Are students emerging from remote learning worse?

[Stockmann]

I've been teaching f2f undergraduates who began their HE when we were still remote. This is a course I've taught many times before, and is taken primarily by freshers and sophomores, and is required for three majors. They seem distinctly much worse than f2f students in the Before Times. A lot of them (about a third of the class) just ghosted completely, a significantly higher fraction than before - I'm not including those that officially dropped the class.
Grade-grubbing is also definitely much worse for this class. I had a flood of grade-grubbing - both the usual I'm-so-close-to-passing folks, just in greater numbers, but also excuses like thinking the final somehow replaced the entire course (yeah, I totally have exams and quizes just for fun - and the percentages they account for in the syllabus are just there to confuse you, please ignore the syllabus) and (my "favorite") someone asking if they could selectively drop their worst grades. Finally, there's a lot of confusion regarding stuff like dates (no, there have been no changes to the university calendar).
Another class I teach, where the students were already in college in the Before Times, doesn't have these issues - which gives me hope we won't have over a decade of terrible students.
I've seen comments on social media about K12 students being much worse than before the pandemic, so I'm wondering if HE folks are having similar problems.

[mahagonny]

The students seem weaker and less energetic in terms of preparation today than before the pandemic, but the pandemic isn't the only thing that's happened in the last few years so it's hard to tell why. They seem sadder, and although one of our deans insists that depression is worse among POC, I haven't been able to find any studies confirming that, and I've found at least one strongly suggesting white people in the college age group are more depressed. One thing I wonder about is does the DEI presence, which keeps expanding and adding words to its title, feel to students more like support or does it feel more like suspicion, potential liability or criticism.

If they're paying attention to national and world news I would expect them to be sadder and more anxious as I have been. That's one reason I try to provide them with a few laughs here and there.

[Liquidambar]

This is a timely question, since I just gave the first exam in an introductory quantitative class I haven't taught since pre-pandemic.

It seems like there are more problems now with students thinking that mathematical quantities are arbitrary symbols to be manipulated in arbitrary ways.  They had trouble with order of operations and completely violated the rules of algebra in appalling ways.

On the other hand, students did better than usual at my true/false questions.  These aren't easy, since they require memory and careful reading.  Perhaps these students are more accustomed to evaluating information in written format.  (For the answers that are false the students need to explain why they're false, so I'm not just testing whether the students are good guessers.)

The class average was about the same as pre-pandemic, so I can't say these students are worse overall.  I did come away feeling depressed about the future of society, though.  I can easily imagine these students falling victim to predatory lenders or being misled by politicians because numbers don't mean anything to them.

[Sun_Worshiper]

I thought so last semester, but this time they are quite good, so hard to say based purely on my anecdotal experiences. However, it does seem from the various studies that have been reported on in the news that the pandemic left students less well prepared (and this is also my intuitive sense).

My classes are upper-level undergrads and master's students, so most were at least through high school when the pandemic hit. Perhaps the younger cohort will be in worse shape since their learning was disrupted at a more critical stage? I'll start to find out soon enough.

[mamselle]

Wonder if the new generation will be known by the moniker, "The pandemic generation"...

[apl68]

Wonder if the new generation will be known by the moniker, "The pandemic generation"...

I would pretty much guarantee it.  The pandemic has been a World War-level, break-in-history into before-and-after periods defining event, and the young people who've had the misfortune to go through it have had their lives changed by it in all sorts of ways.  The world's just not what it was three years ago, and not generally in a good way.

[marshwiggle]

Wonder if the new generation will be known by the moniker, "The pandemic generation"...

I would pretty much guarantee it.  The pandemic has been a World War-level, break-in-history into before-and-after periods defining event, and the young people who've had the misfortune to go through it have had their lives changed by it in all sorts of ways.  The world's just not what it was three years ago, and not generally in a good way.

I think that's an overly pessimistic view of things. There have definitely been setbacks in various areas, but the acceleration of trends like remote work and remote *learning generated by the pandemic is probably comparable to decades of normal progress, rather than years. The important thing to watch is what things never go back to how they were before.


*Yes, many students have struggled, but there are probably many, if not most, instructors who found at least something that worked as well or better remotely, and intend to keep and/or expand it.

[Biologist_]

Our campus has seen a dramatic change in math preparation of incoming students. A much larger number of students in STEM majors now need to start with pre-calculus instead of calculus, to the point that our math department is having trouble meeting the demand for those classes. There are several ways that students can earn their math placement, so some of the shift could be related to disruption of standardized testing. However, students who take the math placement exam on campus are also doing much worse now than they did pre-pandemic.

[secundem_artem]

TL/DR

Short answer is yes.  A disturbing number of them have simply forgotten how to student.  And it shows - in their behavior and in their work.

[artalot]

Yes, for sure. I have a much higher number of students who can't manage their time effectively and are just unable to work on their own and show up for stuff. I've never had students ghost on a test before (now I have multiple) and the number of students who just haven't submitted work is ridiculously high. You'd think remote learning might have helped with independence, since they had to teach themselves a lot of the time, but I think many of them just tuned out.
They do ok with one-on-one tutoring, but my uni just doesn't have the resources. 

[apl68]

Yes, for sure. I have a much higher number of students who can't manage their time effectively and are just unable to work on their own and show up for stuff. I've never had students ghost on a test before (now I have multiple) and the number of students who just haven't submitted work is ridiculously high. You'd think remote learning might have helped with independence, since they had to teach themselves a lot of the time, but I think many of them just tuned out.
They do ok with one-on-one tutoring, but my uni just doesn't have the resources.

It sounds like perhaps some of them are in such poor shape psychologically that they just can't hold it together enough to stay on-track.

[mahagonny]

As a person who recently acquired a union, I have been disappointed in the top leadership. I don't see how continuing remote learning for as long as we did has helped our image at all. I would have been happy to get back into the classroom sooner. My attitude has been I hope none of us gets deathly ill from something we caught at the workplace, but hey, working with people involves risk. We've always accepted that. Compare this pandemic to one of the real bad ones, like 100 years ago. Not even close to being that level of threat and disruption.
Union rhetoric: you can't scream that you've been willing risk your life in order to teach and that's why you should be able to sit at home with your coffee table and your computer for a whole year so you won't have to put up with a stuffy nose and a headache.
ETA: They say unions are getting up a head of steam again. But that only helps so much when the economy is a mess.

[Kron3007]

I was fortunate to have sabbatical last year, so have not taught much during Covid, but I am back in the class and don't see much difference.

I have one student who has decided they dont need to show up and is now complaining that they missed group signup and will have to do it alone, but there is always one...  They have blamed it on Covid, but I feel that under different circumstances they would have had another reason so dont think it is really related.

I suppose I will find out soon since they have a midterm coming up, but from general engagement they dont seem abnormal. 

[fishbrains]

TL/DR

Short answer is yes.  A disturbing number of them have simply forgotten how to student.  And it shows - in their behavior and in their work.

I think we have also found that a lot of professors/instructors didn't do well moving into the online/remote arena. I think the quality of some teaching has suffered quite a bit because some faculty assumed they would never have to teach online or remotely, and they never put in the time to learn how to do it with any degree of competence.

And I say this as someone who has taught online for over 20 years and knows it can work as well as traditional courses, at least for my field.

[jimbogumbo]

I supervised dual credit math instructors, and they did LOADS better than my colleagues at making the transition. There was no drop in students performance who were remote for precalculus and then went on to calc and stat. There did seem to be a serious issue in Alg I-Geom-Alg II went this students went on to precalculus. Lots of reteaching had to be done.

Also, has researchers have noted, huge difference in students in technology rich suburbs vs urban districts. You could also see a big difference in our rural students that were already 1-1 technology schools vs the rural districts that were still essentially paper-pencil in class instruction heavy.