Trends and Gender Disparities in Grades and Grade Penalties Among Bioscience and Health-Related Major Students Before, During, and After COVID-19 Remote Instruction

TL;DR

This study examines how student grades and gender disparities in bioscience and health-related majors changed across pre, during, and post COVID-19 remote instruction, highlighting persistent gender differences in grade penalties.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of grade anomalies and penalties as measures to analyze gender disparities and performance trends across different instructional periods.

Findings

Grades and penalties improved during remote instruction.

Post-pandemic, grades and penalties deteriorated.

Women experienced larger grade penalties than men across all periods.

Abstract

In this study, we investigate student performance using grades and grade anomalies across periods before, during, and after COVID-19 remote instruction in courses for bioscience and health-related majors. Additionally, we explore gender equity in these courses using these measures. We define grade anomaly as the difference between a student's grade in a course of interest and their overall grade point average (GPA) across all other courses taken up to that point. If a student's grade in a course is lower than their GPA in all other courses, we refer to this as a grade penalty. Students received grade penalties in all courses studied, consisting of twelve courses taken by the majority of bioscience and health-related majors. Overall, we found that both grades and grade penalties improved during remote instruction but deteriorated after remote instruction. Additionally, we find more pronounced gender differences in grade anomalies than in grades. We hypothesize that women's decisions to pursue STEM careers may be more influenced by the grade penalties they receive in required science courses than men's, as women tend to experience larger penalties across all periods studied. Furthermore, institutions concerned with equity should consider grade penalties as a straightforward measure and make a conscious effort to consider their implications.