3435 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Chelsea LeNoble
  2. https://faculty.erau.edu/Chelsea.LeNoble
  3. Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
  1. Kristin Horan
  2. Assistant Professor
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of Central Florida
  1. Mindy Shoss
  2. Associate professor
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of Central Florida

RAPID: Collaborative Proposal: Effects of Institutional Responses to the COVI...

NSF Awards: 2029754

2021 (see original presentation & discussion)

Undergraduate

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in unprecedented, nation-wide disruption of academic institutions. As a result, there is an urgent need to understand the acute effects of this disruption on undergraduate STEM education in the U.S. This video reports on findings that have been generated from an ongoing project examining experiences of faculty and students resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent institutional changes. Initiated during a time of uncertainty, this project aims to: (1) capture the ephemeral nature of undergraduate education experiences before and as national recovery milestones are achieved; and (2) inform efforts to adapt undergraduate STEM education during crises. The project team has collected data about institutional characteristics and crisis communication messages, as well as about experiences of individual faculty and students. These data are being analyzed to identify pathways through which the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced teaching and learning within undergraduate STEM education. The findings of this project are being used to develop actionable recommendations for institutions of higher education, including crisis communication strategies, guidelines for pedagogy in times of crisis, and checklists of resources. As the STEM workforce plays a critical role in the economic health of the U.S. in normal and disaster situations, this effort to rapidly collect data and learn from this situation contributes to the security and well-being of society. It is expected that these results will also support a more resilient, globally competitive next generation of STEM workers.

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Discussion from the 2021 STEM For All Video Showcase (29 posts)
  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 10, 2021 | 12:01 p.m.

    My name is Dr. Chelsea LeNoble, and along with my Co-PI's Dr. Kristin Horan and Dr. Mindy Shoss, I welcome you to our STEM for All Video page! I hope everyone who visits our page is doing well and having a nice week.

    Our project began in May of 2020, and our final wave of data collection is currently underway. We are examining the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on undergraduate faculty and students across the country from an organizational science and occupational health perspective. 

    To all who view our video, we encourage you to think about the resources that may or may not have been available at your institution when the pandemic began and how that may have changed over time. We look forward to your questions, comments, and discussion. 

    If you would like to see updates as we continue to conduct analyses and identify best practices, you're welcome to check out our Facebook page and/or our study website. You can reach us via email as well! 

    Thank you,

    Chelsea, Kristin, & Mindy

  • Icon for: Patricia Marsteller

    Patricia Marsteller

    Facilitator
    Professor of Practice Emeritus
    May 10, 2021 | 12:28 p.m.

    This is really fascinating...where will it be published?  I'd really like to share this information with colleagues.

    What are best practices that higher ed adopt and adapt?

    What have you learned that we can reccommend to administrators and faculty?

     

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 10, 2021 | 02:04 p.m.

    Thank you, Patricia! We are finishing our final round of data collection, and hope to be publishing the results of our full study soon thereafter. We will also be hosting results on our study website as they're available and will post any presentations or publications that are published there, too.

    One of the important things we've learned so far is that self-efficacy for change is one of the strongest predictors of undergraduate faculty and student burnout, teaching/learning efficacy, and resilience. So, we're looking into the different resources that best predict self-efficacy for change. Our preliminary results indicate that there are four resources that institutions can provide that result in higher self-efficacy for change for both faculty and students:

    • Continuous COVID-19 updates from the institution
    • Personalized messages checking in on well-being
    • New mental health support
    • Course-relevant guidance and support
  • Icon for: Patricia Marsteller

    Patricia Marsteller

    Facilitator
    Professor of Practice Emeritus
    May 12, 2021 | 04:42 p.m.

    Thanks for this response.  I guess my concern is that sometimes the response officially has been beurocratic and not consultative.  I like the personalized messages...If I get one more generic cvoid update  form my own institution, I may scream.

    Sounds like you all are figuring it out.  I am glad to hear that we may find appropriate resources for faculty, student and staff .  We can all use resources for resiliance!!

    Loooking forward to hearing more

     
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    Chelsea LeNoble
  • Icon for: Crystal James

    Crystal James

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 10, 2021 | 03:25 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing this important work.  As the Special Assistant to the President for COVID19 Recovery, I am intimately involved in discussions regarding curriculum changes and student impact.  I would love to see have we can collaborate in the future.

    Kudos,

    Crystal M. James, JD, MPH

     

     
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    Chelsea LeNoble
  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 10, 2021 | 06:12 p.m.

    Thank you so much for your comment. I sent you an email in case you'd like to discuss ideas!

  • Icon for: Pendred Noyce

    Pendred Noyce

    Founder and Executive Director
    May 11, 2021 | 08:46 a.m.

    As the mother of a child who spent their last quarter of college, as they and their friends put it, attending Zoom University, this hits home. I wonder what the impact of graduating during COVID has had on the career plans and paths of STEM students. Do graduating students make up part of your surveys?

    In our own project (#1984), we have tried to mix teaching about data science and epidemiology with opportunities for kids (we're working with grades 4-8 in afterschool) to process their own uncertainties and frustrations and put them in a historical and global perspective. But we're not doing so through literature and discussion, not from an institutional perspective. We're trying to empower kids to be able to access and consider their own up-to-date information. We'll see how it goes--early pilot kids found themselves on the whole less anxious about the pandemic.

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 11, 2021 | 02:17 p.m.

    Thank you for your comment and question, Pendred! We did ask students what they believe the impact of COVID-19 will be on their major academic and career milestones, including graduation and their anticipated STEM career. So, we believe those data will be particularly informative. 

  • Icon for: Preeti Gupta

    Preeti Gupta

    Researcher
    May 11, 2021 | 12:11 p.m.

    I am so glad that you have a presentation in this showcase! Our Rapid grant complements your project. For the last four years we have been studying the trajectories of nearly 500 youth who had in-depth mentored science research experiences when they were in high school. In documenting their trajectories longitudinally, we are looking at the obstacles they face as they pursue their majors, with 75% planning on STEM majors, and the opportunities and resources they leverage to support persistence. When the pandemic hit, the Rapid Grant we received allows us to continue documenting these same youth as they went through college. With very similar research questions to yours, we are gathering data on the types of resources college youth have access to, the types of significant adults and peers they are using and where they need more supports. Your findings align with our emerging findings - we are 8 months into the project. We will connect with you offline because we are about to start the next phase of our study which is focused on the significant adults and it be good if we can build off of your existing findings! The mid-year report for our Rapid grant can be found here: https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/evaluation-res...

    Our showcase video is here: https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/presentations/2149

     

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 11, 2021 | 02:19 p.m.

    Mentored research experiences are such a wonderful resources for students; thank you for this important work, Preeti! 

  • Icon for: Jay Labov

    Jay Labov

    Facilitator
    Senior Advisor for Education and Communication (Retired)
    May 11, 2021 | 02:16 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing this work! Throughout the pandemic I kept asking myself whether and how pandemic experiences, responses, and planning were being captured and analyzed so that we can hopefully learn from this vast social experiment in ways that will help us better confront disasters in the future, which are inevitable. I'm also pleased to see from this discussion thread that others are also undertaking different aspects of this critical research.

    Could you please say more about how you define self-efficacy? I've been wondering whether affording students some level of decision-making, especially during this pandemic, is preferable to having institutions provide mostly top-down support. For example, we're now reading about the political battles that are about to ensue, especially at public state universities, about whether those institutions will require students to be vaccinated before they can return to campus. Telling people that they have to do something (or, in some cases, don't have to do something like getting the vaccine) vs. educating them in ways that lead them to make more informed decisions about such matters is an interesting conundrum. I've long been a proponent for teaching STEM subjects in ways that will allow students to understand that knowledge and understanding of these fields is personally empowering, but too often they are not taught with that kind of conceptual framework in mind. Do your think that your research will be able to help institutions focus on approaches to teaching and learning in addition to the other kinds of institutional support that they have provided students during the pandemic?

     
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    Judith Dilts
  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 11, 2021 | 03:07 p.m.

    Absolutely! We used a few scales that capture different types of efficacy. For all respondents, we asked questions about their self-efficacy of handling changes their institutions were implementing due to COVID-19. An example item is, "When we implement this change, I feel I can handle it with ease." We also measured faculty teaching efficacy and student learning efficacy. Example items are "Even if the work is hard, I can learn it," and "I am good at helping all the students in my classes make significant improvements," respectively. 

    You bring up a great question about the role of autonomy in making decisions and whether it really makes sense to have all of the support come top-down from institutions. We're interested in the fact that institutions are making decisions that folks might not understand or agree with. We use an occupational health psychology framing, so the idea is that there are multiple factors and sources of resources that contribute to whether faculty and students feel they can cope with the changes that have emerged due to COVID-19 and how certain well-being outcomes (like anxiety, burnout, resilience) influence their teaching and learning. Some of those resources come from the institution and some of them are individual differences (as well as the interactions between the two).

    One of the exciting things we're doing that wasn't able to be covered in the video is that we asked participants to upload a message that their institution sent out that was particularly impactful, and we'll be linking different components of these uploaded messages to survey responses. This will allow us to look a bit closer at the way institutions' decisions around COVID-19 (and communication of those decisions) affect teaching and learning. 

    Thanks so much for the feedback and questions, Jay!

  • Icon for: Eric Hamilton

    Eric Hamilton

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 11, 2021 | 02:54 p.m.

    This is a very useful and instructive presentation.  Thank you very much for sharing it and your findings.  I think it helps people situate their interpretation of their own experiences and feelings in addition to those with whom they work.

     
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    Chelsea LeNoble
  • Icon for: Preeti Gupta

    Preeti Gupta

    Researcher
    May 12, 2021 | 03:26 p.m.

    Would you be able to share your sample size and how many different institutions participated in the study? Were you able to distinguish between race/gender or other demographics?

     

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 12, 2021 | 05:28 p.m.

    Sure thing, Preeti; thank you for this question. In this post on our study Facebook page, you can see an infographic that summarizes the institutions that participated in our study.

    In our survey, we also collected demographic information across a few different categories, including race, gender, age, marital status, and caregiver status. Because of the importance of accurately representing identities and intersections of identities among faculty and students in our sample, we want to ensure we've collected our last wave of data (which is ongoing) before reporting final demographic rates of participants. I can say that from our first survey, our 36% of respondents identify as a man, 60% as a woman, and 4% as transgender, non-binary, or other. For race, 78% identify as White/Caucasian, 7% as Black, 8% as Asian, 4% as Native, 7% as Hispanic/Latinx, 1% Middle Eastern, and 1% Pacific Islander (therefore there are also those who identify as multiple races). For marital status, 55% are single, 24% married, 16% in a relationship, and 3% divorced or widowed. Our participants' ages range from 18 to 80 with a mean age of 28. For caregiving, 40% indicated having children under 18 years in their household and 7% indicated having caregiving responsibility for someone other than a child. 

     
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    Preeti Gupta
  • Icon for: Lydia Horne

    Lydia Horne

    Researcher
    May 12, 2021 | 07:03 p.m.

    Really important work you're doing that I could see being expanded/applicable to other grade levels. Did you collect data from students who graduated from high school and entered college during the pandemic? I'm curious to see how those students managed such a big transition and what resources helped them during this process.

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 13, 2021 | 09:56 a.m.

    Thanks, Lydia! That's a fantastic idea for a breakdown in participant characteristics that we'll definitely want to look into. While we didn't ask that explicitly, we do have students in our sample who started college for the first time in the fall of 2020 (we'll have to essentially cross check students who say they were not enrolled in courses in the spring with those who said they've been in college for less than a year). 

     
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    Lydia Horne
  • Icon for: Judith Dilts

    Judith Dilts

    Facilitator
    Retired Associate Dean, College of Science and Mathematics
    May 12, 2021 | 07:28 p.m.

    This is fascinating work. Look forward to seeing the results. One of the questions I've pondered is which changes institutions, faculty, and students make because of the pandemic will be continued post-pandemic because of the value of the changes. Have you seen any changes that you think will continue?

    Thanks!  Judy

  • Icon for: Preeti Gupta

    Preeti Gupta

    Researcher
    May 12, 2021 | 08:57 p.m.

    This is right on point. In our Rapid study which complements this project, we are equally interested in how this crisis has led to changes/practices that might sustain past the pandemic. 

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 13, 2021 | 12:42 p.m.

    Thank you, Judy! This is one of the questions that's very important to me as well. The potential  improvements to things like communication and accessibility from certain changes are substantial. We have some preliminary indications that faculty and students in institutions who had more robust online learning capabilities and support felt a greater self-efficacy for change and higher resilience, so infrastructure to support online learning in ways that didn't have to exist pre-pandemic may be helpful to sustain in the long term. 

  • Icon for: Junell McCall

    Junell McCall

    Higher Ed Administrator
    May 12, 2021 | 08:13 p.m.

     Thank you for sharing this amazing work related to student self-efficacy. I would like to collaborate and discover more about your findings on best practices.

     

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 13, 2021 | 12:44 p.m.

    Thank you so much, Junell! Your projects is one of my favorites, and I'm right around the corner from you in FL. I'd love to connect! 

  • Icon for: Taryn Kato

    Taryn Kato

    Marketing and Communications
    May 13, 2021 | 07:32 p.m.

     Hello Dr. LeNoble and team! Thanks for sharing your fascinating research. I completed my undergraduate education just a few months before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, but I've spent a lot of timing wondering what the experience must've been like for my friends and peers still pursuing their degrees. After speaking with many of them, they stressed the noticeable negative impacts it had on their mental health. What types of mental health support resources did students attributed to their increased self-efficacy?

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 17, 2021 | 11:57 a.m.

    Thank you for your insights, Taryn. I imagine it must be tough to see your friends going through this while also perhaps feeling lucky to have been able to finish before everything started. I know I think often about how grateful I am to have completed my degree a while ago. 

    That is a fantastic question that we'll be looking into in more depth very soon. Right now, we have our preliminary survey data, but there are also nuanced interviews and open-ended responses in the survey yet to be fully analyzed that I believe will ultimately answer your question. Initially, it seems to be that the very act of institutions offering new mental health support that didn't exist before (or perhaps is newly framed toward the COVID-19 situation) is positively influencing self-efficacy. Another thing is personalized messages that check in on students' well-being is considered very helpful for those who have received them. 

  • Icon for: Sarah Kirk

    Sarah Kirk

    Higher Ed Administrator
    May 14, 2021 | 11:21 a.m.

    Thank you for this important work. We know that STEM courses are also often accompanied by hands on labs and that many students find their passion in the applied work. This was disrupted for many students; do you have any sense as to how the loss of labs and in person summer research experiences is impacting students identity as scientists?

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 17, 2021 | 01:30 p.m.

    Thank you for this great question, Sarah! There are many students who have or had lab requirements, and we're finding that the absence of guidance regarding what students would need to do to fulfill those requirements significantly negatively affects self-efficacy. The idea of examining whether that influences their identity as scientists is really interesting. We have asked about commitment to students' chosen STEM career and are looking at whether students have changed their major in the past year. We'll have to look deeper into the personal accounts of individual experiences related to labs to be able to connect that to some of our survey data about career commitment. Either way, that's something we're examining and will hope to provide additional insight into in the coming months!

  • Icon for: Lindsay Palmer

    Lindsay Palmer

    Graduate Student
    May 14, 2021 | 02:31 p.m.

    Great work! I love your emphasis on social context on educational outcomes. 

     
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    Chelsea LeNoble
  • Icon for: Cathy Lussier

    Cathy Lussier

    Researcher
    May 14, 2021 | 02:58 p.m.

     

    This is such important work. Putting into context what resources and what responses helped students to stay dedicated to STEM during these uncertain times will have a significant impact for next year when we go back and to in-person transitions and have a different type of uncertainty of hybrid/vaccinated/what does new normal look like/and/or for other future trauma-related situations. This will really give us critical feedback on what worked. 

    I also thought the note where you commented that you had the participants "upload a message that their institution sent out that was particularly impactful, and we'll be linking different components of these uploaded messages to survey responses. This will allow us to look a bit closer at the way institutions' decisions around COVID-19 (and communication of those decisions) affect teaching and learning." was an excellent point of data to collect. I wonder if the timing on some of these messages might be a factor too. Not just the content? I'd be curious to see if students had more or less time in "atypical" university college contexts shifted needs. For example, I wonder if this year's students who have been exposed longer to the events started needing different resources or messages, or is it more of the same type?

    We used exit interviews on our students and asked similar self-efficacy style questions. (Our study was originally focused on Noyce STEM scholars who were receiving extra PD training to adapt instruction to help support CLD students.) In our studies case, we asked during exit interviews how they felt COVID had impacted their preparedness and feelings of self-efficacy, as well as, how it might have helped them learn new technologies or methods. 

     

    I would be very interested to see what the outcome on your study is. Besides what resources had the greatest impact. I would love to be kept posted on your findings. If you have a mailing list on please include me; cathy.lussier@ucr.edu

     

  • Icon for: Chelsea LeNoble

    Chelsea LeNoble

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology
    May 17, 2021 | 03:28 p.m.

    Thank you so much for these comments and questions, Cathy! While we don't currently have a mailing list, I will keep your email to make sure to send out additional results as they become available. 

    That's a great point about looking beyond just message content. We'll definitely be looking into timing and how it impacts the relationships between our variables of interest. We're planning to pull data from archival COVID-19 databases related to infection rates in the zip codes in which the participating schools were located and map that to the timing of the messages they provided to us.  There is some initial evidence that timing does play a role in the resource and information needs of students and faculty, where more information is desired when it's time to plan for the next term (enrolling in course, determining course requirements and whether they will be online vs in person, contingency plans for moving things online, etc.). We imagine that some immediate "what do we do right now?" types of resources will have been most relevant toward the start of the pandemic, such as those that help in transitioning online. As time goes on and those immediately urgent things are addressed, resources for more big-picture "how do we all recover from this and move forward" things like degree requirements and the sustainability of changes may become more salient. 

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