A COVID-19 Shift to Online Learning: A Comparison of Student Outcomes and Engagement for the Bacterial Unknown Identification Project
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is interesting but its quality should be improved before acceptance for publication. I recommend the authors to:
- state the aim of their article at the Abstract and Introduction section;
- describe the structure of the paper at the end of the Introduction;
- cite all reference in the the same style (now some citations are in APA style, other with numbers);
- add suitable titles for all figures - there are figures with too long titles;
- conduct t-test to support the hypothesis;
- add Conclusion section;
- state the limitation of their study and plans for future work
Minor editing of English language required
Author Response
Thank you for your extensive review of our manuscript. We have responded to each of the points below and submitted a revised manuscript.
- state the aim of their article at the Abstract and Introduction section;
Author response: Thank you for this recommendation to add an aim in the abstract and introduction. Due to the word count of the abstract (200 words), we added a few words (line 9) to address this. However, we more fully added an aim to the last paragraph of the introduction (lines 86-88).
- describe the structure of the paper at the end of the Introduction;
Author response: Thank you for this suggestion to appropriately describe the hypothesis, methods, and main findings of the paper at the end of the introduction. We have re-written the last paragraph of the introduction accordingly (lines 88-107).
- cite all reference in the the same style (now some citations are in APA style, other with numbers);
Author response: The reviewer is correct, and we apologize for the oversight. The references throughout have been corrected according to fit Chicago style.
- add suitable titles for all figures - there are figures with too long titles;
Author response: We appreciate the reviewer’s comment. The figures previously only had captions and did not have titles. We have now added abbreviated figure titles to amend this.
- conduct t-test to support the hypothesis;
Author response: The reviewer makes an interesting comment. Each question in the survey was aggregated across the cohort during input to ensure student anonymity according to IRB guidelines, so unfortunately, a t-test for this is not possible for this dataset. However, we worked with a statistical consulting service to ensure appropriate tests were used, which is indicated in the methods sub-section “Statistical Analysis” (lines 239-246).
- add Conclusion section;
Author response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have added a conclusions section to summarize major findings (lines 582-590).
- state the limitation of their study and plans for future work
Author response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have added a paragraph to the discussion to indicate limitations (lines 568-575) and clarify plans for future work (lines 576-581).
Reviewer 2 Report
1. The reference format should be consistent throughout the manuscript. There are more than one format in the current version of manuscript.
2. Introduction: Some more studies on post-covid-19 higher education should be added in the revised manuscript. For example:
[1] Pham, H. H., & Ho, T. T. H. (2020). Toward a ‘new normal’ with e-learning in Vietnamese higher education during the post COVID-19 pandemic. Higher Education Research & Development, 39(7), 1327-1331. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1823945
[2] Sun, Y., Li, N., Hao, J. L., Di Sarno, L., & Wang, L. (2022). Post-COVID-19 Development of Transnational Education in China: Challenges and Opportunities. Education Sciences, 12(6), 416. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12060416
3. The authors’ names and affiliations should be added in the revised manuscript.
4. What are the relationships among the factors considered in the survey?
5. Some more explanations need to be added to better explain the obtained results via survey.
6. How do the authors think about the application of the results to other related projects?
Author Response
Thank you for your extensive review of our manuscript. We have responded to each of the points below and submitted a revised manuscript.
The reference format should be consistent throughout the manuscript. There are more than one format in the current version of manuscript.
Author response: The reviewer is correct, and we apologize for the oversight. The references throughout have been corrected according to fit Chicago style.
Introduction: Some more studies on post-covid-19 higher education should be added in the revised manuscript. For example:
[1] Pham, H. H., & Ho, T. T. H. (2020). Toward a ‘new normal’ with e-learning in Vietnamese higher education during the post COVID-19 pandemic. Higher Education Research & Development, 39(7), 1327-1331. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1823945
[2] Sun, Y., Li, N., Hao, J. L., Di Sarno, L., & Wang, L. (2022). Post-COVID-19 Development of Transnational Education in China: Challenges and Opportunities. Education Sciences, 12(6), 416. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12060416
Author response: The reviewer is correct. We have added these two additional references on post-COVID-19 education to the introduction. We have also added additional references for COVID-19 learning in both the introduction and discussion.
The authors’ names and affiliations should be added in the revised manuscript.
Author response: We appreciate the reviewer’s attention. As per journal policy (“A double-blind peer-review process is applied, where authors' identities are not known to reviewers”), the manuscript was anonymized and placeholders (“XXXXX”) were included to replace author information and anonymize the document. They will be revealed during publication.
- What are the relationships among the factors considered in the survey?
Author response: The reviewer raises an interesting question and future studies should evaluate the interrelationship between self-efficacy and correct responses. Each question in the survey was aggregated across the cohort during input to ensure student anonymity according to IRB guidelines, so unfortunately, the relationships among the factors could not be evaluated. We have added a line to the methods to clarify this point (line 281) as well as pointed out this limitation in the limitations sub-section (line571).
- Some more explanations need to be added to better explain the obtained results via survey.
Author response: Thank you for the suggestion to improve the results section. Towards this, we have rewritten parts of the results section to improve clarity (lines 342-349, 415-430).
- How do the authors think about the application of the results to other related projects?
Author response: The reviewer makes a good point regarding the lack of specific detail connecting this study to other similar studies on student learning. This point has been expanded in the discussion (lines 489-499) to connect learning gains found here to other studies that tracked learning gains across the pandemic. Additionally, a comparison to student experience and drop rate has been clarified (line 505-507).
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for inviting me to be a reviewer of the manuscript entitled A COVID-19 shift to online learning: A comparison of student outcomes and engagement for the Bacterial Unknown Identification Project. This document is really impressive in terms of your efforts to demonstrate the power of your study.
Introduction: The introductory part of the study presents the basic ideas and directions of the entire study. Only 14 quality references are used in the introductory part. I recommend expanding the number of references in the introduction. References are inconsistently presented, need to be corrected.
Research: The objectives and methods of the research investigation are not clearly described. The proposed research is inappropriate given the conditions. The whole solution is not ideal and appropriately described. It's a lot of confusion and mistakes. Table 1 is not shown. Move the questionnaire to the attachment. Generally described processing of obtained data. I recommend greatly expanding and reworking this section.
Discussion and conclusion: In this section, the authors qualitatively discuss their findings and the results of the research investigation. The authors try to refer to other works and try to compare the results. The entire described part of the study is quite comprehensive and boring. Some passages are too descriptive and unclear. The conclusion is missing, needs to be added.
References: This study refers to 26 scientific references, sources and publications, that is not enough. Need to expand the number of references. The references used are up-to-date and of sufficient quality and are a suitable theoretical basis for this study.
Conclusion: This study represents a contribution to this area of research. The basic ideas of the submitted manuscript are interesting. It is necessary to expand the presented study and add a more research part. I find many errors and inaccuracies here. However, some passages of the study are very descriptive and lengthy. This is sometimes confusing. Therefore, I would suggest shortening and simplifying them.
Author Response
Thank you for your extensive review of our manuscript. We have responded to each of the points below and submitted a revised manuscript.
Thank you for inviting me to be a reviewer of the manuscript entitled A COVID-19 shift to online learning: A comparison of student outcomes and engagement for the Bacterial Unknown Identification Project. This document is really impressive in terms of your efforts to demonstrate the power of your study.
Introduction: The introductory part of the study presents the basic ideas and directions of the entire study. Only 14 quality references are used in the introductory part. I recommend expanding the number of references in the introduction. References are inconsistently presented, need to be corrected.
Author response: The reviewer is correct regarding the inconsistency of the references, and we apologize for the oversight. The references throughout have been corrected according to MDPI guidelines. We have also expanded the number of references in the introduction and discussion.
Research: The objectives and methods of the research investigation are not clearly described. The proposed research is inappropriate given the conditions. The whole solution is not ideal and appropriately described. It's a lot of confusion and mistakes. Table 1 is not shown. Move the questionnaire to the attachment. Generally described processing of obtained data. I recommend greatly expanding and reworking this section.
Author response: We agree with the reviewer’s assessment, and apologize for the oversight for missing Table 1. We have reworked both the methods and results sections (lines 109-134, 215-229, 230-238,342-349,415-430), moved the questionnaire to the supplemental, and reorganized the Tables in the document.
Discussion and conclusion: In this section, the authors qualitatively discuss their findings and the results of the research investigation. The authors try to refer to other works and try to compare the results. The entire described part of the study is quite comprehensive and boring. Some passages are too descriptive and unclear. The conclusion is missing, needs to be added.
Author response: The reviewer makes an interesting comment regarding the depth of the discussion. While we appreciate this comment, we are currently below the requested word limit, and have been asked to increase the word count by the editor. We have done our best to modify this section, and have added a conclusions section to summarize our findings (lines 582-590).
References: This study refers to 26 scientific references, sources and publications, that is not enough. Need to expand the number of references. The references used are up-to-date and of sufficient quality and are a suitable theoretical basis for this study.
Author response: The reviewer is correct. We have added additional references to the discussion and introduction.
Conclusion: This study represents a contribution to this area of research. The basic ideas of the submitted manuscript are interesting. It is necessary to expand the presented study and add a more research part. I find many errors and inaccuracies here. However, some passages of the study are very descriptive and lengthy. This is sometimes confusing. Therefore, I would suggest shortening and simplifying them.
Author response: The reviewer makes an interesting comment regarding expanding the research and length of the document. However, in order to collect additional data, individual IRB approval would have been required before the study was in place. This would entail putting the IRB in place and repeating the study. Additionally, due to the length requirement of the journal, we have been asked to increase the word count by the editor. That said, we have have done our best to rewrite sections of the methods, results, and discussion to improve the clarity and simplify our findings. Finally, we have added a conclusions section to summarize our main findings.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper can be accepted
Reviewer 2 Report
All comments have been addressed in the revised manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
I have noticed a big shift in the quality of the study presented. The authors reflected some of the notes and comments.
