The impact of internet access at home and/or school on students' academic performance in urban areas in Brazil

This study is an exploration of the digital divide between urban and rural areas, and it was conducted to assess the impact of the minimum living guarantee system on online education in China. The results of the research showed that 83.38% of students in low-income families have been able to participate in online education at home during the pandemic, while 16.62% of students in low-income families have been unable to do so. The absence of computers, smartphones, and broadband Internet access in low-income households reduces the likelihood of children being able to participate in online education at home. In terms of accessing online education at home, students from urban areas have obvious advantages over those from rural ones, and students from minimum living guarantee families have obvious advantages over those from marginal minimum living guarantee ones. This study also showed that the presence of online education-related amenities, including computers, smartphones, and Internet access, mediates the relationship between the subsistence allowance system, Hukou, and accessibility of online education. To address this issue, this paper includes suggestions for bridging the digital divide in online education.

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The Impact of Internet Access at Home and/or School on Students’ Academic Performance in Brazil

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.2133609 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Narine Badasyan ◽

Simone Silva

Keyword(s):

Academic Performance ◽

Internet Access ◽

The Impact ◽

At Home

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The Effects of COVID-19 on Education in Pakistan: Students’ Perspective

International Journal of Distance Education and E-Learning ◽

10.36261/ijdeel.v6i1.1431 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 217-234

Author(s):

Fouzia Malik ◽

Fouzia Ajmal ◽

Zohran Jumani

Keyword(s):

Quantitative Study ◽

Internet Access ◽

Likert Scale ◽

Online Classes ◽

Wide Spread ◽

Educational Activities ◽

Online Platform ◽

Postgraduate Level ◽

The Impact ◽

At Home

Due to the wide spread of COVID-19, the educational institutes were closed on 20th March, 2020 and the individuals were advised to isolate themselves at home. This lockdown not only adversely affected the economy but all the educational activities were shut down which created a huge gap in students’ learning and knowledge all over the globe. This quantitative study was designed to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the education of higher level students in the context of Pakistan. The five point Likert Scale questionnaire was provided to the learners enrolled in intermediate, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level. 74 respondents respond to the questionnaire. The data were analyzed through SPSS 23. The results of the findings revealed that students have been facing a lot of difficulty to grasp certain concepts during e-classes. The students lacked internet access along with not been given any prior guidance related to the usage of online platform. The challenges regarding online classes at the same time are being faced by the teachers as well along with the students. It was also analyzed that although teachers are providing all the necessary resources and feedback to the students but still students have been going through difficulties in grasping the concept, gaining knowledge and communicating with their teachers online. Due to immense number of online classes teachers have a huge workload on their part.

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Quantifying the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic Restrictions on CO, CO2, and CH4 in Downtown Toronto Using Open-Path Fourier Transform Spectroscopy

Atmosphere ◽

10.3390/atmos12070848 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (7) ◽

pp. 848

Author(s):

Yuan You ◽

Brendan Byrne ◽

Orfeo Colebatch ◽

Richard L. Mittermeier ◽

Felix Vogel ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Fourier Transform ◽

Mole Fraction ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Trace Gas ◽

Reference Period ◽

Mean Values ◽

Percentage Decrease ◽

Open Path ◽

The Impact ◽

At Home

During the global COVID-19 pandemic, anthropogenic emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially traffic emissions in urban areas, have declined. Long-term measurements of trace gas concentrations in urban areas can be used to quantify the impact of emission reductions on GHG mole fractions. Open-path Fourier transform infrared (OP-FTIR) spectroscopy is a non-intrusive technique that can be used to simultaneously measure multiple atmospheric trace gases in the boundary layer. This study investigates the reduction of mole fractions and mole fraction enhancements above background for surface CO, CO2, and CH4 in downtown Toronto, Canada (the fourth largest city in North America) during the 2020 and 2021 COVID-19 stay-at-home periods. Mean values obtained from these periods were compared with mean values from a reference period prior to the 2020 restrictions. Mean CO mole fraction enhancement declined by 51 ± 23% and 42 ± 24% during the 2020 and 2021 stay-at-home periods, respectively. The mean afternoon CO2 mole fraction enhancement declined by 3.9 ± 2.6 ppm (36 ± 24%) and 3.5 ± 2.8 ppm (33 ± 26%) during the stay-at-home periods in 2020 and 2021. In contrast, CH4 mole fraction enhancement did not show any significant decrease. Diurnal variation in CO during the stay-at-home period in 2020 was also significantly reduced relative to the reference period in 2020. These reductions in trace gas mole fraction enhancements coincide with the decline of local traffic during the stay-at-home periods, with an estimated reduction in CO and CO2 enhancements of 0.74 ± 0.15 ppb and 0.18 ± 0.05 ppm per percentage decrease in traffic, respectively.

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Impact of Security of School Environment on the Academic Performance of Secondary School Students in Enugu State.

10.36265/ijired.2019.010124 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 175-182

Author(s):

Obiokolocha O.M. ◽

Ofoegbu .

Keyword(s):

Academic Performance ◽

Secondary School ◽

Rural Areas ◽

School Environment ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Secondary School Students ◽

School Buildings ◽

School Students ◽

Enugu State ◽

The Impact

This study was carried out to investigate the impact of security of the school environment on the academic performance of secondary school students in Enugu State. The design of the study was descriptive survey design.The study was guided by two research questions and two null hypotheses. The population for this study was all the teachers in Enugu Education Zone of Enugu State.The population of the teachers was 523 in both urban and rural areas (232 teachers for urban areas and 291 for rural areas). The researchers applied the rule of thumb by getting 10% of the teachers‟ population. The instrument consisted of 12 items whose reliability was gotten by a trial testing inAgbani Education Zone on 15 teachers. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha with an overall reliability index of 0.79 which made the instrument reliable. The data were analysed using mean with standard deviation while t-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study showed that the respondents were of the views that, the security of school environment relating to school buildings have an impact on the academic performance of the secondary school students in Enugu Education Zone to a great extent. It was recommended among others that the school buildings should be looked into seriously by the government, parents, non-governmental organizations among others in order to meet the standard of other secondary schools in different climes for an improved academic performance.

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Does Teacher Training Narrow the Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students? Empirical Evidence from CEPS Baseline Data

Best Evidence of Chinese Education ◽

10.15354/bece.21.ar036 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 1243-1261

Author(s):

Ran Sun ◽

Ping Du

Keyword(s):

Academic Performance ◽

Teacher Training ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Endowment Effect ◽

Baseline Data ◽

Rural Students ◽

Practical Significance ◽

Performance Gap ◽

Urban Rural ◽

The Impact

Based on the baseline data of the China Education Panel Survey, this paper explored the relationship between teacher training and academic performance in urban and rural samples respectively and the impact of teacher training on the urban-rural gap of students' academic performance. The results showed that: firstly, there was a significant urban-rural gap in academic performance, and the gap in high quantiles and language subjects were even larger. Secondly, the results of unconditional quantile regression showed that teacher training could improve the performance of urban students with different academic levels and rural students with intermediate or above academic levels, but it cannot improve the performance of rural students with lower academic levels. In addition, the overall effect of teacher training in urban areas is significantly higher than that in rural areas. Thirdly, different quantiles of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition found that the endowment effect and the coefficient effect of teacher training were the important causes of the urban-rural performance gap, but the relative sizes of the two were different according to the different grades and different quantiles of performance distribution. Therefore, to increase the training opportunities and improve the training quality of rural teachers as well as enhance the resource conversion rate of rural students are of great practical significance for narrowing the urban-rural performance gap.

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