Business Ethics During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Quantitative Analysis of Remote Learning on Business Students

Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the education system in immeasurable ways. Given today’s uncertainties, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students’ remote learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although many studies have investigated this area, limited information is available regarding the comparison between business ethics students’ performance before and during the pandemic in terms of their final grades. Thus, this study attempts to add more information. Using a quantitative comparative analysis, the author performed a one-way ANOVA to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between business ethics students’ final grades before COVID-19 and business ethics students’ final grades during COVID-19. Using constructivism learning theory, the researcher related student performance to instructional method. The findings revealed that the performance of business ethics students showed no statistically significant difference in terms of student final grades across semesters. Their greatest challenge was linked to their learning environment, while their least challenge was technological literacy and competency. The findings further revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had the greatest impact on students’ ability to focus due to stress. To cope with the stress, students used university resources including the student resource center, computer labs, and student support staff. Implications for classroom pedagogy and future research were discussed. This study contributes to the knowledge on further adapting to online instructional methods for the delivery of higher education business materials. Future research could expand the subject matter to include further analyses of extraneous variables such as socio- economic class, educational infrastructure, and preferred learning styles.