supporting learners with more flexibility and choice . 18 A total of 4,201 activities were reported to have taken place as planned or moved online , with 85 per cent of activity delivered online during the lockdown period ( from 26 March to 31 July 2020 ), compared with just 4 per cent before this period . Efforts to understand the mode of delivery of outreach activity for the 2021 cohort are now underway , as part of the wider programme evaluation .
22 . The findings of this report , which relate to these two most recent cohorts of applicants , should be viewed within this wider context . Gaps in participation and application rates are likely to have been influenced by both the pandemic and the Uni Connect programme . For the 2021 cohort in particular , it is impossible to definitively separate the impact of the Uni Connect programme from that of the pandemic , or to know the application outcomes of learners in target areas if they had not engaged with the Uni Connect programme . Nonetheless , in the final part of this analysis , we have sought to minimise the differences in characteristics between learners from Uni Connect target areas and learners from other areas ( which should in turn minimise any differences in their experience of the pandemic ) to ensure they are comparable .
18
See www . officeforstudents . org . uk / publications / emerging-insight-report-covid-19-and-uni-connect /.
11