A Case Study in How Covid Affected Grades for Different Student Demographics

Most people use a course grade as a rough indicator of learning achieved in a course. This investigation looked at the effect of Covid on mean course grades by teaching method, student demographics, and college. It showed that there is a clear pattern of mean course grade increase in Spring 20 for different modalities, demographics, and colleges, with a slow decline thereafter to above pre-Covid levels. This pattern holds except in the Honors college which had the opposite pattern. The results also show that hybrid courses clearly maintain the highest mean grade level throughout the timeframe. Since the patterns were consistent across modalities, demographics, and colleges, these metrics don’t affect mean grade patterns. These results may provide a clue that average grades and GPA are not good indicators of student learning. Although GPA is often the only indicator one has, this study discusses the use of course grades as a measure of learning and how effective it is.