Assignment strategies modulate students' academic performance in an online learning environment during the first and second COVID-19 related school closures.

A growing number of studies seek to evaluate the impact of school closures during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While most studies reported severe learning losses in students, some studies found positive effects of school closures on academic performance. However, it is still unclear which factors contribute to the differential effects observed in these studies. In this article, we examine the impact of assignment strategies for problem sets on the academic performance of students (n ≈ 16,000 from grades 4-10 who calculated ≈ 170,000 problem sets) in an online learning environment for mathematics, during the first and second period of pandemic-related school closures in Germany. We observed that, if teachers repeatedly assigned single problem sets (i.e., a small chunk of on average eight mathematical problems) to their class, students' performance increased significantly during both periods of school closures compared to the same periods in the previous year (without school closures). In contrast, our analyses also indicated that, if teachers assigned bundles of problem sets (i.e., large chunks) or when students self-selected problem sets, students' performance did not increase significantly. Moreover, students' performance was generally higher when single problem sets were assigned, compared to the other two assignment types. Taken together, our results imply that teachers' way of assigning problem sets in online learning environments can have a positive effect on students' performance in mathematics.

Performance increases in mathematics during COVID-19 pandemic distance learning in Austria: Evidence from an intelligent tutoring system for mathematics.

BACKGROUND: In 2020, school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic forced students all over the world to promptly alter their learning routines from in-person to distance learning. However, so far, only a limited number of studies from a few countries investigated whether school closures affected students' performance within intelligent tutoring system-such as intelligent tutoring systems. METHOD: In this study, we investigated the effect of school closures in Austria by evaluating data (n = 168 students) derived from an intelligent tutoring system for learning mathematics, which students used before and during the first period of school closures. RESULTS: We found that students' performance increased in mathematics in the intelligent tutoring system during the period of school closures compared to the same period in previous years. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that intelligent tutoring systems were a valuable tool for continuing education and maintaining student learning during school closures in Austria.

Evaluating students' engagement with an online learning environment during and after COVID-19 related school closures: A survival analysis approach.

BACKGROUND: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic schools all over the world were closed and thereby students had to be instructed from distance. Consequently, the use of online learning environments for online distance learning increased massively. However, the perseverance of using online learning environments during and after school closures remains to be investigated. METHOD: We examined German students' (n ≈ 300,000 students; ≈ 18 million computed problem sets) engagement in an online learning environment for mathematics by means of survival analysis. RESULTS: We observed that the total number of students who registered increased considerably during and after school closures compared to the previous three years. Importantly, however, the proportion of students engaged also decreased more rapidly over time. CONCLUSION: The application of survival analysis provided valuable insights into students' engagement in online learning - or conversely students' increased dropout rates - over time. Its application to educational settings allows to address a broader range of questions on students' engagement in online learning environments in the future.