Far from Normal – Student struggles with health and social interaction persist through three semesters of education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Ashley J. Earle; Alison R. Kennicutt

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Conference: 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual Conference
Publication Date: July 26, 2021
Start Date: July 26, 2021
End Date: July 19, 2022
Conference Session: How We Tackled the Pandemic
Tagged Division: Mechanical Engineering
Page Count: 29
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--37188
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/37188
Download Count: 361

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Paper Authors

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Ashley J. Earle York College of Pennsylvania

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Ashley is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical and Civil Engineering department at York College of Pennsylvania. She received her B.S in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and B.A. in International Studies from Lafayette College. She then pursued her passion for neuromuscular disease research at Cornell University where she received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering. At York, she is passionate about developing pedagogy that encourages students in reflective learning and personal self reflection in engineering classes in addition to her passion for engineering ethics and conceptual learning.

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biography

Alison R. Kennicutt York College of Pennsylvania orcid.org/0000-0003-2932-356X

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Alison is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at York College of Pennsylvania. She received her B.S. in Civil Engineering and her M. Eng. and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. Her research interests are in drinking water treatment of emerging contaminants and the production of disinfection byproducts. At York College, Alison loves to use hands-on exploration, both in the field and the lab, to trigger curiosity and get students excited about engineering!

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Abstract

The abrupt change from in-person learning to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on academia worldwide. Many schools reduced or relieved teacher evaluations, provided additional opportunities for students to designate courses pass/no credit, or otherwise attempted to alleviate the burden and stress of the sudden transition and a drastically different modality of instruction. In this study, we wanted to evaluate the emotional and behavioral response of the students to various stages of remote teaching – emergency response, planned, and hybrid. We wanted to determine what factors were making it more challenging for our students to learn in this new environment, and to determine if the forewarning of the remote nature of instruction, and therefore also the amount of time instructors had to prepare for the new setting, could offset the stress for students.

We surveyed students at the end of the spring, summer, and fall terms to determine our students emotional and behavioral response to various remote learning delivery methods. Our survey was broken into two major categories, 1) emotional response to remote learning and 2) course structure in the remote learning environment. We analyzed data for our entire engineering program, and in subsets based on major (mechanical, electrical and civil engineering as well as computer science) and class year. Our students participate in co-op rotations, giving us at least two complete class cohorts for the summer and three for the spring and fall. Data has currently been collected for the spring and summer terms, and the fall semester data is pending.

In the spring of 2020, when remote learning was delivered in an emergency response setting, we generally saw that students were moderately displeased with remote learning. In summer 2020, students had 10% more favorable perception of remote learning, remaining globally unchanged throughout the semester. Regardless of semester, the most prominent attitude toward remote learning was wishing they were in person, followed by open-minded. Consistently, approximately 30% of students ranked at least one or more elements of the remote learning environment as making “learning almost impossible” and approximately 60% ranked one or more elements as making “learning highly challenging.” In the spring, we found that approximately 40% of students listed lack of motivation to do work, lack of daily structure, and limited social interactions as at least making learning very challenging or impossible. In the summer, we still saw 40% of students listing lack of motivation and limited social interactions at least at the very challenging level, but the daily structure was improved by holding live synchronous classes, so only 25% of students listed structure as a major challenge. Students found that clearly laid out LMS (learning management system) course resources and flexibility with due dates were the most helpful elements related to course structure. In terms of instructor presence, e-mail availability and the perception of empathy from instructors made the largest positive impact in students feeling supported in their coursework. While these trends were general in their impact across all majors and class years, we found that first years and seniors were especially hard hit with anxiety and disappointment compared to their other cohorts. In addition to that, we found that the specific subprogram structure and delivery could have a major impact on the student response as the Civil Engineering program showed students who reacted as being more open-minded in both semesters compared to other majors.

The sudden shift to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic created many new challenges for faculty and students. While some of those stressors were alleviated by additional preparation time for the semester and/or an adjustment to hybrid delivery, it certainly did not remove them all. Student responses shed some light on areas for improvement, needs for additional types of support, and indicate the importance of community in an educational environment.

Citation
Format

Earle, A. J., & Kennicutt, A. R. (2021, July), Far from Normal – Student struggles with health and social interaction persist through three semesters of education during the COVID-19 pandemic Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37188

TY - CPAPER
AB - The abrupt change from in-person learning to remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on academia worldwide. Many schools reduced or relieved teacher evaluations, provided additional opportunities for students to designate courses pass/no credit, or otherwise attempted to alleviate the burden and stress of the sudden transition and a drastically different modality of instruction. In this study, we wanted to evaluate the emotional and behavioral response of the students to various stages of remote teaching – emergency response, planned, and hybrid. We wanted to determine what factors were making it more challenging for our students to learn in this new environment, and to determine if the forewarning of the remote nature of instruction, and therefore also the amount of time instructors had to prepare for the new setting, could offset the stress for students.

We surveyed students at the end of the spring, summer, and fall terms to determine our students emotional and behavioral response to various remote learning delivery methods. Our survey was broken into two major categories, 1) emotional response to remote learning and 2) course structure in the remote learning environment. We analyzed data for our entire engineering program, and in subsets based on major (mechanical, electrical and civil engineering as well as computer science) and class year. Our students participate in co-op rotations, giving us at least two complete class cohorts for the summer and three for the spring and fall. Data has currently been collected for the spring and summer terms, and the fall semester data is pending.

In the spring of 2020, when remote learning was delivered in an emergency response setting, we generally saw that students were moderately displeased with remote learning. In summer 2020, students had 10% more favorable perception of remote learning, remaining globally unchanged throughout the semester. Regardless of semester, the most prominent attitude toward remote learning was wishing they were in person, followed by open-minded. Consistently, approximately 30% of students ranked at least one or more elements of the remote learning environment as making “learning almost impossible” and approximately 60% ranked one or more elements as making “learning highly challenging.” In the spring, we found that approximately 40% of students listed lack of motivation to do work, lack of daily structure, and limited social interactions as at least making learning very challenging or impossible. In the summer, we still saw 40% of students listing lack of motivation and limited social interactions at least at the very challenging level, but the daily structure was improved by holding live synchronous classes, so only 25% of students listed structure as a major challenge. Students found that clearly laid out LMS (learning management system) course resources and flexibility with due dates were the most helpful elements related to course structure. In terms of instructor presence, e-mail availability and the perception of empathy from instructors made the largest positive impact in students feeling supported in their coursework. While these trends were general in their impact across all majors and class years, we found that first years and seniors were especially hard hit with anxiety and disappointment compared to their other cohorts. In addition to that, we found that the specific subprogram structure and delivery could have a major impact on the student response as the Civil Engineering program showed students who reacted as being more open-minded in both semesters compared to other majors.

The sudden shift to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic created many new challenges for faculty and students. While some of those stressors were alleviated by additional preparation time for the semester and/or an adjustment to hybrid delivery, it certainly did not remove them all. Student responses shed some light on areas for improvement, needs for additional types of support, and indicate the importance of community in an educational environment.

AU - Ashley J. Earle
AU - Alison R. Kennicutt
CY - Virtual Conference
DA - 2021/07/26
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Far from Normal – Student struggles with health and social interaction persist through three semesters of education during the COVID-19 pandemic
UR - https://strategy.asee.org/37188
DO - 10.18260/1-2--37188
ER -