Negative Impacts From the Shift to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from a Statewide Community College System

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in Spring 2020. We use two complementary difference-in-differences frameworks, one that leverages within-instructor-by-course variation on whether students started their Spring 2020 courses in person or online and another that incorporates student fixed effects. We estimate the impact of this shift on the academic performance of Virginia’s community college students. With both approaches, we find modest negative impacts (three to six percent) on course completion. Our results suggest that faculty experience teaching a given course online does not mitigate the negative effects. In an exploratory analysis, we find minimal long-term impacts of the switch to online instruction. <br>

2020年春季，新冠疫情（COVID-19 pandemic）引发了线下教学向虚拟授课的骤然转型。本研究采用两种互补的双重差分（difference-in-differences）分析框架：其一利用教师-课程维度下，学生2020年春季课程以线下还是线上形式开课的组内差异；其二则纳入了学生固定效应（student fixed effects）。我们借此评估了此次教学转型对弗吉尼亚州社区学院学生学业表现的影响。两种分析方法均显示，该转型对课程完成率存在3%至6%的小幅负面影响。研究结果表明，教师针对特定课程的线上授课经验，并未能缓解此类负面影响。在探索性分析中，我们发现转向线上教学对学生仅存在极微弱的长期影响。