This Innovate Practice work-in-progress paperpresents findings around how distance learning, due to the theCOVID-19 pandemic, affected students as measured by time-ontask in programming.In this qualitative study, we examine a group of 36 second yearupper-secondary students in Programming 1 during a nine weekperiod in Spring 2021. During this time, they alternated betweenone whole week of distance learning followed by two weeks of inschool instruction. For the Programming 1 lessons, students usedan online platform to write, edit and run code in. We analyzedthe log data from the platform to estimate time-on-task for eachstudent for every lesson both at home and at school.We observed that students were affected differently by distancelearning as measured by time-on-task. 12 students had moreaverage time-on-task at school. 15 students had more averagetime-on-task at home. Nine students had less than five minutesdifference on average.In addition to the analysis of time-on-task, students weregiven a survey in Fall 2021 to follow up on their experienceswith in-school teaching and distance learning. In the survey,students were asked questions about their study environment athome during distance learning. From the responses, 13 studentsdescribed their study environment as “in bed” despite having access to a table and chair in a room for themselves and twentythree students described their study environment as “playingvideo games during online lectures”. Not surprisingly, studentsthat said they were playing video games during online lectureshad a lower average time-on-task by about ten minutes than theirpeers. Interestingly, students that said they participated in classin bed had a higher average time-on-task by about ten minutesthan their peers.Correlating responses from the survey and time-on-task data,we reason about how students’ study environments at homeaffected their time-on-task and how distance learning has affectedstudents in the pandemic.