Student sitting at laptop learning

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TASO has launched a new report exploring the evidence on the impact of online teaching and learning on student outcomes in higher education before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on the effect on students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Key findings:

  • The existing evidence is somewhat mixed; there are a small number of studies which suggest online teaching and learning can maintain or improve outcomes for some groups, but overall the move to online learning appears associated with worse student outcomes.
  • There is some tentative evidence of a widening disadvantage attainment gap associated with a move to online provision.
  • Blended learning (e.g., a combination of face-to-face and online learning) appears to improve attainment when compared to purely online learning.
  • Building student interactions into an online course, such as discussion boards between peers, allows for increased engagement which is often positively associated with attainment.
  • The existing evidence also suggests that course design is key to effective online provision.

In response to the findings, TASO recommends higher education providers:

  • Make a concerted effort to design online courses rather than simply moving face-to-face materials into the online environment.
  • Make use of their institutional data and differing pedagogical approaches to design and conduct evaluations that allow for strong conclusions about what works in the UK context. Our data analysis provides a foundation and blueprint for future work of this sort.
  • As students from disadvantaged backgrounds may be more likely to be adversely impacted by the shift to online teaching, learning and assessment, future research should focus on their experiences and outcomes.

The rapid evidence review assessed findings from 18 studies. 7 of these focus on the pre-pandemic context, including two meta-reviews. The remaining 11 papers focus on studies conducted since the pandemic.

We also analysed existing historical data from a single university to investigate the relationships between measures of disadvantage, changes to teaching and assessment, and student outcomes (attainment and progression). The data covered 1,000 students from three courses for first, second and third year across the years 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21.

It was not possible to untangle the effect of a module being taught online, from the effect of it being taught in the context of the pandemic, using the available data.

Download the executive summary report: Online teaching and learning in the time of COVID-19

Download the rapid evidence review: Online teaching and learning in the time of COVID-19

If you have any questions around the report, or would like the report in another format, you can get in touch with us at info@taso.org.uk.