ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic caused schools nationwide to open the 2019-2020 school year with educational options for students and parents. Distance learning has become increasingly popular with the ability to learn anytime and anywhere. Traditional learning provides face-to-face instruction with the ability for collaboration among students. This quantitative study compared the impact of virtual or face-to-face instruction on students' progress towards high school graduation. Specifically, this study investigated the effect the two instructional models had on course failures, grade point average, and attendance. Lastly, this study investigated the influence a tiered two intervention, Extended School Day, had on students identified as Off-Track students who had earned less than the required credits and had a grade point average below 2.0. Unpaired, two-tailed t-tests were used to determine the instructional model's impact on course failures, absenteeism, and grade point average. Archival data from a suburban high school from the 2019- 2020 school year was analyzed. The results showed that distance education students accumulated less course failures and better grade point averages for semester one. The results shifted towards traditional learning for semester two, and a Fisher Exact test was used to calculate the effect Extended School Day had on Off-Track students. The results demonstrated this two-tiered intervention benefitted those who attended by decreasing course failures thus increasing grade point average. These results suggested that distance education provided a better learning environment for students during the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year. However, traditional education impacted students more positively during the second semester. Therefore, distance education may be a good option during times of emergency, but it cannot be the only option for all students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
The number of failing students in courses incompletion has increased during the implementation of distance learning due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The phenomenon also happened at STT Terpadu Nurul Fikri, a campus majoring in IT and IS, Depok, Indonesia. The implementation of distance learning commonly utilizes a learning management system (LMS) as the primary learning media, such as Moodle. It encourages a shift in students monitoring approach using their behavior in LMS usage. Therefore, an early warning system using students' at-risk behavior in utilizing the LMS is an opportunity to reduce the failure rate. It is the issue raised in this research, which carried out using the following steps: Analyze course incompletion pattern, formulate to-be-monitored factors, designing early warning system, and recommending how to apply it. The results form factors related to the LMS usage monitoring and the design of an early warning system for student at-risk. This result may become a tool to prevent course incompletion by showing overview about students' at-risk situation. © 2021 IEEE.