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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic early in 2020 forced universities to shut down their campuses and transition to emergency remote instruction (ERI). Students had to quickly adapt to this new mode of instruction while dealing with all other distractions caused by the pandemic. This study integrates extensive data from students’ institutional records at a large Historically Black College and University (HBCU) institution with data from a students’ survey about the impact of COVID-19 on learning during the Spring 2020 semester to examine the impact of the transition to ERI on students’ performance and identify the main factors explaining variations in students’ performance. The main findings of our analysis are: (a) students’ university experience was positively correlated with performance (continuing students who spent at least one academic year at the university prior to the outbreak had better performance than freshman and new transfer students), (b) students’ perceived change in performance after the transition was positively associated with actual performance (students who perceived a decline in their performance after transition to ERI had significantly worse performance than other students), and (c) students’ prior online learning experiences and students’ emotional experiences with the COVID-19 disease were not significantly associated with performance. These results suggest that the approaches adopted by higher education institutions to support students during times of crisis should pay special attention to certain groups of students. 

It is now generally accepted that many students enter college severely underprepared for their mathematics college courses in terms of basic skills and study habits, and that intervention is expected to overcome these deficiencies. As a result, many mathematics departments nationwide have over the last two decades redesigned their algebra and calculus courses to incorporate technology and active learning in various combinations, some of which have utilized extensive learning space designs. This article is a preliminary report of one Historically Black College or University’s (HBCU) experience with its redesign of the first semester of Calculus for STEM Majors that resulted in a course-wide partial implementation of the Student-Centered Active Learning Environments with Upside-down Pedagogies (SCALE-UP) method. Preliminary results show that the redesign, enabled by institutional and external resource coordination, has led to moderate improvements in course pass rates, from a normal of 40% and below to a new normal of above 50%. The pass/fail student profile suggests that weakness in pre-requisite skills is a major cause of failure.