High School Students’ Performance Indicators in Distance Learning in Chemistry during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

All private and public schools in the UAE had to run online classes as they closed their face-to-face classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2021. In this context, the purpose of this study was to investigate the indicators of high school students’ performance in online chemistry classes in a private school in Al Ain, UAE. A quantitative study with an online survey questionnaire was carried out with 101 participants. The data were analyzed using One-Sample Wilcoxon Signed Ranked Test, Independent Sample Mann Whitney U, Independent Sample Kruskal Wallis H, and Spearman’s Rank Correlation in the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS 26). The findings revealed that there was a statistically significant positive impact on critical thinking, collaborative skills, creativity and innovation, technology application, class participation, and overall achievement during online and distance learning of chemistry. There was a statistically significant difference in students’ critical thinking, collaborative skills, creativity and innovation, class participation, and achievement by gender and nationality. These skills were not statistically significantly different across students of grades 10, 11, and 12, except for creativity and innovation, which were significantly different between students of grades 11 and 12. All the six indicators of students’ performance had a significant correlation between each other, with the highest correlation between collaborative skills and participation level. These findings indicated that students’ performance in online chemistry classes during the COVID-19 pandemic provided opportunities to develop creativity and collaborative skills, together with better learning achievement as perceived by the students.

Behavioral, cognitive, emotional and social engagement in mathematics learning during COVID-19 pandemic

“…In terms of pedagogy, social, emotional, and behavioral engagements have significant contributions to the cognitive engagement which may lead to improved learning outcomes. Such engagements are interconnected and mutually inclusive to influence students’ creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration [ 73 ]. Hence, concerned stakeholders should focus on enhancing learners’ engagement in self-learning, accomplishing assignments on time, being aware of self-evaluation, collaboration, participation in social activities, forming study groups, reducing boredom and anxiety, and increasing happiness to promote a greater motivation towards learning.…”

Useful Teaching Strategies in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine) Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In the United Arab Emirates, AlMahdawi et al [36] investigated the performance of online chemistry classes in a private school. Interestingly, they found a statistically significant improvement in critical thinking, collaborative skills, creativity and innovation, and overall class achievement from online and distance learning of chemistry [36]. These results suggest that student learners during the COVID-19 pandemic achieved better performance than the students perceived [36].…”

“…Interestingly, they found a statistically significant improvement in critical thinking, collaborative skills, creativity and innovation, and overall class achievement from online and distance learning of chemistry [36]. These results suggest that student learners during the COVID-19 pandemic achieved better performance than the students perceived [36]. Cicha et al studied digital and media literacies in the Polish education system [37].…”

Access, Efficiency, Inconvenience, and Scarcity as Issues of Online and Distance Learning in Higher Education

“…The COVID-19 pandemic immensely impacted the education system in the world due to lockdowns and social distancing measures (Johnson et al, 2020). As a response to this effect, online and distance education have been a means of continuing teaching and learning at schools and in higher education (AlMahdawi et al, 2021;Omar et al, 2021). Although distance education has been offered by several universities through their courses, it has not been a mainstream education (Sadeghi, 2019).…”