RAPID: Mitigating the Potential Negative Impacts of Involuntary Online Engineering Courses to Diverse Students’ Sense of Belonging

该项目旨在通过确定新冠肺炎疫情期间远程教学的意外转变如何影响来自不同人群的本科工科学生来服务于国家利益。具体地说，这项工作关注的是学生的归属感，这是一个有据可查的学生成功预测因素。向远程教学的快速过渡可能会导致学生面临“三重威胁”，因为学生的个人身份、在线课程形式和STEM学科本身都会阻碍STEM归属感的发展。这一待遇可能对来自种族/民族代表性不足人群的学生、第一代学生、女性和来自低收入背景的学生尤为严重。该项目将在几个传统上面对面举行的在线工程基础课程中开展研究活动。收集和分析这些课程的数据将特别重要，因为它们通常是学生在中学后接触工程学的第一次机会，因此是完成工程学学位的重要第一步。多阶段混合方法方法将解决以下研究问题：(A)工科学生在非自愿远程课程中如何感知自己的归属感？为什么？(B)远程工程课程的哪些要素对公平地培养所有学生的归属感影响最大？该项目将用现有的四项量表来衡量归属感，该机构对此有历史工科学生的反应。鉴于审查在线课程背景下的归属感的重要性，旨在审查在线课程关键要素的探究社区框架也是这项研究的一个组成部分。数据来源将包括对一年级工程学学生的调查，与感兴趣人群的学生组成的小焦点小组，以及课程观察。这项研究设计既可以检验归属感、学生身份和课程交付之间的总体关系，也可以深入了解课程要素为什么以及如何与学生的归属感相关。这项研究发现的影响包括，有可能帮助校园缓解目前正在远程课程的不同学生因新冠肺炎而面临的潜在威胁，以及制定未来避免此类威胁的在线STEM课程。这一快速奖项是由本科生教育部门(教育和人力资源局)的IUSE项目颁发的。这一奖项反映了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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by identifying how the unexpected shift to remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic impacts undergraduate engineering students from diverse populations. Specifically, this work focuses on students’ sense of belonging, which is a documented predictor of student success. The rapid transition to remote teaching may result in students facing a “triple threat,” since student’s personal identities, online course formats, and the STEM disciplines themselves each can obstruct development of a sense of belonging in STEM. This treat may be particularly acute for students from racially/ethnically underrepresented populations, first generation students, women, and students from low income backgrounds. The project will carry out its research activities in several online engineering foundations courses that have traditionally been held in-person. Collecting and analyzing data from these courses will be especially important since they generally serve as students’ first postsecondary exposure to engineering and are thus important first steps towards completing an engineering degree. A multi-phase mixed-methods approach will address the following research questions: (a) How do engineering students perceive their sense of belonging in involuntary remote courses and why? (b) What elements of remote engineering courses are most influential for equitably fostering a sense of belonging for all the students? The project will measure sense of belonging with an existing four-item scale for which the institution has historical engineering student responses. Given the importance of examining sense of belonging in the context of an online course, the Community of Inquiry framework, designed to examine key elements of an online course, is also a component of the study. Sources of data will include surveys of first year engineering students, small focus groups with students from populations of interest, and course observations. The study design affords both examination of the overarching relationships among belonging, student identity, and course delivery as well as in-depth understanding of why and how elements of a course relate to students’ sense of belonging. The impacts of the study’s findings include the potential to help campuses mitigate potential threats facing diverse students currently in remote courses because of COVID-19 and to craft future online STEM courses that avoid such threats. This RAPID award is made by the IUSE program in the Division of Undergraduate Education (Education and Human Resources Directorate).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.