Sustainable Development in Action: A Retrospective Case Study on Students’ Learning Before, During, and After the Pandemic

Abstract

Adherence to sustainable development in higher education rests on the assessment of students’ academic attainment, especially during unexpected environmental changes, such as the sudden move from face-to-face to online courses during the recent pandemic. Most studies devoted to this issue have compared students’ performance online with that of face-to-face courses before the pandemic, tallying together a variety of courses, often from specific disciplines. Besides their mixed results and generality, such studies do not address the issue of students’ adjustment to the post-pandemic learning environment. The present retrospective case study offered a simple evidence-based model for educators to measure the relationship between environmental changes and students’ behavior for self-reflection and adjustment. It examined students’ academic attainment (as measured by grades) within a broader timeframe, including courses taught by the same instructors face-to-face before and after the pandemic and online during the pandemic. Specific courses of the general education curriculum were selected to include a broad spectrum of students. The study then assessed whether students’ activities before, during, and after the pandemic predicted summative assessment performance (i.e., final exam grades) differently. In this study, performance differences were recorded, usually in favor of post-pandemic face-to-face classes. Midterm examinations were the best predictors of final exam grades irrespective of the modality of instruction and timeframe. Implications and applications of the methodology used and the results obtained were considered.

What Do Female and Male College Students from Saudi Arabia Think of a Green Economy?

“…Data collection and analysis motivated particular faculty members of the College of Sciences and Human Studies to conduct action research (see Pilotti et al, 2023) over time. It was recognized that although the current findings replicated an earlier study on Saudi college students (Al-Zohbi & Pilotti, 2023), they might become obsolete as the implementation of the Vision 2030 agenda becomes more visible in the quotidian life of Saudi Arabian citizens.…”

The Emotional State of Second-Language Learners in a Research Writing Course: Do Academic Orientation and Major Matter?

“…Furthermore, interventions targeting emotional regulation [76] are seen as making students more able to cope with challenging situations (e.g., exams), benefiting their emotional states as well as performance. Emotional regulation may be particularly important for performance after a disruptive event, such as the pandemic, when readaptation to on-campus life adds to the ordinary challenges of college demands [80]. Consideration of individual differences in grade orientation appears to be an effective way of identifying students who may benefit from interventions targeting emotional regulation.…”

Grade prediction in the middle east: a post-pandemic case study of the optimism bias

“…The few comparisons between pre- and post-pandemic periods available in the literature have yielded mixed evidence. For instance, Pilotti et al (2023a) found that performance after the pandemic improved relative to that of the pandemic. Specifically, a return to fully face-to-face classes was accompanied by performance higher or equivalent to that of pre-pandemic levels.…”