Work In Progress: Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Engineering Students' Sense of Belonging and Learning.

This work in progress paper reports on part of a larger project examining engineering students' learning experiences, sense of belonging, motivation, and engineering identity, specifically focusing on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected these attributes and students' connection to others. A survey was distributed in Spring 2021 to engineering students (n = 1565) at a land grant institution in the southeastern U.S. that included open-ended questions about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the students' learning experiences and sense of belonging. Likert-type questions asked students to rate the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic affected their learning experiences, sense of belonging and connections to others (peers, instructors, TAs, other engineering groups). Our analysis of the qualitative data (open-ended survey responses; n=815) used inductive, emergent coding to categorize students' responses. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the quantitative data (close-ended responses) to help visualize emerging themes. Analysis with respect to gender and race/ethnicity revealed significantly lower connections to peers for Hispanic/Latino students when compared to White students. Analysis also found that female students reported statistically higher effects of online learning on their sense of belonging in engineering compared to male students. First year students felt less connected and more stressed than they had prior to the pandemic. First-year and senior students reported lower connections with their TAs than sophomore and junior students. Some students said they relied on technology, such as social media platforms to connect with other students and groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]