Student reflections on emotional engagement reveal science fatigue during the COVID-19 online learning transition.

Numerous quantitative studies in science education found that student engagement declined after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but analyses to identify the factors that drove emotional engagement down are lacking. Emotional engagement is a multidimensional construct composed of interest in an academic discipline, value in an academic course, and anxiety. Here, we use qualitative analysis to examine how and why the emergency shift from face-to-face to online classes during and after the pandemic-induced emergency remote transition impacted student emotional engagement.

Training Faculty as an Institutional Response to COVID-19 Emergency Remote Teaching Supported by Data.

In March 2020, colleges in the United States rapidly switched in-person courses online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. To chronicle how biology faculty responded to this emergency remote teaching, we surveyed faculty across the United States in August of 2020. Our survey included open-ended questions to identify a memorable moment, difficulties encountered, and unexpected benefits during the first COVID-19 semester.

Student Engagement Declines in STEM Undergraduates during COVID-19-Driven Remote Learning.

We examined how the shift in learning environment from in-person to online classes, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, impacted three constructs of student engagement: behavioral engagement, including students' frequency of participating in class discussions, meeting with instructors, and studying with peers outside of class; cognitive engagement, including students' sense of belonging and self-efficacy; and emotional engagement, including students' attitudes toward science, their perceived value of the course, and their stress. Seventy-three undergraduate STEM students from across the country completed five-point Likert-style surveys in these areas of student engagement, both prior to their science course transitioning online and at the end of the spring 2020 semester. We found that while overall behavioral engagement did not change, students participated less frequently in class discussions but met with professors more often outside of class.