Q&A With Eleni Packis: Supporting Student Engagement During Remote Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed the landscape of schooling by moving everything completely online. Years later, we’re still seeing the lasting effects of the pandemic on instruction: schools are now better equipped to provide virtual instruction, and schools are employing virtual methods of schooling more regularly. For example, most snow-prone states now have policies that permit schools to use e-learning days instead of cancelling school for snow days. Students also increasingly experience unplanned disruptions to their schooling related to a multitude of factors (including natural disasters, climate change, school-based violence, social and political unrest, and health events) that can cause schooling to temporarily move fully online.

It has become incredibly important to understand how to engage students during periods of virtual instruction. There isn’t much research out there on how to promote students’ engagement with remote schooling, and we know that schools experienced a lot of difficulties with virtual student engagement during the pandemic. This study was motivated by the drop in school participation that Chicago Public Schools experienced during the spring of 2020. Our research team partnered with CPS to evaluate whether several interventions designed to re-engage the students who struggled the most during remote schooling were effective.

This study is asking: how can we more effectively engage students during remote schooling? We are applying several methods that have been shown to improve engagement with in-person schooling, and testing their efficacy during remote instruction.

During the summer of 2020, CPS held a virtual program called Summer Learning designed for 1st – 8th grade students who either never attended class during the remote learning period in the 2019-2020 school year, or who received a grade of “incomplete” in math or reading. We evaluated the effectiveness of three interventions to re-engage students: 1) calling eligible families to encourage students to register for Summer Learning, 2) sending weekly text message reminders to families encouraging their registered students to attend class over the summer, or 3) a more intensive intervention that provided instructional support to improve learning and engagement. In this third intervention, we assigned a teacher’s aide to a randomized set of virtual math classrooms to assist with contacting families and providing in-class support to the lead teachers.

Why is it important for public policy scholars to answer these types of questions? What do you hope school administrators will take away from your research?

Virtual schooling presents unique challenges as compared to in-person schooling. There are multiple forms of distraction that students experience when learning remotely. These include the lack of physical presence of teachers and peers, as well as potential environmental distractions within a student’s home, like from their family members or noise from their surroundings. Our research speaks to ways that schools can work to engage students despite those distractions.

We worked closely with CPS to utilize existing resources within the district to conduct these interventions, such as their already set-up automated text messaging system for students and families, to try to minimize additional costs. We find promising results that show that students’ attendance and engagement within virtual learning environments can be improved. These positive effects show that it is possible to re-engage the most vulnerable students with remote learning (and schooling more broadly) through the use of both light-touch nudges and more intensive instructional support.

I’ve worked on the summer learning study since its inception in the spring of 2020.

The Ed Lab granted me the opportunity of being the lead data analyst on this project, meaning for the first time, I was in charge of writing all of the code, managing our data infrastructure, and helping to present results to the team. My role since then has been expanded to being a coauthor on the paper, and I’ve worked with the team to write the paper and present our findings at conferences. It’s been an unbelievably beneficial learning experience to be involved with every stage of the research process.

I am in my fifth year as a PhD student in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. The Ed Lab really inspired my entire career trajectory. I started working at the Ed Lab in 2019 as a Data Project Associate, and the research “bug” bit me pretty quickly. At the Ed Lab, I assisted with several citywide program evaluations, where we worked closely with Chicago Public Schools to figure out what types of programs they offered helped students the most. I’m so grateful for my experiences with the Ed Lab, because they really showed me the positive power of research, and the importance of community partnership and trust in that process.