Studying physics during the COVID-19 pandemic: Student assessments of learning achievement, perceived effectiveness of online recitations, and online laboratories

Scientific paper - Original scientific paper

• Author: P. Klein
• Author: L. Ivanjek
• Author: M. N. Dahlkemper
• Author: K. Jeličić
• Author: M.-A. Geyer
• Author: S. Küchemann
• Author: A. Susac
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Science
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: NATURAL SCIENCES; Physics

Abstract (english)

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the education system worldwide, which was forced to respond with a sudden shift to distance learning. While successful distance teaching requires careful thinking, planning, and the development of technological and human resources, there was no time for preparation in the current situation. Various physics courses, including lectures, tutorials, and laboratory courses, had to be transferred to online formats, resulting in a variety of simultaneous, asynchronous, and mixed activities. To investigate how physics students perceived the sudden shift to online learning, we developed a questionnaire and gathered data from N=578 physics students from five universities in Germany, Austria, and Croatia. In this article, we report how the problem-solving sessions (recitations) and laboratories were adapted, how students judge the different formats of the courses, and how useful and effective they perceived them. The results are correlated with the students’ self-efficacy ratings and other behavioral measures (such as self-regulated learning skills). This study is descriptive in nature, and a survey study design was implemented to examine the relationships among the variables. We found that good communication abilities (r=0.48, p<0.001) and self-organization skills (r=0.63, p<0.001) are positively correlated with perceived learning achievement. Furthermore, the previous duration of studies had a significant impact on several self-reported achievement measures, resulting in consistently lower scores of students in their first academic year compared with students who were further along academically. We draw conclusions and suggest implications for future online classes on the instructor and faculty level. Suggestions include (i) focusing on first-year courses with on-campus teaching when facing limited lecture hall capacities, (ii) offering special courses for promoting self-regulated learning skills, (iii) emphasizing the positive aspects of distance learning, and (iv) installing networking services for supporting student communication.

• Keywords (english): COVID-19 pandemic; online recitations; online laboratories; learning effectiveness
• Language: english
• Publication type: Scientific paper - Original scientific paper
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review: Peer review - international
• Publication version: Published version
• Journal title: Physical Review Physics Education Research
• Numbering: vol. 17, no. 1, 010117
• e-ISSN: 2469-9896
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.010117
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:217:739017
• Publication: 2021
• Document URL: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.010117
• Type of resource: Text
• Access conditions: Open access
• Public note: Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Received 13 October 2020; Accepted 28 January 2021; Published 11 March 2021.
• Created on: 2023-08-11 11:09:00