Are students emerging from remote learning worse?

[Parasaurolophus]

Mine are about as bad (and good) as before and during. I think.

They certainly aren't any worse at the quantitative stuff I teach, and it's just about possible that they might be reading a smidgen more (just not my instructions). They're cheating more, but they already cheated a lot so it's a particularly appreciable difference. I don't think they've discovered GPT-3 and LLMs yet...

[kaysixteen]

Correct me if I err, but isn't it true that Canada, ahem, had a significantly better experience, death toll, etc., during the pandemic than we did here?

[marshwiggle]

Correct me if I err, but isn't it true that Canada, ahem, had a significantly better experience, death toll, etc., during the pandemic than we did here?

Yes, because in Canada it wasn't nearly as politicized as in the US. Parties of all political stripes realized things needed to be done, and also realized the difficulties of deciding how and when to lift restrictions. They didn't all agree on the details, but no government accused the other(s) of making it all up.

[Kron3007]

Correct me if I err, but isn't it true that Canada, ahem, had a significantly better experience, death toll, etc., during the pandemic than we did here?

Yes, because in Canada it wasn't nearly as politicized as in the US. Parties of all political stripes realized things needed to be done, and also realized the difficulties of deciding how and when to lift restrictions. They didn't all agree on the details, but no government accused the other(s) of making it all up.

Sure, but we also shifted harder and longer to remote learning, so one would expect the impacts to be greater no?  I guess it depends on what factor is really causing it though. 

[marshwiggle]

Correct me if I err, but isn't it true that Canada, ahem, had a significantly better experience, death toll, etc., during the pandemic than we did here?

Yes, because in Canada it wasn't nearly as politicized as in the US. Parties of all political stripes realized things needed to be done, and also realized the difficulties of deciding how and when to lift restrictions. They didn't all agree on the details, but no government accused the other(s) of making it all up.

Sure, but we also shifted harder and longer to remote learning, so one would expect the impacts to be greater no?  I guess it depends on what factor is really causing it though.

But again, our education system is more consistent than the US, so we probably won't have a big a difference between schools, provinces, etc. (In other words, our worst case scenarios are probably not nearly as bad as US worst case scenarios.)

[Mobius]

Correct me if I err, but isn't it true that Canada, ahem, had a significantly better experience, death toll, etc., during the pandemic than we did here?

Yes, because in Canada it wasn't nearly as politicized as in the US. Parties of all political stripes realized things needed to be done, and also realized the difficulties of deciding how and when to lift restrictions. They didn't all agree on the details, but no government accused the other(s) of making it all up.

Sure, but we also shifted harder and longer to remote learning, so one would expect the impacts to be greater no?  I guess it depends on what factor is really causing it though.

There are several factors. Students do not like closed-book assessments. They got used to a few years of open book. I don't use online proctoring or lockdown browsers. New college students aren't used to more rigid standards regarding late work. This disconnect had always been there, but seems to be more pronounced.

It's going to take several more years to get students used to higher standards. We all know most of us were more generous during the first few semesters of the pandemic.

[phi-rabbit]

There are several factors. Students do not like closed-book assessments. They got used to a few years of open book. I don't use online proctoring or lockdown browsers.

This is one of the biggest issues I have noticed.  During the time I was teaching remotely, I attempted to give the same essay exam I always give in my philosophy class, which is designed as a closed-book exam.  I made them take it with Respondus webcam monitoring, which I don't love and agree with some of the concerns about, but under the circumstances it seemed like the best of various bad options in terms of having some small deterrent factor against cheating.  I had a couple of students completely freak out.  One of them emailed me with an imperious missive stating that there were too many items on the study guide to expect someone to know by heart, so I should make it open book, which they claimed all the rest of their professors were doing.  I had never in my time at this school (over 15 years) had anyone try to insist an exam should be open book.  I wrote back giving my reasons why I would not do that, and the student(s) responded by going to my chair to complain after the exam.  This was in an upper-level course, too, though the students in question were not majors.

Now that I'm back on campus, I noticed so much anxiety over the idea of taking closed-book exams that I am allowing students to use a notecard in my intro-level classes, something I haven't done since my grad school teaching days.  Even that seems to be really worrying them.  The idea of hand-writing an essay in class itself seems highly intimidating.  I gave them an idea of the approximate length in words I expect from essays, which I always do because someone insists on asking and people won't take "as long as it needs to be" as an answer, and then someone was fussed about how they would know the length of it when they didn't have a word count to look at, as they would get typing an essay in an online exam.

All through the pandemic, we got chirpy messages from the pedagogy folks at our institution telling us that we shouldn't worry about not being able to stop cheating on exams, and in fact pointing out the obvious truth that using things like Lockdown Browser is asking for headaches, so we should just make all exams completely open book and write better exams.  Nevermind that this approach is quite a bit easier to carry out in some disciplines than others, or that it would require a lot of additional work.  I already had to document far more cases of plagiarism than average even using alleged "online proctoring."  The one semester I tried doing completely open book essay exams (spring 2020) I had probably 50% of the exams show signs of having plagiarized essays.

Which brings me around to my current complaint: we are increasingly pressured (by both students and administration) to give online exams even when the classes are meeting in person, as most people's are now.  The latest news is that they are planning to discontinue Scantron scanning and the only offered solution to instructors who give partly or wholly multiple choice exams is to give online exams, outside class, through the LMS and use Respondus/Lockdown Browser as desired.  Nevermind that these are much less effective ways of ensuring exam integrity than having students take the exam in person.  The alleged reason is that Scantron usage has been low and they can save money by getting rid of it, but I can't help wondering if it's not part of pushing for what students prefer.  And why do students prefer online exams?  There could be various reasons, no doubt, but I have seen students on social media stating outright that they like taking online classes because it's easier to cheat.

[Larimar]

My students post-lockdown have forgotten the concept of doing work in class. If I give them a writing assignment and some time in class to work on it and ask questions, and tell them it's due next class, and what do they do? They bolt like the classroom is on fire.

[kaysixteen]

When the 'pedagogy folks' tell you to to stop worrying about not being able to suppress online cheating, it is probably best to ignore everything else they have to say going forward.

[Zeus Bird]

When the 'pedagogy folks' tell you to to stop worrying about not being able to suppress online cheating, it is probably best to ignore everything else they have to say going forward.

Good advice.  Our pedagogy folks are out-of-the-loop and mostly listen to administrators' concerns about enrollment.  When students in professional fields then fail licensure exams they have to retake their online open-book courses, for which the kindly administrators charge them a second time.

[dr_evil]

Which brings me around to my current complaint: we are increasingly pressured (by both students and administration) to give online exams even when the classes are meeting in person, as most people's are now.  The latest news is that they are planning to discontinue Scantron scanning and the only offered solution to instructors who give partly or wholly multiple choice exams is to give online exams, outside class, through the LMS and use Respondus/Lockdown Browser as desired. 

My institution also discontinued Scantron in many cases, but thankfully I have small classes and can grade even the multiple choice section by hand. I have for some time because I got tired of the excuses that students claimed to have erased an answer but the Scantron misread it.

Instead, I have students arguing that exams should be open-book, open-internet, etc AND have no time limit. They also complain that they have no idea how they can be expected to know a shorter list of terms than I had to memorize for my high school class...back in the day when dinosaurs apparently roamed the earth.

When the 'pedagogy folks' tell you to to stop worrying about not being able to suppress online cheating, it is probably best to ignore everything else they have to say going forward.

Very true. These are the same people that encourage offering extra credit for things that have little to do with the course material, such as filling out student evals and attending activities on campus.

[Ruralguy]

There are people on our Tenure and Promotion committee who advise faculty up for review to "bribe" students at eval time
(they claim its not "quid pro quo" if you don't promise you'll give class credit based on the precise response) , etc. I can't really believe it, but that's what happens when you review people based on eval response rates and such.

[mythbuster]

Just to let you know that not ALL schools or students are pushing entirely online exams. I am teaching a course that Pre-Pandemic was entirely F2F. This semester I am trying out teaching the lecture portion of the course online. This course has a lab, which remains F2F. But the big thing is, I also scheduled 4 class sessions over the semester for our exams. Our exams are entirely F2F. The students overwhelmingly THANKED me for this set up so they could avoid all the issues and stress of online proctoring. They also can raise their hand and ask me a question during the exam. Another big bonus.
   Now it's a class of over 100 students so yes, the exams are scantron. No way my every growing department or institution is getting rid of those. In fact, I wish our department could just buy one for just us. It would get good use, as the Intro course has regular enrollment of 1,000+ every semester.

[artalot]

There's a difference between online exams and remote exams.
I've been giving exams online since before the pandemic, but only during the pandemic were they remote. I prefer them online - they take a little longer to make, but are much quicker to grade since I don't have to decipher their terrible handwriting. All CMS's let you reuse questions and will auto grade multiple choice, matching, etc., so I'm not sure how they are that different from ScanTron.

Students have always wanted open-note tests, but I find that the course average is always lower. They don't study, but there's not enough time to look up every answer, so they either run out of time or write some pretty nonsensical stuff.. The note card idea is better - at least they study by making the note card.

[marshwiggle]

There's a difference between online exams and remote exams.
I've been giving exams online since before the pandemic, but only during the pandemic were they remote. I prefer them online - they take a little longer to make, but are much quicker to grade since I don't have to decipher their terrible handwriting. All CMS's let you reuse questions and will auto grade multiple choice, matching, etc., so I'm not sure how they are that different from ScanTron.

Students have always wanted open-note tests, but I find that the course average is always lower. They don't study, but there's not enough time to look up every answer, so they either run out of time or write some pretty nonsensical stuff.. The note card idea is better - at least they study by making the note card.

As I always say, "You can't learn the course in 2 hours...."