During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many K-12 students in China relied on online video courses for education. Prior studies suggest that taking pure online courses can negatively impact academic achievement. To address this, Wang and colleagues conducted a randomized controlled experiment to investigate whether enhancing teacher-student interaction could mitigate these effects for primary students.
The study involved 3,037 grade 3-5 students from 72 classes in 5 schools which were randomly selected in a rural county in South-Central China. One class per grade in each school was randomly assigned to the treatment classes, while the remaining served as the control groups. During the spring semester of 2020, the 15 teachers of the treatment classes delivered a 30-minute interactive online recitation session weekly after the regular online classes for 16 weeks. In these sessions, teachers answered student questions, called on students to answer questions about the taught material, and communicated with them regarding their mental state. Control group students were directed to self-study at home during the same period.
After controlling for baseline scores and background characteristics, the results revealed:
- The treatment group students had significantly higher exam scores than the control group (ES = +0.185).
- Low-ability students achieved greater improvement compared to high-ability students.
- Students in the treatment group reported greater improvements in extraversion (ES=+0.13), openness (ES=+0.09), and conscientiousness (ES=+0.16), compared to the control group.
The authors suggested that the online tutorial sessions may have enhanced academic performance through improving in-class attention and increasing study hours after school. They also speculated that the intervention strengthened personality traits by increasing parental engagement hours with their children. However, these proposed mechanisms require more rigorous examination.
Source: Wang, C., Wang, Y., Xiao, A., Zhang, Y., & Zou, H. (2025). Student development in teacher–student interaction: Evidence from a randomized experiment in online education. Journal of Public Economics, 242, 105285. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105285