Disconnecting Women: Gender Disparities in the Impact of Online Instruction

Xiaoyue Shan, Ulf Zoelitz and Uschi Backes-Gellner
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ulf Zölitz

No 245, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: We study the impact of online instruction using a field experiment that randomly assigns 1,344 university students to different proportions of online and in-person lectures across multiple introductory courses. Increased online instruction leaves men's exam performance unaffected but significantly lowers women's performance, particularly in math-intensive courses. Online instruction also reduces women's longer-run performance and increases their program dropout. Exploring mechanisms, we find that women exposed to more online lectures report greater difficulty in connecting with peers, perceive instructors as less engaging, and express lower course satisfaction. Our findings highlight that shifting toward online instruction may disproportionately harm women.

Keywords: Online instruction; field experiment; gender disparities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I23 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2025-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gen
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/leadinghouse/0245_lhwpaper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Disconnecting Women: Gender Disparities in the Impact of Online Instruction (2025)
Working Paper: Disconnecting Women: Gender Disparities in the Impact of Online Instruction (2025)
Working Paper: Disconnecting Women: Gender Disparities in the Impact of Online Instruction (2025)
Working Paper: Disconnecting women: gender disparities in the impact of online instruction (2025)
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:iso:educat:0245

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sara Brunner ().