Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on many aspects of people's life, health, labor and economic environments were significantly affected, and at one moment, another fundamental environment that suffered a notable impact was the educational one.

Almost any institution from all educational levels, from primary to university, had to move to a distance or remote teaching model. It was expected that the effects of the pandemic would last a few months, however, in some countries, this lasted almost two years.

This time represents that many students finished one educational level and entered the next one. For example, in Mexico thousands of students finished highschool and entered different universities in a distance model.

The Mexican Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) developed the Emergent Program of Remote Teaching (PEER for its acronym in Spanish). During these two years, meaning six scholar periods (in a trimester system), four generations of new incoming students were accepted into the distance scheme. Many of these students finished their previous level under a distance model, and almost two years later, they finally knew the university installations.

The change from highschool to university sometimes represents a high impact for the students. Moreover, they faced a change from a face-to-face educational to a remote model, maybe unknown to them (and even to the professors).

At UAM, many students have problems during their first year (three scholar periods) in the topics that form the group called “General Block of Topics” which are common to all engineering students and it is considered the most challenging part of their studies.

It is important to analyze the academic performance of the students, measuring the amount of approved credits, during their first year under a distance educational model and comparing it with those students that entered and took their courses in the face-to-face educational model.

This work compares and analyzes academic performance of students from the ten engineering programs at UAM Azcapotzalco campus. Results would give an initial idea about implementing a remote model in a superior level institute.

Keywords:

Educational analytics, academic performance, students’ progress, effects of educational teaching.