Abstract
This study examined the student experience (n=507) during emergency remote learning at a medium-sized private southeastern university during the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging the Social Presence Model (SPM) as a guiding framework. Tensions were high at this critical time as students were stressed with financial burdens, supply shortages, overlapping work and educational schedules, and shared technological resources and physical spaces. Therefore, this study helps educators better understand students’ emotional needs and experiences during the March 2020 lockdown transition to remote learning. Specifically, examining the student experience in a time of crisis offers critical lessons about the importance of connectedness, online readiness, cultivating relationships, adaptability during transitions, and class interaction. The data revealed the depth of anxiety felt by students and suggests the need for increased empathy, communication, interaction, and flexibility from their instructor and course community to proceed with academic coursework, particularly for first-year college students. The findings elevate the importance of social presence as a literacy for learning in any modality, underscore the need to support the mental health of our students, and stress the urgency for online and remote learning readiness for current and future public emergencies.
Highlights
This study examined the student experience (n=507) during emergency remote learning at a medium-sized private southeastern university during the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging the Social Presence Model (SPM) as a guiding framework
As a result of the tidal wave of change, an understandable lack of online readiness resulted in diminished social presence in learning environments (Cutri et al, 2020)
Faculty navigated the best way while underestimating the importance of connectedness for students, the emotional impact of COVID, and the overall importance of social presence at the time
Summary
This study examined the student experience (n=507) during emergency remote learning at a medium-sized private southeastern university during the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging the Social Presence Model (SPM) as a guiding framework. As a result of the tidal wave of change, an understandable lack of online readiness resulted in diminished social presence in learning environments (Cutri et al, 2020). This deficiency stems from faculty getting courses ready for remote learning with short notice. Cutri and her colleagues (2020) noted, Faculty, including teacher educators, were asked to transition, create, and implement online teaching due to university closures with no choice but to teach online even if they did not feel properly prepared to do so, or formerly had little interest in online teaching Emerging studies on the 2020-21 student experience showcase numerous constraints, large cultural disparities, mixed emotions, and varied scholastic results (Nguyen et al, 2021)
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