RAPID: Collaborative Research: Faculty Networks Supporting Rapid Transitions to Online Physics Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic

为了最大限度地减少新型冠状病毒在社区内的传播，全国各地的学院和大学都关闭了校园。大多数人还决定转向在线教学，这样学生就可以继续他们的教育，并继续他们的学位课程。为了实现这一目标，所有学科的教师都在争先恐后地将他们的面授课程迅速转移到在线环境中。这些教师中的许多人以前没有在网上授课的经验。许多有经验的人既不熟悉在线环境中的技术，也不熟悉最有效的在线教学方法。这个项目将系统地探索全国各地的物理教职员工在巨大的时间压力下，在将他们的物理课程转移到网上时，如何在网上相互作用。这些在线网络还可以帮助教师克服在线教学的压力，以及确保学生获得有益的教育体验的焦虑。该项目将收集和分析数据，以描述这些网络的特点，以及它们如何在危机期间和以后支持物理和其他STEM学科向在线教学的过渡。学术和社交网络是STEM学生生活的关键要素，对教师也很重要。在这场危机中，教师们正在利用专业的社交网络来支持他们向在线教学的过渡。需要更多的研究来理解这些非正式的教员网络，并将这些网络与教职员工和学生的成果联系起来。由于与冠状病毒相关的向在线教学的过渡如此紧迫和广泛，这种情况呈现出一种独特的环境，在这种情况下，应用社会网络分析技术来研究专业网络在一个学科内的大规模角色。为此，该项目将从三个主要部分收集数据：(1)对过渡到在线教学的物理教师进行调查；(2)对教师进行后续采访；(3)在Twitter上收集数据，以确定正在推广和分享在线教学方法的群体。这三个数据集将被连接在一起，共同为分析网络增长、资源共享、个人社区增长以及大学物理教师焦虑的调解做出贡献。这项研究旨在揭示这场危机在多大程度上：1)调动了潜在的网络，并围绕物理教学形成了新的网络；2)使这些网络变得更加突出和富有成效；3)建立了教职员工对自己在线教授物理的能力的效能信念；以及4)缓和了他们对在线教学的焦虑。除了揭示教师网络是如何本地化和国家化的，研究结果还有助于更好地理解社交网络如何影响不同规模的教学决策。如果是这样的话，这些结果可以为未来关于危机应对期间发生的教育变革的持续性的纵向研究提供信息，这可能在理解制度变革的成功和失败方面具有普遍的应用价值。这一快速奖项由本科生教育部(教育和人力资源局)的改善本科生STEM教育计划(IUSE：EHR)颁发。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

To minimize the spread of the novel coronavirus within their communities, colleges and universities around the nation have closed their campuses. Most have also decided to pivot to online instruction so students can continue their education and remain on track in their degree programs. To accomplish this goal, faculty in all disciplines have scrambled to quickly move their in-person classes to an online environment. Many of these faculty have not had previous experience teaching online. Many who have experience are not fluent with either the technologies or the most effective methods for teaching and learning in online environments. This project will systematically explore the ways in which physics faculty members around the nation, under enormous time pressure, are interacting with each other in online networks as they transition their physics courses online. These online networks can also help faculty navigate the stresses of teaching online and the anxiety of ensuring that students have a beneficial educational experience. This project will gather and analyze data to describe the characteristics of these networks and how they may support the transition to online teaching of physics and other STEM disciplines during a crisis and beyond.Academic and social networks are critical elements of student life in STEM, and they are also important for instructors. During this crisis, faculty are drawing on professional social networks to support their transition to online teaching. Additional research is needed to understand these informal faculty networks and to link these networks to outcomes for faculty and students. Because the coronavirus-related transition to online teaching has been so urgent and widespread, the situation presents a unique setting in which to apply techniques of social network analysis to study the roles of professional networks on a large scale within a discipline. To this end, the project will collect data from three primary components: (1) a survey of physics faculty as they transition to online teaching; (2) follow-up interviews with faculty; and (3) Twitter data-scraping to identify groups that are promoting and sharing approaches to online teaching. The three data sets will be connected and collectively contribute to analyses of network growth, resource sharing, personal community growth, and mediation of anxiety among college physics faculty. The study intends to reveal the extent to which the crisis has: 1) mobilized latent networks and formed new networks around physics teaching; 2) made such networks more salient and productive; 3) built faculty members' efficacy beliefs about their ability to teach physics online; and 4) mediated their anxiety about teaching online. In addition to revealing how faculty networks are localized and nationalized, the results can contribute to a greater understanding of how social networks influence instructional decision-making on different scales. If so, these results can inform future longitudinal studies of the persistence of educational transformations that occur during a crisis response, which may have generalizable application in understanding institutional change successes and failures. This RAPID award is made by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE: EHR) program in the Division of Undergraduate Education (Directorate for Education and Human Resources).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.