Does transitioning to online classes mid-semester affect conceptual understanding?

Abstract

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) can be used as an assessment tool to measure conceptual gains in a cohort of students. The FCI uses a conceptions/"misconceptions" lens rather than a context dependent perspective, such as "knowledge-in-pieces". In this study it was given to first year students ($N=256$ students) pre- and post-mechanics lectures, at the University of Johannesburg. From these results we examine the effect of switching mid-semester from traditional classes to online classes, as imposed by the COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa. Overall results indicate no appreciable difference of gain, when bench-marked against previous studies using this assessment tool. When compared with $2019$ grades, the $2020$ semester grades do not appear to be greatly affected. Furthermore, statistical analyses also indicate a gender difference in mean gains in favour of females at the $95\%$ significance level (for paired data, $N=48$).

17 pages, 6 figures, and 3 tables. To appear in the European Journal of Physics under the title, "Probing the effect on student conceptual understanding due to a forced mid-semester transition to online teaching"

References in corpus (4)

• Studying physics during the COVID-19 pandemic: Student assessments of learning achievement, perceived effectiveness of online recitations, and online laboratories
• Teaching labs during a pandemic: Lessons from Spring 2020 and an outlook for the future
• Polarization of physics on global courses
• Cognitive Reflection Test and the Polarizing Force-Identification Questions in the FCI

Cited by in corpus (1)

• A three-year comparative study of dominant misconceptions among first-year physics students at a South African university