Inequalities in connectivity and academic performance during non-face-to-face teaching due to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has turned our world upside down. Universities were not the exception. Most administrators struggle to redesign higher education for a postCOVID world university. During the pandemic, however, many of the face-face courses turned to virtual, giving rise to or incrementing inequalities among students due to lack of equipment and network connectivity could affect their academic performance. This paper brings together evidence from various data sources and the most recent studies to describe what we know so far about the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on inequalities across several key domain factors, including the availability of equipment and connectivity could affect their academic performance. The paper explores the effect of connectivity on the academic performance of our chemical and engineering students based on (i) the location of the home, (ii) the equipment, (iii) the type of connectivity, (iv) the number of people with those in which the equipment is shared and (v) online attendance at classes, finding that the ones with the greatest impact are the lack of synchronous attendance at class, the equipment, and internet connectivity.