Engaging Early College Students in Their Chemical Education through Academic Support: A Pandemic Era Effort

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 significantly hindered student access to valuable university resources aimed at promoting engagement and academic success. The need to adapt the academic support services to a virtual environment also presented an opportunity to tailor these services to be more effective in chemical education. The primary goal of this work was to develop a program to increase student participation in tutoring services and improve the quality of educational support offered to first- and second-year chemistry students. By restructuring staff roles, carefully developing online sessions, maintaining close communication with teaching faculty, and focusing on student outreach, the number of students taking advantage of the tutoring program soared from an average of 6% prepandemic to 53% in a virtual environment. There is a well-established link between increased student engagement and positive educational outcomes. Student achievement (based on final grades) was better among those students who took advantage of academic support services compared to those who did not participate. These results justified using a hybrid format when in-person sessions were resumed. Despite the unprecedented challenges, this study proves that a carefully designed virtual learning support service can foster student success by engaging students in their chemistry coursework. While this model has been proven to be valuable in chemical education, we suggest that it would also be successful if adapted to other disciplines.