Open AccessAcademic performance of K-12 students in an online-learning environment for mathematics increased during the shutdown of schools in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic
Author(s) -
Markus Spitzer,
Sebastian Musslick
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0255629
Subject(s) - shutdown , covid-19 , pandemic , curriculum , mathematics education , online learning , computer science , medical education , psychology , medicine , pedagogy , engineering , multimedia , virology , disease , pathology , nuclear engineering , outbreak , infectious disease (medical specialty)
The shutdown of schools in response to the rapid spread of COVID-19 poses risks to the education of young children, including a widening education gap. In the present article, we investigate how school closures in 2020 influenced the performance of German students in a curriculum-based online learning software for mathematics. We analyzed data from more than 2,500 K-12 students who computed over 124,000 mathematical problem sets before and during the shutdown, and found that students’ performance increased during the shutdown of schools in 2020 relative to the year before. Our analyses also revealed that low-achieving students showed greater improvements in performance than high-achieving students, suggesting a narrowing gap in performance between low- and high-achieving students. We conclude that online learning environments may be effective in preventing educational losses associated with current and future shutdowns of schools.