Logging in to Learn: The Effects of Online Civic Education Pedagogy on a Latinx and AAPI Civic Engagement Youth Conference

Civic education is essential to the health of any democracy. When COVID-19 hit in the spring of 2020, almost all civic education efforts went online. This increased interest in the effectiveness of online civic education. Does online civic education lead to similar outcomes as in-person education? Utilizing student evaluations from a youth civic engagement conference co-run by Latinx and AAPI focused civic mobilization organizations, I compare learning outcomes on multiple dimensions of civic education from an in-person youth civic engagement conference in 2019 to those of an online 2020 conference. I find that though students in both conferences improved over the course of each conference, the 2019 in-person conference yielded slightly greater improvement in civic knowledge confidence than the online conference. Other dimensions, verifiable knowledge, self-efficacy and community consciousness, did increase after participation in the conference in each year, however, the increases were similar between the online and in-person formats.