Rapid Change to Refined Teaching: Lessons Learned and Lasting Impacts the COVID-19 Pandemic Had on How We Teach Engineering.

This research paper will assess the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on learning strategies implemented by engineering faculty during the purely online phase of the pandemic and following the return to in-person classes. The Covid-19 pandemic forced faculty to entirely reformat their courses such that they could be accessible in an online format. In this paper, the authors interrogate how this dramatic restructuring of courses has had a lasting impact on how professors think about teaching. A first objective of this study is to identify changes in the learning and assessment strategies employed by engineering faculty pre-pandemic, during-pandemic, and following the return to in-person teaching. Furthermore, this study aims to identify motivations and barriers faculty faced when choosing and implementing various learning and assessment strategies in their courses following the return to in-person classes. To meet these objectives, the authors collected data using an electronic survey that evaluated learning and assessment strategies employed by faculty, along with motivations for selecting these strategies. Forty-five faculty responded and identified 26 unique learning strategies. Fourteen learning strategies showed a greater than 40% growth in implementation between prepandemic and the return to in-person teaching. The top six all leveraged technology tools, and the top three leveraged the use of virtual-video platforms for delivering course content. The key motivators for faculty to maintain and improve learning strategies following the return to in-person teaching include striking a balance between effort to implement and positive impact on students, engaging students, and improving the accessibility of course content. We intend to present this work in the traditional lecture style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]