Instructor Perceptions of Student Incivility in the Online Undergraduate Science Classroom

Abstract

Student incivility, defined as a student behavior perceived to be disrespectful or disruptive to the overall learning environment in a course, can negatively affect the science learning environment and instructors. The transition to online science courses during the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique environment for student incivility to take place in undergraduate courses. There are few studies that examine student incivility in online synchronous courses, and we know of no studies that have investigated student incivility during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we surveyed 283 instructors across U.S. institutions who taught undergraduate science courses with synchronous online components. We probed their experiences with student incivility during the fall 2020 term. Over half of instructors surveyed reported experiencing student incivility, with women being more likely than men to report student incivility. Compared with white instructors, people of color were more likely to perceive an increase in student incivility in fall 2020 relative to previous in-person terms. This work indicates that student incivility is perceived in the online synchronous learning environment and that the negative impacts of perceived student incivility during COVID-19 online instruction were not distributed equally among instructors, disproportionately burdening women and people of color.

Keywords: COVID-19; Zoom; gender; instructor; online learning; race; remote instruction; science; student incivility; uncivil.

FIG 1

Instructor experiences with incivility by demographic group. (A) Percent of all instructors who reported experiencing incivility in their online science courses. (B) Demographic differences in who reported experiencing incivility. The vertical dashed line at x = 1 indicates that the group of interest and reference group (in parentheses) had equal odds of experiencing incivility, points to the right of the line indicate the group of interest had greater odds of experiencing incivility compared with the reference group, and error bars which do not cross the dashed line reflect statistical significance. (C) Percent of instructors who reported an increase in incivility in their online science courses compared with their in-person courses. (D) Demographic differences in who reported experiencing increased incivility. Error bars which do not cross the vertical dashed line at x = 1 indicate statistical significance and points to the right of the line indicate that the group of interest had higher odds of reported increased incivility than the reference group.