The outcomes of lockdown in the higher education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic

Peiling Cai; Peng Ye; Yihao Zhang; Rui Dai; Jingchun Fan; Brett D. Hambly; Shisan Bao; Kun Tao

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0282907

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 14, 2022
8 Dec 2022 Decision Letter - Xiangjie Kong, Editor PONE-D-22-27104The outcomes of lockdown in the higher education sector during the COVID-19 pandemicPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Bao, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 22 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. 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Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Authors in this paper investigated the impact of lockdown on tertiary-level academic performance, by comparing educational outcomes amongst first-year students during second semester of their medical course prior to and during lockdown. This paper reveals to us a very interesting conclusion: the scores were improved significantly for both sexes during lockdown in 2020, following the complete online teaching. There some suggestions and concerns are listed as following: 1. Is it reasonable to use final grades to measure students' learning outputs? Is it due to certain differences in the content and difficulty of the exam? 2. Two specific examples are suggested to illustrate the plausibility of the results of this study, such as comparing learning outcomes by comparing the scores of two groups of students on computer programming questions with similar academic requirements. 3. It is recommended that the authors collect and study data of students' self-assessments about their mastery degree of some specific knowledge. Reviewer #2: An interesting study that covered majority of the first year medical course subjects undertaken prior to and during COVID-19. I cannot find any fault to it since all have been explained, analysed and discussed very well. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. 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Revision 1
8 Feb 2023 Author Response Dr Xiangjie Kong Academic Editor PLOS ONE PONE-D-22-27104 Dear Dr Kong We appreciate the constructive comments made by the reviewers, our responses are as follows: 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes The manuscript is being revised accordingly to improve the quality as specified by reviewer #1 in the following sections. 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Thanks 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Thanks 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Thanks 5. Review Comments to the Author Reviewer #1: This paper reveals to us a very interesting conclusion. Thanks There some suggestions and concerns are listed as following: 1. a. Is it reasonable to use final grades to measure students' learning outputs? This point requires clarification, so we have added the following section in Materials and Methods, it now reads: “In all subjects, the overall assessment resulting in the final grades consisted of three elements: the Daily Performance, Mid term Tests and the Final Test, which followed the criteria for teaching management at Chengdu University. Thus, the final grades reflected the overall performance of the students throughout each term. In addition, as an example, for the subject Histology Practice we have provided detailed data on these three specific elements by applying The Electronic Teaching Management System (Fig. 4), to acquire more detailed academic performance data and carry out a more adequate statistical analysis.” (Materials and Methods). b. Is it due to certain differences in the content and difficulty of the exam? (2) Agree, we have added the following section in the Discussion, it now reads: “Notably, it is possible that the differences in performance that we observed may be due to certain difference in the content that was provided to students and/or differences in the difficulty of the assessments that were undertaken. With the possible exception of Sports, the teaching staff involved were confident that both content and assessments were very close to identical between the two cohorts. However, our future studies will verify this point.” 2. Two specific examples are suggested to illustrate the plausibility of the results of this study, such as comparing learning outcomes by comparing the scores of two groups of students on computer programming questions with similar academic requirements. We agree completely. However, the current study was performed 2 years ago in response to a specific emergency situation (the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns) and the teaching model that has been subsequently changed into a combined online and face-to-face teaching format, partly in response to the data presented in this manuscript. However, we will perform such testing in a future study. 3. It is recommended that the authors collect and study data of students' self-assessments about their mastery degree of some specific knowledge. We appreciate such constructive comments, however, we are not able to pursue this question further, because the students have reached clinical years now, and their depth of clinical perspective in relation to the basics sciences has changed since 2020. Thus, the students’ self-assessments may not be objective or clear to enable the test of this hypothesis. We have added this limitation into the Discussion, it now reads: “Additionally, a useful insight may be gained in future by surveying data concerning the students' self-assessments perception about the extent of their mastery of some specific essential knowledge in each subject, which will be performed in a future study.” Reviewer #2: An interesting study that covered majority of the first year medical course subjects undertaken prior to and during COVID-19. I cannot find any fault to it since all have been explained, analysed and discussed very well. Thanks We have modified our manuscript accordingly. Yours sincerely Shisan Bao Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: rebutttal Plos Med3.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282907.r002
27 Feb 2023 Decision Letter - Xiangjie Kong, Editor The outcomes of lockdown in the higher education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic PONE-D-22-27104R1 Dear Dr. Bao, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Xiangjie Kong Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Authors in this paper investigated the impact of lockdown on tertiary-level academic performance, by comparing educational outcomes amongst first-year students during second semester of their medical course prior to and during lockdown. This paper reveals to us a very interesting conclusion: the scores were improved significantly for both sexes during lockdown in 2020, following the complete online teaching. The previous problems have been solved perfectly. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282907.r003
Formally Accepted
14 Apr 2023 Acceptance Letter - Xiangjie Kong, Editor PONE-D-22-27104R1 The outcomes of lockdown in the higher education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic Dear Dr. Bao: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Xiangjie Kong Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282907.r004

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