Disruptiveness of COVID-19: Differences in Course Engagement, Self-appraisal, and Learning

Abstract

We investigated how the transition to remote instruction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic affected students’ engagement, self-appraisals, and learning in advanced placement (AP) Statistics courses. Participants included 681 (Mage=16.7 years, SDage=.90; %female=55.4) students enrolled in the course during 2017-2018 (N=266), 2018-2019 (N=200), and the pandemic-affected 2019-2020 (N=215) year. Students enrolled during the pandemic-affected year reported a greater improvement in affective engagement but a decrease in cognitive engagement in the spring semester relative to a previous year. Females enrolled in the pandemic-affected year experienced a greater negative change in affective and behavioral engagement. Students enrolled during the pandemic-affected year reported a greater decrease in their anticipated AP exam scores and received lower scores on a practice exam aligned with the AP exam compared to a prior year. Though resilient in some respects, students’ self-appraisal and learning appeared negatively affected by pandemic circumstances.

Leveraging performance and feedback‐seeking indicators from a digital learning platform for early prediction of students' learning outcomes

“…Our results indicate that students enrolled in the pandemic‐affected 2019–2020 academic year tended to receive lower assignment scores and tended to complete the AP exam at lower rates. This finding is consistent with trends in student achievement, which point to evidence of diminished engagement (Dorn et al, 2020; Ober et al, 2023a) and an apparent ‘learning loss’ during the pandemic‐affected year (Bailey et al, 2021; NAEP, 2022a, 2022b). During the pandemic‐affected year, children and adolescents experienced great anxiety and stress (Gazmararian et al, 2021; Zhang et al, 2020), likely due in part to social isolation because of school closure (Vaillancourt et al, 2021).…”

“…We would like to thank the graduate and undergraduate research assistants in the Learning Analytics and Measurement in Behavioural Sciences (LAMBS) Lab at the University of Notre Dame for their contributions to the broader discussion of the topic, the high school statistics teachers and students who contributed to this project, as well as the STATS4STEM project (https://www.stats4stem.org/) and the ARTIST project (https://apps3.cehd.umn.edu/artist/index.html) for allowing us to use their items in our research. A preprint of the manuscript is available (see Ober et al, 2023b).…”