Teaching in times of the coronavirus

Initial study progress monitoring findings with regard to online teaching When the coronavirus pandemic first struck in March, face-to-face teaching became impossible in the Netherlands. Like other universities, the UvA had to switch rapidly to online teaching in order to avoid students falling behind with their studies wherever possible. Among other things, monitoring the impact of online teaching has shown that the average pass rates and average marks per course in the second semester of the past academic year were comparable to those in previous years. It has also revealed that a proportion of the students is dissatisfied with the possibilities of online tutorials when it comes to the ability to interact with fellow students. An initial analysis of the data in UvAdata (the UvA management information system) and UvA Q course evaluations produced the following overall findings in relation to the second semester of the past academic year: There was no fall in the average pass rates and average marks per course in the second semester of the 2019-2020 academic year compared to previous years. The responding students assessed the quality of teaching as comparable to other years. The majority of students have the tools they need to be able to participate in remote teaching and the rapid switch to online teaching caused very few technical problems for most of the respondents.