Participation and Performance by Gender in Synchronous Online Lectures: Three Unique Case Studies during Emergency Remote Teaching

Studies have documented that men’s voices are generally heard more than women’s voices in face-to-face undergraduate biology classes, and some performance gaps have also been documented. Some of the few studies on gender equity in traditional online biology education suggest that women participate more and perform better in asynchronous online courses compared to men. While much is known about emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating existing inequities generally, studies are needed about the impact of specific emergency remote teaching practices on specific groups such as women. In this study, we performed an in-depth investigation of three life sciences classrooms that utilized synchronous online lectures during the pandemic. We observed each class throughout the semester, quantified participation behaviors, and investigated the role of student gender. We also compared final course grades by gender. On average, we found that men participated more than women both verbally and by chat. These differences were not significant for each class individually, but the differences align with the face-to-face patterns seen in this population previously. Our results also hint that men’s chat comments may be more likely to be acknowledged than women’s chats by peers. We found evidence of greater performance disparities favoring men than seen previously before the pandemic, but not in all classes. We discuss implications for instructors conducting emergency remote teaching as well as the need for larger studies to test the replicability of our results.