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

Abstract

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. We saw no significant change in cognitive engagement, indicating that while students' sense of belonging and self-efficacy ideally increases over the course of the semester, in this case, it did not. Most alarmingly, we found a significant decrease in emotional engagement, with students reporting a drastic decline in positive attitudes toward science. Students' reported stress levels remained unchanged, and students reported a slight increase in their perceived value of the science course they were taking. These data shed light on how the transition to online learning had an overall negative impact on undergraduate student engagement in science courses.

FIGURE 1

Percentage of student behavioral engagement before (Pre) and after (Post) the COVID-19 emergency transition to online learning. Students self-reported the frequency of their behavior on a five-point Likert scale for class participation, meeting with the professor outside of class, and using a study group.

FIGURE 4

Emotional engagement of students before (Pre) and after (Post) the COVID-19 transition to online learning. Calculated perceived value of the course and stress were standardized to a value out of 5 for this graph. Error bars are ± 1 standard error. ***, p < 0.001.

FIGURE 2

Students’ overall behavior, cognitive, emotional, and engagement scores before (Pre) and after (Post) the COVID-19 transition to online learning. Each score was linearly scaled to a range of 0 to 1 for graphing. Error bars are ± 1 standard error. **, p < 0.01; ***, p < 0.001.

FIGURE 3

Cognitive engagement of students before (Pre) and after (Post) the COVID-19 transition to online learning. Calculated self-efficacy and sense of belonging measurements were standardized to a value out of 5 for this graph. Error bars are ± 1 standard error.