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It's #NBERday !
First up:
Q: Did the pandemic negatively impact learning?
A: In a sample of economics undergrads, yes: but the effect vanishes among professors who adapted well to Zoom's options!
#NBERday https://www.nber.org/papers/w28022
First up:
Q: Did the pandemic negatively impact learning?
A: In a sample of economics undergrads, yes: but the effect vanishes among professors who adapted well to Zoom's options!
#NBERday https://www.nber.org/papers/w28022
Before the pandemic, some courses at Cornell administered a low-stakes non-graded test in a few courses near the end of the term just to look at learning progress.
That test was also administered in those same courses this year. #NBERday
That test was also administered in those same courses this year. #NBERday
Because the test wasn't part of student's grade, it's unlikely they'd have used the change in context (i.e. it was now open book) to put in tons of extra study effort or looking up answers. #NBERday
Test results were indeed related to GPA, so it doesn't appear these tests were just tossers either. Student outcomes on them were correlated with wider performance. #NBERday
What they find is:
1) the pandemic did NOT alter inequality in outcome across categories like first gen student, minority status, ESL status, gender, etc. The pandemic DID NOT significantly exacerbate these inequalities within classes.
#NBERday
1) the pandemic did NOT alter inequality in outcome across categories like first gen student, minority status, ESL status, gender, etc. The pandemic DID NOT significantly exacerbate these inequalities within classes.
#NBERday
Now, note that this is WITHIN CLASS inequality of outcome. In intermediate econ classes at 3 R1 universities.
You can't generalize from that to educational inequality generally. #NBERday
You can't generalize from that to educational inequality generally. #NBERday
Since "odds of being enrolled in intermediate econ at an R1 university" are of course selective within groups experiencing inequality in wider society, truly no generalization to be made. #NBERday
Which is fine; that's not the authors' goal. But I'm noting it because twitter is a hellsite and people make up absurd implications to things. #NBERday
2) The pandemic DID disrupt learning. Curriculum taught online due to the pandemic got a lower score on the test than curriculum taught earlier in the term in person.
BUT.... this effect could be mediated! #NBERday
BUT.... this effect could be mediated! #NBERday
Students enrolled in classes where the instructor 1) had taught classes online before AND 2) had intentional student engagement like using breakout rooms or in-class group problem solving.... had NO NEGATIVE EFFECT of moving to online learning. #NBERday
Administering lots of polls to students had no effect. It was just instructor experience and more intensive engagement activities that had an effect. #NBERday
But what's striking here is that this is actually a nice apples-to-apples-ish test of whether online learning can work.
And it's in a situation DEEPLY unfavorable to online learning: a mid semester break with unprepared faculty during a public crisis. #NBERday
And it's in a situation DEEPLY unfavorable to online learning: a mid semester break with unprepared faculty during a public crisis. #NBERday
And yet, students whose instructors had prior online experience and who made an effort to encourage peer engagement did as well or better than students in the same courses in person a year prior. #NBERday
ONLINE LEARNING CAN WORK PEOPLE.
Speaking personally, I expected to haaaaaate being online for my classes at McGill.
Instead, I've loved it. I'm learning better than I ever have, and it's a million times more life-compatible.
#NBERday
Speaking personally, I expected to haaaaaate being online for my classes at McGill.
Instead, I've loved it. I'm learning better than I ever have, and it's a million times more life-compatible.
#NBERday
This is especially true for my professors who are using online tools to engage students in new ways, like my professors using Perusall to require commenting on the readings. #NBERday
Note that when people say "online learning is worse for X subgroup."
Yes.
True.
And in-person learning is worse for many subgroups! #NBERday
Yes.
True.
And in-person learning is worse for many subgroups! #NBERday
Speaking as a person with a child, in person learning would have been WAY more burdensome than online. I can babysit and participate in class at the same time!
(in fairness I'm also the guy who double books conference calls so I multitask well) #NBERday
(in fairness I'm also the guy who double books conference calls so I multitask well) #NBERday
Also, the "instructor experience" bit is informative:
Practice matters. This is probably true for students too. I suspect kids will get better at online learning if it becomes more normalized. #NBERday
Practice matters. This is probably true for students too. I suspect kids will get better at online learning if it becomes more normalized. #NBERday
And while I worry about excessive screen usage.... I really like the idea of pulling kids out of schools, which are by and large horrible environments which ruin children and turn them into worse people through peer socialization effects. #NBERday
Next up:
Q: Did COVID make our politics more hostile?
A: NO!!!! COVID MADE AMERICANS LIKE EACH OTHER MORE....
.... and the the George Floyd protests undid that and we're back to hating each other.
#NBERday https://www.nber.org/papers/w28036
Q: Did COVID make our politics more hostile?
A: NO!!!! COVID MADE AMERICANS LIKE EACH OTHER MORE....
.... and the the George Floyd protests undid that and we're back to hating each other.
#NBERday https://www.nber.org/papers/w28036
The main test here is a survey called Nationscape which surveys people very frequently so gets at high-frequency changes in polarized partisan affect. What you can see is polarization FELL after the pandemic. This shows up in ANES too! #NBERday
But then the George Floyd protests happened and the effect vanished.
There was a brief moment of greater national political solidarity. And then it was gone. #NBERday
There was a brief moment of greater national political solidarity. And then it was gone. #NBERday
You can blame that on police violence or you can blame it on the protests but blaming it on either and not both is just revealing the exact polarized affect that this survey is measuring. #NBERday
Ultimately, it comes down to "public racial division" writ large, which makes it difficult to maintain non-vitriolic politics. #NBERday
They do some survey experiments that are broadly suggestive that this effect really is COVID.
Folks, existential risk creates civic solidarity.
#NBERday
Folks, existential risk creates civic solidarity.
#NBERday
