Community College Student Persistence During the COVID-19 Crisis of Spring 2020

Objective: This quantitative study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' persistence at a minority-serving, open-access, public, urban community college in New York City. Specifically, the project looked at factors associated with mid-semester college withdrawals during spring 2020 when the college shifted to remote instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: Utilizing data from three spring semesters (spring 2018, 2019, and 2020), four logistic regression models tested the marginal effects of student background and college program factors on mid-semester withdrawal and the moderating effect of spring 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak semester. Results: Findings indicated that the withdrawal rates were higher for new students, men, minoritized students, and part-time students across all three spring semesters. Spring 2020 disproportionally affected part-time students, men, Black students, as well as readmitted students. The greatest increase in the probability of mid-semester college withdrawal was observed for Black men who had been enrolled part-time in spring 2020. Belonging to a highly structured full-time study program protected students from leaving mid-semester, although this protection was weaker in spring 2020 and spring 2019 compared to spring 2018. Contributions: The research highlights the equity gap for Black men at the college and points to additional factors contributing to mid-semester college attrition. The work provides insights into factors that worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study thereby contributes to understanding short-term risk factors for vulnerable student populations and adds to the body of literature on crisis situations in higher education. © The Author(s) 2023.

The Perspectives of Distance Learning in Higher Education: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered changes in higher education and put to light the question of the future of education. The goal of the research was to gather the opinions of students, who are the main stakeholders of education, concerning their perception of various forms of education in the context of distance learning and their preferences and predictions on the future shape of education. 1005 students of the Cracow University of Economics, Poland, share their opinion participating in the survey. The results point to a diversification of the student population as far as their perception of distance learning is concerned: students with greater experience in traditional higher education and part time students favored distance learning more and foresee it as the future of education, which is in line with the necessity of facilitating life-long learning. Hence, universities have to adjust their offer to different student preferences in order to survive. © 30th International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, ICCE 2022 - Proceedings.

What Happened during COVID-19? Instructional Setting as a Predictor of Students' Academic Achievement

Our goal in the current study was to identify the degree to which instructional setting (remote versus traditional) predicted students' academic achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic. A matched sample of data from 194 undergraduate students who were continuously enrolled at a private university in the southeastern United States from the spring semester of 2020 through the spring semester of 2021 was selected for this study. Data from students enrolled remotely across 37 majors were matched by sex, enrollment status, and Spring 2020 GPA. Our findings showed that neither instructional setting, students' sex, nor the number of hours they attempted were important predictors of students' academic performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the academic performance of students enrolled remotely on average remained unchanged from Spring 2020 through Spring 2021. Incidentally, our results revealed that the preceding academic performance was the only important predictor of students' academic achievement during this period. This finding confirms former research on the role that previous performance plays in the academic performance of undergraduate students.

A reflection on evolving student support in a post-pandemic higher education environment

The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on many facets of education and the education experience. This paper seeks to understand how it impacted the support in place for part-time, mature students studying at UCD College of Business. The concepts of learner-centredness and student engagement are explored in order to ask the question ‘How has the model of part-time student support provision evolved since the COVID-19 pandemic?'. The Dowling and Ryan (2007) model of student support was used as a heuristic to look at what principle changes are evident in the post-COVID19 environment. This case study demonstrates that the model of part-time student support has evolved since the Dowling and Ryan (2007) model as a result of changing student needs, the external pressures due to the pandemic, and the modes of provision now available to students. In particular, the proliferation of technology has changed the way students ultimately engage with their programme of study. Four central tenets of student support for part-time mature students were identified, namely: 1) Day to day support and use of technology;2) Feedback and learner progress;3) Skills Development and 4) Orientation and learner integration. Looking to the future, technology and learner support are fundamental to understanding and achieving learner-centred and engaging student support models. This paper's reflection on the part-time student experience and how learner support might have been reshaped as a result of the pandemic will hopefully help to influence and shape policy-making in higher education and determine how practitioners provide support for part-time students. It also suggests the current concept of learner-centredness might also be expanded upon. © 2022. Kate Collins, Gerard Dooley, and Orna O'Brien.

Online Learning of Basics of Graph Theory

As a result of COVID-19 pandemic, the methods of teaching at Slovak universities have significantly changed. Before 2019, majority of subjects was taught by face-to-face instruction. Despite positive experience with utilization of modern technologies in education, only a little number of subjects was taught bye-learning or blended learning. In the paper, we summarize our experience with teaching the subject Basics of Graph Theory. In the winter term of the academic year 2021/2022, due to restrictions caused by COVID-19, full-time students had to be taught by a combination of pre-recorded video lessons, synchronous online lessons, and e-learning course, while part-time students were taught only by video lessons and e-learning course. A comparison of students' results in the final test reveals that online learning is a suitable method to teach Basics of Graph Theory, as there is no significant difference compared to the results of the students taught by blended learning two years ago. Further, this method is equally suitable for both full-time and part-time students, since there is no significant gap in the level of their knowledge. Moreover, answers of students in a questionnaire reveal other benefits of this method. © 2022 IEEE.