Did transition to online teaching during Covid-19 pandemic affect students’ performance? Evidence from a Statistics course

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown imposed by many countries had a huge impact on social and economic aspects of life, throughout the world. Schools of all order and grades were affected severely and forced to transition to alternative teaching methods. Most uni- versities, in particular, turned to different forms of teaching in-distance. Students and instructors had to face the challenge of adapting to a sudden change in the delivery of courses and exams. This paper tries to address the question of how the unavoidable distress caused by these changes has affected higher education students’ performance, using data from a Statistics course in a Master of Science program in the two consecutive years 2019 and 2020. Evidence of a signifi- cant Year effect is found, which seems to be ascribable, at least partially, to factors different from student’s cohort characteristics.