Influence of COVID-19 to Students’ Performance
Maritonie Jane R. Salvador
The coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak disrupted life around the globe in 2020. As in any other sector, the COVID-19 pandemic affected education in many ways. Government actions have followed a common goal of reducing the spread of coronavirus by introducing measures limiting social contact. Many countries suspended face-to-face teaching and exams as well as placing restrictions on immigration affecting students.
In terms of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different countries’ education systems many differences exist. This lack of homogeneity is caused by such factors as the start and end dates of academic years and the timing of school holidays. While some countries suspended in-person classes from March/April until further notice, others were less restrictive, and universities were only advised to reduce face-to-face teaching and replace it with online solutions wherever practicable.
Fortunately, there is a range of modern tools available to face the challenge of distance learning imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In DepEd we have different modalities like modular learning, TV-based learning, and radio learning modality. Using these tools, the modification of contents that were previously taught face-toface is easily conceivable. There are however other important tasks in the learning process, such as assessment or autonomous learning, that can still be challenging without the direct supervision of teachers. All these arguments end in a common topic: how to ensure the assessment’s adequacy to correctly measure students’ progress. Thus, how can teachers compare students’ results if they differ from previous years? On one hand, if students achieve higher scores than in previous years, this could be linked with cheating in exams or with changes in the format of the evaluation tools. On the other hand, lower grades could also be caused by the evaluation format change or be attributable to autonomous learning as a less effective teaching method.
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The author is Teacher II at Baliti Integrated School