Learning in the Time of COVID-19

In response to the uncertainties of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, universities closed to face-to-face learning, shifting entirely to online instruction midway through the spring 2020 semester. Understanding the impact of this shutdown on student learning is important for university planning; such efforts can help to clarify the tradeoffs associated with choices about continued online learning, re-opening of face-to-face learning, and possible short and long-term reclosures. In this paper, we compare student performance in the COVID-19 affected semester to that of the previous unaffected semester. We consider both student grades and student performance on standardized post-tests in introductory macroeconomics, microeconomics, and statistics courses. While course grades were statistically significantly higher in the COVID-19 affected semester, student performance on post-tests of general subject knowledge was slightly lower. Senior students and students enrolled in statistics courses were the most negatively affected, whereas non-white students and women recorded improvements. We conclude that the closure of campus to face-to-face instruction did not yield substantially worse learning outcomes for students.