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Engineering and computer science disciplines remain substantially under-represented in Hispanic, African American and women students. Relative to the population demographics reflecting approximately 50% women, 60% white non Hispanic/Latinx, 13% African American, 19% Hispanic and 1.3% Native American, engineering demographics reflect underrepresentation. While recent trends reflect significant gains, women remain under-represented in engineering. Based on the ASEE EDMS system, in 2022, women earned 25% of engineering degrees and under-represented students (URM=African American, Hispanic, native American and Pacific islanders) earned 21% of degrees. From a first time in college enrollment in a university perspective, URM freshmen accounted for 27% of all freshmen enrollment. Within that the African American student population was at 6% and Hispanic at 13%. The gap between freshmen enrollment at the Universities and higher percentages at graduation reflects the trend that URM students are entering the University experience beyond the freshmen level making the transfer student engagement and retention a key need. In this paper we explore systematic organizational change in communicating the degree pathways to a graduation in engineering and engaging students sequentially from enrollment through graduation. We explore these in the prepandemic, post-pandemic, new HSI designation macro changes in the University. The results indicate that students are benefitted from having administrators, faculty and full-time staff work synergistically to communicate information that can be accessed by students without needing an appointment/commute and to grow a students pathway to lifelong learning through research is best enabled through student-student direct engagement.
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Are synchronous chats a silver lining of emergency remote instruction? Text-based chatting is disproportionately favored by women in a non-majors introductory biology course
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a reimagining of many aspects of higher education, including how instructors interact with their students and how they encourage student participation. Text-based chatting during synchronous remote instruction is a simple form of student-student and student-instructor interaction. The importance of student participation has been documented, as have clear disparities in participation between those well-represented and those under-represented in science disciplines. Thus, we conducted an investigation into who is texting, what students are texting, and how these texts align with course content. We focused on two sections of a large-enrollment, introductory biology class offered remotely during Fall 2020. Using an analysis of in-class chatting, in combination with student survey responses, we find that text-based chatting suggests not only a high level of student engagement, but a type of participation that is disproportionately favored by women. Given the multiple lines of evidence indicating that women typically under-participate in their science courses, any vehicle that counters this trend merits further exploration. We conclude with suggestions for further research, and ideas for carrying forward text-based chatting in the post-COVID-19, in-person classroom.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1919462
- PAR ID:
- 10466578
- Editor(s):
- Nayyar, Anand
- Publisher / Repository:
- PLOS One
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PLOS ONE
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 1932-6203
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e0273301
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273301
