Student success throughout the COVID-19 pandemic: longitudinal analysis of the basic communication course

This article reports on a longitudinal study of the basic course at a large Western university in the United States. As higher education faces mounting internal and external pressures, such as curricular changes, declining enrollment, state laws restricting curriculum and content, or legislation mandating financial spending, we must consider how student learning is affected. The following study compares measures related to student learning or student success paired with end-of-term gradebook data across the years of 2020–2021 and 2023–2024 to examine changes in student achievement in the basic communication course. Our findings indicate that, (on particular speech assignments), students in post-COVID semesters scored higher on those speeches than students enrolled during COVID semesters. We also found that students in online asynchronous sections of the basic course score lower on particular speeches than face-to-face students and that oral in-class engagement and grit both predicted increased total speech grade.