Online Education and Undergraduates’ Academic Record during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China: Evidence from Large-Scale Data
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting paper, but there is much room for improvement. Here are my comments:
1) Abstract: "However, the impact of online education on college students' academic records still needs to be effectively verified by large-scale data". Please state the reason why as well.
2) Abstract: "this improvement is more obviously for sophomore and junior students than freshmen". Please state why the improvement is more obvious for these two groups of students. Also, there is a bit of grammar error ("obviously" should be "obvious").
3) Abstract: "following a return to offline 18 classes, junior students' academic record improved for a semester or two"... due to? Please state the reason of such a finding.
4) Introduction (last statement): "It was found that the academic record of undergraduates among different grades and semesters were improved to different degrees". I'm afraid I don't understand why this statement is placed in this section when the authors describe the contribution of their study, because it is worded as a finding or result of the study. Perhaps it needs rephrasing or further clarification.
5) There is a very critical matter to address in this write-up, and the authors should look into this matter carefully. There are several studies that point out the difference between "emergency remote teaching and learning" and "online teaching and learning". Please look into the following articles:
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2021.639842/full
- https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.921332/full
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347535715_Understanding_Pandemic_Pedagogy_Differences_Between_Emergency_Remote_Remote_and_Online_Teaching?channel=doi&linkId=5fe16db192851c13fead76b0&showFulltext=true
I believe that the authors need to clarify this difference in the article, and whether they are (1) trying to compare "online teaching and learning" in the context of "emergency remote teaching and learning" with "offline teaching and learning", or (2) trying to deliberately set up the experimental plan to compare "online teaching and learning" in comparison to "offline teaching and learning". In the reviewer's opinion, it is not appropriate to test out situation (2) just because a pandemic "conveniently" happened. But if the authors work around considering situation (1) in the write-up, then, in the reviewer's opinion, it is still rational.
6) The means in sections 3.1 and 3.2 should not be compared if the assumption of normality was not fulfilled. A non-parametric test, such as the Mann-Whitney U Test (which compares the medians), should be used by the authors. In the event you feel differently, please provide evidence.
7) Was the normality of the standardised residuals checked? And if found to be not normal, did the authors consider using a power transformation (Box-Cox transformation) to normalise the parameters and proceed with regression and ANOVA? Please justify.
8) I believe that there are quite a number of statisticians who would argue that using power analysis to predict sample size and obtain good statistical power (> 80%) would invalidate the need for a study with an excessively large sample size such as the one presented by the authors, in which case I disagree with the authors that the main problem statement should be as follows: "Student academic achievement has yet to be effectively verified by large-scale data" because even with large-scale data, the statistical power might not be > 80%, OR might not be significantly higher than a statistical power generated by another study with much fewer samples (E.g. a study with a sample size of 100, as mentioned by the authors). If the authors want to continue with this study, they should fix this contradiction or find a way to reformulate the problem statement that relates to large data sets.
9) The English language of this paper needs significant proofreading.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review the article “Online education and undergraduates' academic record during Covid-19: Evidence from large-scale data”. The paper addresses an interesting and well researched theme in the recent period about the quality of education after the implementation of the online teaching approach, especially in terms of their impact on academic achievement, for ensuring sustainable education during the pandemic. The paper is also in line with the special issue was submitted to: “Technology Enhanced Learning and Resilience in Higher Education Institutions during COVID-19 and Beyond: Challenges and Opportunities”.
This study represents a solid effort in the field approached. It is constructed in a mature manner, following the publication standards of the journal, discussing the subject that needs to be comprehensively analyzed by using “the quasi-natural experiment during the Covid-19 pandemic to explore the short- and long-term relationships between online education and undergraduates' academic record by means of multiple comparison analysis of variance (ANOVA)”, as the authors underline.
Also, the study is written in an adequate manner, with a specific review of the literature and robust research design. The results are presented clearly and coherently, using visuals and text. The tables constructed in the paper were relevant to explore the results of the research and the ways these were adapted to the explanations in the text.
As the authors say, one conclusion of this paper assumes that “the online education "experiment" was basically successful. Online education is good for the improvement of undergraduates’ learning performance and outcomes in short and long time periods,” but also inform the readers about the limitations of the study and possible future directions.
Moreover, there are some point-by-point observations that should be addressed in this revision.
- Please revise and correct al the entries in the References section to the publication standards and style.
- Please correct Line 84 “2622 undergraduates and 123208” with “2,622 undergraduates and 123,208” and all the other similar situations throughout the text.
- Correct at Line 14 “9 semesters” with “nine semesters” (as in Line 84).
- The whole research should be better localized using the country/ region, institution/ university name, as in other References used (e.g., The impact of environmental factors on academic performance of university students taking online classes during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico; Investigation and enlightenment of college students' online learning during the COVID-19: A case study of Zhu Kezhen College of Zhejiang University). So, to correctly orient the reader about the content of the research, the authors should think about adding that extra information within the title of the paper.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: Please revise and correct al the entries in the References section to the publication standards and style.
Response 1:
Thank you for your valuable comments. We have revised and corrected all the entries in the References section to the publication standards and style. We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.cn) for English language editing.
Point 2: Please correct Line 84 “2622 undergraduates and 123208” with “2,622 undergraduates and 123,208” and all the other similar situations throughout the text.
Response 2:
Thank you for your valuable comments. We have corrected all the numbers throughout the text.
Point 3: Correct at Line 14 “9 semesters” with “nine semesters” (as in Line 84).
Response 3:
Thank you for your valuable comments. We have corrected this word in the text.
Point 4: The whole research should be better localized using the country/ region, institution/ university name, as in other References used (e.g., The impact of environmental factors on academic performance of university students taking online classes during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico; Investigation and enlightenment of college students' online learning during the COVID-19: A case study of Zhu Kezhen College of Zhejiang University). So, to correctly orient the reader about the content of the research, the authors should think about adding that extra information within the title of the paper.
Response 4:
Thank you for your valuable comments. We have added the country information in the title of the paper. University name was not added because of the confidentiality and ethical aspects of the study. We have not obtained permission to use the university's name in the text. Therefore, we removed the name of the university and simply describe the university and its general location for privacy and confidentiality purposes. Finally, the new title of this paper is “Online education and undergraduates' academic record during the Covid-19 pandemic in China: Evidence from large-scale data”
