Low achieving students benefit most from COVID-19 online switch
Students struggling academically benefited most when schools around the world transitioned from classroom teaching to online learning
2021-05-06
(Press-News.org) Students struggling academically benefited most when schools around the world transitioned from classroom teaching to online learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the switch also didn't negatively impact higher achievers.
A new study has analysed the impact of online learning during the pandemic by crunching data at three middle schools in China, which administered different educational practices for about 7 weeks during the country's Covid-19 lockdown.
Online learning was shown to have a positive impact on overall student performance when compared to not receiving any support from school during lockdown, and the best results were achieved by higher quality teachers preparing content for both rural and city students, regardless of their location.
Senior Lecturer in Economic at Flinders University, Dr Rong Zhu, says the study results show online delivery of education materials can help narrow the achievement gap between struggling students and their higher-achieving peers to improve academic performance despite the COVID-19 lockdowns.
"Our findings have important policy implications for educational practices when lockdown measures are imposed during a severe pandemic like what we have witnessed around the world due to COVID-19,"
"First, when physically shut down, schools should create distance learning resources for students given the beneficial influence of online education with low-ability students shown to be the biggest beneficiaries."
"Our study also highlights that the quality of teachers who design and deliver recorded online lessons has a positive impact on academic performance. Local government can organise top quality teachers to prepare online lessons in advance, complying with local curriculum standards and then make them available when necessary."
Students who used a computer as a remote learning device instead of a smartphone also achieved more improved academic results.
Dr Zhu says online programs are a cost-effective method with great potential to generate substantial economies of scale, since each school does not have to prepare its own version of online classes if a system in setup in advance to facilitate online learning.
"Governments should ensure all students have the resources necessary to access online education, potentially through joint efforts with the telecommunications sector."
"If resources available are constrained, priority should be given to low-achieving children as they benefit the most from distance learning. Since students with access to a computer as the online learning device can benefit more than those using a smartphone, government can play a more active role in providing or subsidizing investment in computers for students having no access to one at home."
INFORMATION:
"Compensating for academic loss: online learning and student performance during the Covid-19 pandemic" by Andrew. E Clark (Paris School of Economics - CNRS), Huifu Nong (Guangdong University of Finance), Hongjia Zhu (Jinan University), and Rong Zhu (Flinders University). Dr Rong Zhu is the corresponding author of this article.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-05-06
Australia's 'black summer' of bushfires was depicted on the front pages of the world's media with images of wildlife and habitat destruction, caused by climate change, while in Australia the toll on ordinary people remained the visual front-page focus.
QUT visual communication researcher Dr TJ Thomson compared the front-page bushfire imagery of the Sydney Morning Herald over three months from November 10, 2019 to January 31 2020 with 119 front pages from international media from the start of January, when the world sat up and took notice, to January 31.
"The international sample of front pages included the Americas and Europe (about 90 per cent) representing Australia's 'black summer'. Asia represented around 7 per cent of the international ...
2021-05-06
Transitioning from fossil fuels to a clean hydrogen economy will require cheaper and more efficient ways to use renewable sources of electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen.
But a key step in that process, known as the oxygen evolution reaction or OER, has proven to be a bottleneck. Today it's only about 75% efficient, and the precious metal catalysts used to accelerate the reaction, like platinum and iridium, are rare and expensive.
Now an international team led by scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has developed a ...
2021-05-06
A cross-institutional collaboration has developed a technique to repartition carbon resources from carbohydrates to lipids in microalgae. It is hoped that this method can be applied to biofuel production. This discovery was the result of a collaboration between a research group at Kobe University's Engineering Biology Research Center consisting of Project Assistant Professor KATO Yuichi and Professor HASUNUMA Tomohisa et al., and Senior Researcher SATOH Katsuya et al. at the Takasaki Advanced Radiation Research Institute of the Quantum Beam Science Research Directorate ...
2021-05-06
Scientists are calling for more stringent pesticide bans to lower deaths caused by deliberately ingesting toxic agricultural chemicals, which account for one fifth of global suicides.
A NHMRC funded study, in which the University of South Australia analysed the patient plasma pesticide concentrations, has identified discrepancies in World Health Organization (WHO) classifications of pesticide hazards that are based on animal doses rather than human data.
As a result, up to five potentially lethal pesticides are still being used in developing countries in the Asia Pacific, where self-poisonings account for up to two thirds of suicides.
In ...
2021-05-06
New research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine reveals why sleep can put people with epilepsy at increased risk of sudden death.
Both sleep and seizures work together to slow the heart rate, the researchers found. Seizures also disrupt the body's natural regulation of sleep-related changes. Together, in some instances, this can prove deadly, causing Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, or SUDEP.
"We have been trying to better understand the cardiac changes around the time of a seizure in patients with epilepsy. When we looked ...
2021-05-06
Proteins are the workhorses of cells, responsible for almost all biological functions that make life possible.
Understanding how specific proteins work is key to disease prevention and treatment, allowing us to lead longer, healthier lives.
Yet scientists still know nothing or very little about thousands of proteins that exist in our bodies and their role in keeping us alive.
Now researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University have uncovered a new protein analysis tool - coined the Bacterial Growth Inhibition Screen (BGIS) - that could fast-track the process of assessing proteins. The tool allows for quick and efficient basic characterisation of protein function with no special equipment or cost involved.
Dr Ferdinand Kappes of XJTLU's ...
2021-05-06
It is now well known that carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor to climate change and originates primarily from burning of fossil fuels. While there are ongoing efforts around the world to end our dependence on fossil fuels as energy sources, the promise of green energy still lies in the future. Can something be done in the meantime to reduce the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere?
It would, in fact, be great if the CO2 in the atmosphere could simply be adsorbed! Turns out, this is exactly what direct air capture (DAC), or the capture of CO2 under ambient conditions, aims to do. However, no such material with the ability to adsorb CO2 efficiently under DAC ...
2021-05-06
In Alzheimer's disease, neurons in the brain die. Largely responsible for the death of neurons are certain protein deposits in the brains of affected individuals: So-called beta-amyloid proteins, which form clumps (plaques) between neurons, and tau proteins, which stick together the inside of neurons. The causes of these deposits are as yet unclear. In addition, a rapidly progressive atrophy, i.e. a shrinking of the brain volume, can be observed in affected persons. Alzheimer's symptoms such as memory loss, disorientation, agitation and challenging behavior are the consequences.
Scientists at the DZNE led by Prof. Michael Wagner, head of a research group at the DZNE and senior ...
2021-05-06
Determining safe yet effective drug dosages for children is an ongoing challenge for pharmaceutical companies and medical doctors alike. A new drug is usually first tested on adults, and results from these trials are used to select doses for pediatric trials. The underlying assumption is typically that children are like adults, just smaller, which often holds true, but may also overlook differences that arise from the fact that children's organs are still developing.
Compounding the problem, pediatric trials don't always shed light on other differences that can affect recommendations for drug doses. There are many factors that limit children's participation in drug trials - for instance, some diseases simply ...
2021-05-06
AURORA, Colo. (May 6, 2021) - Scientists examining the remains of 36 bubonic plague victims from a 16th century mass grave in Germany have found the first evidence that evolutionary adaptive processes, driven by the disease, may have conferred immunity on later generations of people from the region.
"We found that innate immune markers increased in frequency in modern people from the town compared to plague victims," said the study's joint-senior author Paul Norman, PhD, associate professor in the Division of Personalized Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "This suggests these markers might have evolved to resist the plague."
The study, done in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute in Germany, was published online Thursday in the journal Molecular ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Low achieving students benefit most from COVID-19 online switch
Students struggling academically benefited most when schools around the world transitioned from classroom teaching to online learning
