Analysis of the Impact of COVID-19 on Education Based on Geotagged Twitter

Abstract

More than 150 colleges have reported hundreds of COVID-19 confirmed cases over all the states as the campuses have reopened and the schools have resumed in-person classes, after switching overnight to online teaching in the spring. We conduct a large scale study on education by using a geotagged Twitter dataset, which spans the whole U.S. during parts of the spring, summer, and fall terms of 2020. We analyze the temporal and spatial patterns of COVID-19 cases. Then, we conduct content and sentiment analysis to discover which topics and which thoughts people located at U.S. colleges and universities are communicating.