Going the Distance or Growing More Remote? The Academic Impacts of Course Modality following Pandemic-Era Investments

May 2025

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education has rapidly expanded, transforming the landscape of community colleges. This paper explores how different online learning modalities impact student success in the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), one of the largest and most diverse systems in the United States. With the purpose of providing actionable insights to community college leaders seeking to improve student outcomes and plan modality offerings moving forward, our analyses examine how student academic performance is influenced by participation in online courses and the extent of online course enrollment, as well as how outcomes vary based on course type, subject area, prior academic performance, and student demographics. Our findings suggest that enrolling in online courses leads to a slight reduction in students’ GPAs, has no impact on credits earned, and has a moderate negative effect on persistence. Negative impacts are driven by dosage of online course taking, modality choice, and course subject.

Keywords

community college; distance education; COVID-19

Education level

Post-secondary education

Topics

Pathways to and Through Postsecondary