Negative Impacts From the Shift to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis - Evidence From a Statewide Community College

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a rapid transition from in-person to virtual instruction, beginning in spring 2020. Using two difference-in-differences strategies—one based on within-instructor-by-course variation and another incorporating student fixed effects—this study measures the effect on academic performance for Virginia’s community college students. Both approaches indicate modest negative impacts, reducing course completion by roughly 3%–6%. The findings also show that online teaching experience does not offset these effects, and exploratory results suggest limited long-term consequences.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Context of the shift to online learning

Potential mechanisms affecting community college students

Prior evidence from online learning research

Related COVID-19 specific studies

AERA Open January-December 2022, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 1–16 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584221081220 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2022. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Negative Impacts From the Shift to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence From a Statewide Community College System Kelli A. Bird Benjamin L. Castleman University of Virginia Gabrielle Lohner University of California, Berkeley The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in the spring of 2020. We use two complementary difference-in-differences frameworks: one that leverages within-instructor-by-course variation on whether students started their spring 2020 courses in person or online and another that incorporates student fixed effects. We estimate the impact of this shift on the academic performance of Virginia’s community college students. With both approaches, we find modest negative impacts (3%–6%) on course completion. Our results suggest that faculty experience teaching a given course online does not mitigate the negative effects. In an exploratory analysis, we find minimal long-term impacts of the switch to online instruction. Keywords: community colleges, virtual instruction, COVID-19, fixed effects, difference-in-differences Introduction The COVID-19 health crisis led to one of the largest disruptions in the history of American education. Beginning in March 2020, tens of millions of students attending school in person at all education levels abruptly shifted to online learning due to stay-at-home orders put in place to curb transmission of the virus. Although some teachers and faculty had experience teaching online, many had to pivot into online teaching for the first time, often using videoconferencing technology (e.g., Zoom) to deliver instruction and engage students. There are various reasons why the COVID-19 crisis and the ensuing abrupt shift to virtual instruction may have led to worse outcomes for community college students (Office for Civil Rights, 2021) . Students may have been dealing with health challenges associated with COVID-19 infection or have had family members who became sick. Many community college students and their family members were among the tens of millions of Americans who lost their jobs during the spring of 2020; the stress of these job losses may have reduced the cognitive bandwidth and attention that students could devote to class (Shah et al., 2015) . Increased childcare responsibilities may have detracted from time that adult students could invest in their college course work (Office for Civil Rights, 2021) . A growing body of research on online learning reinforces the potential negative impacts that an abrupt shift to online courses could have had on students’ academic performance. Experimental and quasi-experimental analyses show that students in online courses have lower rates of course completion and final grades, lower rates of persistence, and increased course repetition (Alpert et al., 2016; Bettinger et al., 2017; Figlio et al., 2013; Hart et al., 2016; Jaggars & Xu, 2016; Xu & Xu, 2019). Moreover, this body of research suggests that negative impacts of online learning are most pronounced for students from lower socioeconomic and underrepresented backgrounds as well as for academically weaker students—populations that may have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19–related health, economic, and childcare challenges (Office for Civil Rights, 2021) . Specific to the COVID-19 context, several studies have investigated how this abrupt shift to online learning affected students. Most like our analysis is the work of Altindag et al.(2021), which leverages data from a public university to investigate the performance of students in in-person versus online courses during the pandemic

FAQs

How did the study assess the impact of switching to online learning?

The study used two complementary difference-in-differences frameworks: one leveraging within-instructor-by-course variation and another using student fixed effects.

What effect did the online learning shift have on community college course completion?

Both approaches found modest negative impacts, with course completion decreasing by about 3%–6%.

Does faculty experience teaching the course online reduce the negative effects?

No. The results suggest that faculty experience teaching a given course online does not mitigate the negative effects.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam