Department of Information Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853;
W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Mar 16;118(11). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2026725118.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed peoples' lives in unexpected ways, especially how they allocate their time between work and other activities. Demand for online learning has surged during a period of mass layoffs and transition to remote work and schooling. Can this uptake in online learning help close longstanding skills gaps in the US workforce in a sustainable and equitable manner? We answer this question by analyzing individual engagement data of DataCamp users between October 2019 and September 2020 ( = 277,425). Exploiting the staggered adoption of actions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 across states, we identify the causal effect at the neighborhood level. The adoption of nonessential business closures led to a 38% increase in new users and a 6% increase in engagement among existing users. We find that these increases are proportional across higher- and lower-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods with a high or low share of Black residents. This demonstrates the potential for online platforms to democratize access to knowledge and skills that are in high demand, which supports job security and facilitates social mobility.
新冠疫情以出人意料的方式改变了人们的生活，尤其是他们在工作和其他活动之间分配时间的方式。在大规模裁员以及向远程工作和远程教育过渡期间，在线学习的需求猛增。这种在线学习的普及能否以可持续和公平的方式帮助弥合美国劳动力中由来已久的技能差距？我们通过分析 2019 年 10 月至 2020 年 9 月（=277425）DataCamp 用户的个人参与数据来回答这个问题。利用各州采取措施减缓 COVID-19 传播的时间差，我们在社区层面上确定了因果效应。非必要商业关闭的采用导致新用户增加了 38%，现有用户的参与度增加了 6%。我们发现，这些增长在高收入和低收入社区以及黑人和低收入社区之间是成比例的。这表明在线平台有可能使知识和技能的获取民主化，这些知识和技能的需求很高，这有助于保障工作安全并促进社会流动。
