What the Pandemic Taught Us About Learning Online: Teachers Learn Differently Than Students

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When schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, education systems around the world moved online almost overnight.

The question most researchers asked was simple: Do students learn well online?

But another question mattered just as much—and received far less attention:

Can teachers learn new skills online?

Evidence from Armenia suggests the answer is mixed. Online training works well for sharing information. But when it comes to developing teaching skills, face-to-face training still matters.

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A Natural Experiment in Teacher Training

In Armenia, the pandemic arrived at an inconvenient time.

The government had just introduced new financial literacy topics into the national curriculum for grades 2 to 11. Teachers were scheduled to receive in-person training on these topics, as they had in previous years.

Then COVID-19 hit.

Part of the training was delivered in person in 2019. The rest, in 2020, had to move fully online. The content, assessments, and timeline remained largely the same.

This created a rare opportunity: a natural experiment comparing online teacher training with traditional face-to-face training.

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Three Questions Guided the Study

Using detailed data from Armenian schools, researchers focused on three core questions:

1. Did online training affect teachers’ ability to learn?

2. Did the impact differ depending on what was being taught?

3. Which teacher characteristics influenced success in online learning?

To answer these, teachers completed standardized tests before training and again three months later.

The results were revealing.

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Online Training Helped—but Less Than In-Person Training

The first finding was encouraging.

Teachers improved in both years. Whether trained online or in person, they learned more than they knew before.

But the size of the improvement mattered.

Teachers trained online in 2020 showed significantly smaller gains than those trained face to face in 2019. The conclusion was clear:

Online teacher training worked—but not as well.

The difference was not trivial. It pointed to a structural limitation of remote learning for teachers.

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Not All Learning Is the Same

To understand why online training underperformed, researchers separated learning into two categories:

1. Factual knowledge

2. Implementation skills

Factual Knowledge Transfers Well Online

Factual knowledge included core financial concepts such as:

• Compound interest

• Inflation

• Risk diversification

On these topics, online and in-person training performed almost equally well.

This aligns with broader research: digital learning is effective for transmitting information.

If the goal is to explain ideas, definitions, or rules, online platforms can work.

Teaching Skills Do Not

Implementation skills told a different story.

These included:

• Integrating financial topics into lessons

• Planning lectures

• Choosing appropriate concepts

• Designing assessments

Teachers trained online showed significantly weaker improvement in these areas.

The reason is intuitive.

Teaching skills are social. They depend on discussion, modeling, feedback, and shared problem-solving. These elements are harder to replicate in virtual environments.

Information travels easily online. Practice does not.

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Who Struggled Most With Online Training?

Not all teachers were affected equally.

Several personal and household characteristics influenced outcomes:

• Married teachers performed worse online than in person, while unmarried and divorced teachers showed no significant difference.

• Teachers from higher-income households performed better online, while income made little difference in face-to-face training.

• Teachers who were the main household earners benefited more from in-person training.

These patterns point to a common explanation: learning conditions matter.

Online training shifts the burden of structure from the system to the individual. Teachers with stable internet, quiet workspaces, fewer caregiving responsibilities, and lower stress adapted better.

Those without these advantages struggled.

Online learning does not just test motivation. It tests environment.

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This's Implications for Teacher Training's Future

The pandemic forced education systems to experiment at scale.

That experiment delivered a clear message:

• Online learning is effective for knowledge acquisition

• It is weaker for skill development

• And it amplifies existing inequalities

This does not mean online teacher training should be abandoned.

It means it should be used strategically.

Use online platforms to:

• Deliver background knowledge

• Share materials and resources

• Reduce travel and scheduling costs

But rely on in-person—or at least highly interactive—formats to:

• Practice instructional techniques

• Build classroom management skills

• Develop confidence and professional judgment

Hybrid models are not a compromise. They are a necessity.

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The Core Lesson

Education systems often ask whether online learning works.

The better question is: works for what—and for whom?

The Armenian experience shows that teaching teachers is different from teaching students. Skills require interaction. Judgment requires feedback. Confidence grows through shared experience.

Technology can support teacher learning.
It cannot replace the conditions that make learning stick.

The future of teacher development is not fully online or fully offline.

It is deliberately blended—designed around how adults actually learn to teach.