Resilience in the pandemic: Remote learning on the fly

Abstract

This study examined students’ learning adjustments in an introductory statistics class in response to the unexpected challenge presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show significant correlations in grades, page views, and on-time assignment submissions (OTAS) suggesting that the in-person and online learning modalities were comparable. The distributions of student learning activities were narrowly clustered around the means with smaller standard deviations recorded during the online sessions. Grades were positively correlated with OTAS for the in-person classes. For online classes using synchronous screen sharing, grades were positively associated with attendance; however, they were negatively influenced by the numbers of page views in the learning management system. The relations between attendance and achievement might be influenced by the complexity of content material. Students benefited more from attending classes in technical topics such as inferential statistics compared to descriptive statistics. It appears that participating in synchronous classes was a more effective means of learning inferential statistics than merely reviewing the instructor’s notes. In contrast, no correlation between grades and attendance was observed for in-person learning sessions covering descriptive statistics. There were no differences in learning adjustments between male and female students and both showed substantial resilience in adapting to the changes. Students unanimously looked forward to returning to campus. This study suggests it is the students’ individual learning approaches and behaviors that have a greater impact on their learning outcomes than the modality in which they are taught. Course designs and assignment formats might be factors that influenced students’ attendance and OTAS.