O2035: Virtual Learning: For Better or Worse?

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic reported a nationwide transition to virtual learning. We found very little literature which studied the impact of the virtual learning on parents and hence, we surveyed parents of school aged children to understand their perspectives.

Methods: This was a prospective study and we surveyed 150 parents of all school going children between ages of 6 to 18 years presenting to our clinic during the study period. Results were tabulated in an Excel spreadsheet. The data was analyzed using SPSS Windows Software and simple statistics to understand parental perspectives about virtual learning.

Results: We surveyed the parents under 3 broad headings: Accessibility, balance of caregiver responsibilities and learning outcomes. When asked about how virtual learning affected the academic performance of their child: 52% felt it got worse, 17.3% felt it got better and 30.7% felt no difference. 26.7 % of the children had special needs for ADHD, autism, speech delay or learning disabilities. While assessing accessibility to remote learning resources: 64% parents reported internet connectivity issues. 48.7% of parents were satisfied with the resources available for remote learning. Around 52% thought that the communication between parents and students with teachers was smooth. 82% of the total parents surveyed had a job, and when asked how caregivers balanced responsibilities: 53.67% felt that it affected their work and 50.7% needed to allocate more time helping their children with schoolwork. Also, 52% parents were not confident that their children made adequate academic progress through remote learning, 64% parents felt overwhelmed and 55.3% thought this affected their work-life balance. While assessing the learning outcomes, 46% thought this affected their child’s social skills, 66% worried about the increased screen time, 50% felt that focusing for long hours was an issue and only 38% parents were concerned about their children’s mental and physical health. Table 1 shows demographic characteristics and figure 1 is the survey used. We found parents with an income of < 20,000$ and those with an income of 50,000-75,000$ felt that the academic performance got worse (34.6% each) and in those with an income >75,000$ only 6.4% parents felt that it got worse and this was statistically significant(p < 0.05). Also amongst parents with three or more kids, 71.8 % thought that the academic performance worsened with virtual learning which was statistically significant(p < 0.05).

Conclusion: After analysis, we conclude that most parents felt that their child’s academic performance got worse with online learning. Internet connectivity was the major concern and majority felt that virtual learning affected their work life balance. Increasing screen time and their child’s focus was another concern. Worsened academic performance was more in lower income households and those with more children. Overall majority agreed that children should return to in-person school.