What have we done?

Education in the UK has been severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic hit, higher education (HE) providers were forced to deliver their content online with minimal time to prepare.

A concern is that the pandemic has, or will, further widen the educational attainment gap that already exists between disadvantaged learners and their peers. This project sought to investigate what is the best way of structuring HE courses to minimise equality gaps when pure face-to-face learning is not possible.

We were interested in the response of different providers, and different courses, to the pandemic – the technological choices they made, the way that they adapted their examinations, and the extent to which they made use of synchronous (live) vs asynchronous (non-live) learning.

You can download final reports for the project below.

Download the executive summary: 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

Download the analysis report: the relationship between teaching and assessment methods and student outcomes during COVID-19

Download the research protocol for the project.

If you would like to find out more or have any questions around this project, please get in touch with us at research@taso.org.uk.