The outcomes of lockdown in the higher education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic

Peiling Cai; Peng Ye; Yihao Zhang; Rui Dai; Jingchun Fan; Brett D Hambly; Shisan Bao; Kun Tao

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0282907

The outcomes of lockdown in the higher education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic

PLoS One. 2023 Apr 25;18(4):e0282907. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282907. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Peiling Cai¹, Peng Ye¹, Yihao Zhang¹, Rui Dai¹, Jingchun Fan², Brett D Hambly³, Shisan Bao³, Kun Tao³

Affiliations

¹ School of Preclinical Medicine, Chengdu University, Chengdu, China.
² School of Public Health, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.
³ Department of Pathology, Tongji Hospital, School of Medicine, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

To control COVID-19 pandemic, complete lockdown was initiated in 2020. We investigated the impact of lockdown on tertiary-level academic performance, by comparing educational outcomes amongst first-year students during second semester of their medical course prior to and during lockdown. Evidence: The demographics, including educational outcomes of the two groups were not significantly different during semester one (prior to the lockdown). The academic performance amongst women was better than men prior to lockdown. However, the scores were improved significantly for both sexes during lockdown in 2020, following the complete online teaching, compared to that in 2019, showing no significant difference between men and women in 2020, for English and Chinese History. There were significant different scores between men and women in lab-based Histology Practice in 2019 (in-person tuition) and 2020 (online digital tuition), although only a significant improvement in women was observed between 2019 and 2020. Implication: the forced change to online delivery of the second semester of the first-year medical program in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic did not result in any decline in assessment outcomes in any of the subjects undertaken. We believe extensive online digital media should continue to be available to students in future.

Copyright: © 2023 Cai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
COVID-19* / prevention & control
Communicable Disease Control
Educational Status
Female
Humans
Internet
Male
Pandemics

Grants and funding

This research was supported by grants from First-class Curriculum Project of Chengdu University in 2020 and 2021 (CDYLKC2021063 and CDYLKC2020016), awarded to PC. A grant from Teaching Reform Projects of Chengdu University in 2021 (cdjgb2021050), awarded to PC. Shanghai Jiaotong University Translational Foundation major project: Using single cell sequence, the specific target(s) of IL-38 in the precision medicine for colorectal cancer (ZH2018ZDA33, 2018-2021), awarded to KT. Shanghai Changning District Project for the Combination of Family Medicine and Community Doctor (YZJH003, 2020), awarded to KT. A grant from The Foundation of the Centre for Clinical Training, Shanghai Jiaotong University, awarded to KT. Teaching Achievement Cultivation Project of Gansu Province, grant no. 3136170103, awarded to JF. The 4th batch of Ideological and Political Demonstration Courses of Gansu University of Chinese Medicine- Evidence-based Medicine, Grant no. 313106020101, awarded to JF. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.