Online education during a pandemic - adaptation and impact on student learning

Abstract

Universities and educational institutions worldwide had to abruptly suspend their in-person classes and offer the rest of the term in an online format. This adjustment meant that instructors had to switch their instruction format and redesign their assessment strategies to ensure good quality education. In this work, we present the methods used in two courses for this transition and the impact on student learning. Specifically, we present data from two courses: Second-year engineering mathematics and first-year object-oriented programming. The online instruction was delivered covering all the objectives, and the online assessment environment was designed with all possible safeguards to maintain integrity. Our data from these assessments show that the measures were successful. Further, the data indicate that while the pandemic severely impacted the first-year students, the second-year students did not experience any learning issues in the transition. We also present the lessons learned for future improvement.