Student performance in online health courses

Abstract

The switch to remote classes disrupted higher education during the Covid-19 pandemic. Online courses have the potential to be especially disruptive in health fields, where more of the learning is hands-on and practice-based. Using detailed pre-Covid administrative data from a large, diverse public university, I study how online course delivery can impact student performance in these fields. While grades are similar on average in online courses as compared with in-person courses, grades are difficult to interpret and may not measure actual learning. I find that course pass rates–an outcome of real consequence for students–are 3.9 percentage points lower in online courses. This is especially true among Black and low-income students, for whom pass rates go down by 6.4 and 5.4 percentage points, respectively. The results suggest that the move to online courses may depress graduation rates in health fields, particularly among minority and lower-income students, leading to a less diverse healthcare workforce.

Publication Title

Education Economics

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