Emerging Ways to Conquer Education Challenges in Times of COVID-19 and Their Influence on Students’ Academic Performance

Abstract

Higher education has been faced with a particular set of challenges in response to COVID-19. To ensure continuous and quality education for students, our institution adopted two class attendance modes: 1) A traditional face-to-face (F2F) teaching mode and 2) A Hybrid teaching mode. In the Hybrid mode, half of the class meet online via videoconferencing software while the other half meet face-to-face. In this paper, we investigate both qualitatively and quantitatively student perceptions of course content and learning effectiveness when comparing the delivery modes. Through surveys and daily class comprehension quizzes, we were able to observe and compare performance as it correlates with class attendance mode. Quiz performance was specifically tracked to assess the impact of online versus F2F teaching. Surveys were implemented at the beginning and at the end of the semester to probe student perception and sentiment toward these course delivery modes in three dimensions; strengths, weaknesses, and grade expectations, using a questionnaire survey administered to (n ~250) students.