Collaborative Research: RAPID: Approaches to Online Implementation and Social Support in Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Engineering - The pandemic of COVID-19 is disrupting undergraduate engineering education globally. Students have been asked to move out of their campus residences and back home to take courses online. While some students may quickly adjust and continue to do well in their courses, others may struggle to feel connected to campus and their courses. Recent research has found that peers are a major support for engineering students and supportive social relationships and networks are critical for navigating through engineering education and careers. This research will provide an understanding of how engineering instructors are supporting student connections in their courses and what other social supports students have during this time.

This research explores how choices made by engineering instructors during the COVID-19 pandemic are associated with undergraduate engineering students? academic social capital and achievement of learning outcomes. This work uses a multiple cross-case comparison of three undergraduate engineering courses taught in different ways. Data is collected from three team-based engineering courses at Purdue University: a large first-year course, a medium-sized senior-level capstone course, and a small service-learning course that has first year through senior-level students. Data collection consists of student surveys, interviews with students, faculty, and graduate teaching assistants, course documents such as syllabi and schedules, and student assignment scores. The findings from this study will make online and in-person instruction more inclusive and easier for instructors because it will help make future decisions to ensure that all students have the resources they need to be successful in the course and to persist in their major. Findings and recommendations will be shared with instructors of the courses studied, potentially influencing the learning experiences of more than 3,000 students each year. The research team will use the results of this research to create a list of best practices for online STEM instructors which will be disseminated to the public through social media, professional organization outlets, and archival journals. Ultimately, findings will inform STEM instructors about what they can do to support the success of all undergraduate students by helping them to build academic social capital, whether during online or in-person instruction.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.