"A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that students performed substantially worse, on average, on standardized course assessments at the end of the COVID-19 spring semester than in previous academic terms.
There was no evidence that this was driven by specific demographic groups, meaning that everyone was at an apparent disadvantage as a result of the rapid switch to remote instruction.
Professors' use of active learning methods mitigated some of this negative effect, however. The findings leave the study's authors [including George Orlov, Doug Mckee, Joerg Stoye, Alex Rees-Jones, and Thomas DiCiccio] 'optimistic' about future student learning outcomes even as 'we remain in a period of substantial online instruction.'"