Quantitative Analysis of Academic Performance in Electronic Engineering Students Under the Virtual Modality During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The context of this work lies in the higher education institutions current situation in the Dominican Republic and the efforts carried out by the main actors and their effort to continue teaching virtually as a measure due to universities lockdownd due to COVID-19 pandemic. For this study, the subject of electronics II, from the Electronic Engineering Major at a university in the northern region of the country, has been selected. This subject covers theoretical content on a wide variety of electronic devices, and is complemented by laboratory classes that allow the use and practical experimentation of these devices. In this work we have hypothesized "that the academic performance of the students on this subject improves and that the withdrawal rate decreases under the virtual modality". Correlation and independent t-tests were performed for quantitative analysis between students' performance and the rate of withdrawals according to the teaching modality. Results show that both student performance and the withdrawal rate are affected, decreasing for performance and increasing for the withdrawal rate respectively. Future works are recommended to explore the factors that lead to these results. © 2022 Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions. All rights reserved.