The Impact of COVID-19 in an online and on-campus Software Engineering program

The COVID-19 pandemic raised fears of short and long-term consequences of effective learning from elementary school all the way through higher education. Students in all parts of the spectrum were required to learn online for as long as two years. One interesting question is whether students already accustomed to online learning were able to outperform students who were not. The objective of this paper is to present results of a recent ABET accreditation self-study and review process that compared online and on-campus cohorts across program outcomes (ABET outcomes plus custom outcomes) leading to interesting insights related to outcomes attainment data during the pandemic. The self-study for this review cycle occurred during the academic year 2020-21 when the University, like everyone, was utilizing various tools to continue its educational mission while conforming to health safety protocols. For on-campus students this meant a switch to online education for a period, then to mixed-mode (smaller in-person classes, synchronous broadcast via Zoom, alternating attendance days) delivery. For online students, there was no change in program delivery, as ASUOnline utilizes an asynchronous model using pre-recorded material with online forums, Slack, and Zoom. While all student, on-campus and online, encountered challenges that greatly affected learning, our analysis of outcomes data showed multiple outcomes were significantly impacted by COVID, and the impacts were heavily moderated by online versus on-campus modality. This paper will present the results of this analysis and discuss challenges tracking longer-term impacts.