The quest to figure out just how much the COVID-19 pandemic affected college-level learning is understandable, not least so that colleges and universities can address any potential setbacks students have suffered as many hope to return to more “normal” learning environments this fall.
With that goal in mind, more researchers will probably try to follow the lead of economists at Auburn University, the University of Southern Mississippi and American University, who published a working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research this week, in which they use a large-scale data set from one public research university to compare how studying in person and online affected students’ course completion rates and grades before and after the pandemic.
