Asynchronous lecture participation negatively predicts exam scores for females and students of color in an introductory physiology course during COVID-19

In response to COVID-19, educators rapidly pivoted to new and innovative ways of delivering lecture material. The ability to host synchronous lectures on platforms like Zoom gave students continued access to classroom material in the face of an ongoing pandemic. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in exam scores between students attending a physiology class (PHSL3051) synchronously via Zoom or asynchronously by viewing recorded lectures posted after class. Students in PHSL3051 were evaluated with four unit exams and one cumulative final exam. Although pooled analysis of all students showed that synchronous lecture viewing positively predicted exam scores, this positive association was even larger when the data were analyzed by gender and ethnicity. For female-identified students and students of color (SOC), attending lectures synchronously was associated with average scores on every unit exam that were higher by 2.7–7.4 percentage points. Moreover, the greater a student’s synchronous participation in the course throughout the semester, the better that student’s performance on the cumulative final exam was likely to be. These data highlight the need to better understand how different groups of undergraduate students select and respond to different assessment methods used in the same course, which may have long-term effects on their overall performance at 4-year institutions. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This study examined the relationship between lecture attendance (synchronous or asynchronous) and exam scores throughout the semester. Although everyone in the course benefited from synchronous lecture attendance, our data indicated that students of color (SOC) and female-identified students benefited most. SOC and female-identified students who participated synchronously had even higher mean scores on all exams within the course compared with SOC and female-identified students who participated asynchronously by watching recordings of the same lectures.