Learning, Student Digital Capabilities and Academic Performance over the COVID-19 Pandemic

Limniou, Maria; Varga‐Atkins, Tünde; Hands, Caroline; Elshamaa, Marie

doi:10.3390/educsci11070361

Cited by 80 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…This will be the core challenge for university teaching in the next decade and this paper provided some empirical hints as well as in-depth thoughts regarding that issue from Germany. This has to be compared and complemented with experiences from other countries [54,55,[62][63][64][65][66] as well as other education areas [67]. In total, university lecturers are challenged globally to make the most out of the harsh and limiting circumstances experienced in the 2020/2021 timeframe due to COVID-19.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The lecturing concept required students to prepare synchronous Q&A sessions by watching the relevant video; if students did not manage beforehand, they might have been inclined to skip the video altogether, assuming that just consuming the live Q&A session would partly replace their own video studying session. Another explanation for student engagement is provided in [55], where the students' levels of self-regulation and digital capabilities were identified as predictors for their engagement in online teaching. Additionally, due to the very short lead times, our videos did not have subtitles, hindering accessibility for deaf students [56].…”

Section: Comparative Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Digital University Teaching and Learning in Management—The Gini from the COVID-19 Bottle and Its Empirical Representations in Germany

2021

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Digitalization of teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education has gained increasing attention in research in the recent years. While previous research investigated issues of effectiveness, course attendance, and course evaluation from a long-term perspective, the current COVID-19 pandemic forced higher education institutions to digitalize teaching, learning, and assessment in a very short time. In this context, we investigate the effects of the digitalization of three courses from operations research and management science in the summer term 2020, namely two large lectures and tutorials for undergraduate, and a seminar for graduate students. To that end, student performance, course and exam attendance rates, and course evaluations are compared to the setting of the same courses in the previous year 2019 with a traditional, non-digitalized setting. Next to the quantitative data, qualitative statements from the course evaluations and students’ expectations expressed during the term are investigated. Findings indicate that the lecturers’ understanding of learning behavior has to develop further as interaction is required in any format, on-site or digital. Absenteeism and procrastination are important risk areas especially in digital management education. Instruments would have to be adapted to digital settings, but with care and relating to course specifics (including digital evaluation). Digital education does not make learning per se easier or harder, but we observed that the students’ understanding and performance gap increased in digital teaching times. As an outlook, we propose the longitudinal investigation of the ongoing digitalization during the COVID-19 pandemic, and going beyond, investigate opportunities of the current crisis situation for implementing the long-term transition to digital education in higher institution institutions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Comparative Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital University Teaching and Learning in Management—The Gini from the COVID-19 Bottle and Its Empirical Representations in Germany

2021

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“…Again, within the learning ecology thus conceptualised, the notion of self-directed learning becomes very relevant, as it underlies the broader idea of developing lifelong learners who are agile, responsive, and proactive to rapidly changing contexts, including potential disruptions. For example, in a major disruptive event such as COVID-19, self-directed learners would be able to quickly adapt to changing circumstance by developing their digital capabilities by quickly learning new online tools to help them continue their learning in a digital environment [113].…”

Section: Macrosystemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disrupting the Disruption: A Digital Learning HeXie Ecology Model

Huijser

et al. 2022

Education Sciences

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Broad societal disruptions (i.e., the industrial revolution, digitalisation, and globalisation) have created a need for an increasingly adaptive higher education system in recent decades. However, the response to these disruptions by universities has generally been slow. Most recently, online learning environments have had to be leveraged by universities to overcome the difficulties in teaching and learning due to COVID-19 restrictions. Thus, universities have had to explore and adopt all potential digital learning opportunities that are able to keep students and teachers engaged in a short period. This paper proposes a digital learning HeXie ecology model, which conceptualises elements and relationships pertaining to the societal need for a more agile and digitally resilient higher education system that is better placed to confront disruptive events (such as pandemics) and that is able to produce graduates who are well-equipped to deal with disruption and uncertainty more broadly. Specifically, we propose a digital learning ecology that emphasises the role of self-directed learning and its dynamic interaction between formal, informal, and lifelong learning across a five-level ecosystem: the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. This study contributes to the theoretical literature related to flexible learning ecologies by adopting and incorporating the Chinese HeXie concept into such ecologies.

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“…This perception can hardly be explained by a lack of digital skills on the part of the students, as they rated them as rather good on average and, furthermore, overall showed no negative attitude-related biases towards digital teaching and learning (see Section 3.2.1). Thus, the result may rather indicate that distance learning requires a fundamentally different didactic approach to regular on-site learning [117,118], which should be considered when designing lessons (see Sections 1.1 and 1.2). In this context, technical conditions (rated only as moderate) and accessibility of courses (rated as inadequate) could do with improving as well, to enable all students to learn successfully.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

University Teacher Students’ Learning in Times of COVID-19

2021

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At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, school and university learning were abruptly switched to distance learning, coming along with psychological strains and various learning lags on the part of the students. These problems come to a head when focusing on university teacher students, since an expectable competence lag on their part, similarly arising from pandemic-caused distance learning in university teacher training, could affect their future teaching in schools, possibly then disadvantaging school students a second time. To determine changes of teacher students’ self-concept of professional knowledge, we used data of a repeated cross-sectional survey carried out in a period from 2018 to 2021, including several comparable cohorts of overall N = 395 teacher students. This design allowed for splitting the participants in two groups relating to times before and after switching to distance learning. Our results show that the switch to distance learning goes hand in hand with lower scores on almost every dimension of teacher students’ self-concept of professional knowledge, although, in parallel, their scores on variables such as openness to experiences, agreeableness, and conscientiousness increased significantly, indicating a certain degree of compliance with the new situation. Beyond that, we report on an evaluative survey among N = 84 teacher students carried out in July 2020, offering further insights into their situation during the first semester of distance learning. Its results primarily show which specific aspects of distance learning the students consider in need of improvement. On the other hand, it becomes clear that they experienced handicaps in various areas, accompanied by a significant decrease of their core self-evaluations when comparing them to a reference sample. Practical implications and recommendations that can be derived from these results are discussed.

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Learning, Student Digital Capabilities and Academic Performance over the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cited by 80 publications

References 43 publications

Digital University Teaching and Learning in Management—The Gini from the COVID-19 Bottle and Its Empirical Representations in Germany

Digital University Teaching and Learning in Management—The Gini from the COVID-19 Bottle and Its Empirical Representations in Germany

Disrupting the Disruption: A Digital Learning HeXie Ecology Model

University Teacher Students’ Learning in Times of COVID-19

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