticipated switch to remote teaching in Spring 2020. During the pandemic, total assessment scores declined by 0.2 standard deviations on average. However, we find substantial heterogeneity in learning outcomes across courses. Course instructors were surveyed about their pedagogy practices and our analysis suggests that prior online teaching experience and teaching methods that encouraged active engagement, such as the use of small group activities and projects, played an important role in mitigating this negative effect. In contrast, we find that student characteristics, including gender, race, and first-generation status, had no significant association with the decline in student performance in the pandemic semester.

Keywords: COVID-19; Pedagogy; Student learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176521000896
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: It Is Not Who You Teach, but How You Teach (2020)
Working Paper: Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: It Is Not Who You Teach, but How You Teach (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:202:y:2021:i:c:s0165176521000896

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109812

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().