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

ABSTRACT

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.