Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted several elements of education by forcing educational institutions to suddenly change to online and distance learning. In consequence of the change in the teaching modality, the study patterns and learning strategies followed by the students were altered.

This paper reports on the analysis and evaluation of an intervention of the class schedules change in two large undergraduate courses in a Nordic University. This study was divided into two phases. The first phase, performed in spring 2021, was a detailed analysis of the effect the pandemic had on study patterns. The second phase, comprise a class schedule modification based on the results obtained from the first section.

In the first phase of the intervention, the analysis was performed using data from the Learning Management System (LMS). From the LMS the click-stream data, the assignment submission history, and the final grades were downloaded for students enrolled in the courses in autumn 2019 and autumn 2020 respectively.

For the second phase of the intervention, the data from autumn 2021 were gathered from two platforms:
(1) The LMS, comparable data gathered as in the first phase, and
(2) an external platform used for streaming, and lecture recording and educational material provision. In both phases, activity indices from the LMS logs were calculated and compared among years, from 2019 to 2021.

In addition, in autumn 2021, focus group interviews with students were carried out to get in-depth insights about the effects of the schedule change.

The results of the first phase showed the students modified their interaction levels with the LMS and the course content, as well as their time distribution, indicating their study time was more intense and focused, with more activity in a shorter time span. Those results guided the schedule intervention performed in the phase two of this analysis. Research on phase two is in process as the term autumn 2021 progresses.

In the paper, practical challenges from the implementation, its impact on the teachers’ workload, and positive and negative effects on the students’ time management and study patterns are discussed. In addition, recommendations for future implementations to support universities in modifying their class schedules are provided.

Keywords:

Class schedule, blended learning, learning analytics, mixed methods.