Who Benefits? Understanding the Impacts of Faculty Development Efforts on Engineering Faculty and Student Capacity through the COVID-19 Transition to Online Learning

Background: When COVID-19 cases began rising in early 2020, many universities transitioned online.

Purpose/Hypothesis: This mixed-methods study examined how students, staff, and faculty members in a college of engineering experienced the early stages of the pandemic. We hypothesized that our prior work to build community and capacity around teaching and learning among faculty would support an empowered transition to online learning.

Design/Method: We collected 70 participant accounts from April 10 to May 28, 2020 (students = 45, staff = 2, and faculty = 24). We collected these data using the SenseMaker® online survey platform. They comprised short stories written by the participants and quantitative data resulting from participant responses to a series of questions about their experiences. We used inferential statistics to determine pivotal variables that correlated to the emotional tone of a story and differentiated faculty and student experiences. Using these pivotal variables for interpretation, we examined participant stories to identify underlying trends in faculty and student experiences.

Results: The majority of faculty members rated their stories positively (62%) while the majority of students rated their stories negatively (53%). Compared to students, faculty members reported greater opportunities, fewer struggles, higher levels of willingness to experiment, better treatment by people in positions of power, and more experiences of putting the needs of others before their own. Qualitatively, we identified two themes – ability and empowerment (or lack thereof) – to characterize the key differences between faculty and student experiences. Ability and empowerment are key facets of capacity.

Conclusions: These findings confirm our hypothesis that prior work to build community and capacity around teaching and learning among faculty in our college supported an empowered transition to online learning. A next step in the development of our programming is finding ways to ensure our efforts lead to increased capacity for students, too.