Perceptions of Online Learning and COVID-19 Disruptions among Undergraduate Meyerhoff Scholars
Presenter: Ahmad Ndir
Mentors: Mariano Sto. Domingo (Psychology), Meghan Flynn (Psychology)
Abstract:
The advent of the global pandemic in late 2019 had wide-ranging impacts across the world. Students, in particular, were a vulnerable population that faced a multitude of educational and personal challenges. The current study explores students' reactions to individual and societal stressors due to COVID-19 and their relationship with sense of community and online learning in the year 2021. A total of 204 undergraduate students completed an online survey in May 2021 (49% cisgender men; 81% self-reported non-White). All students were enrolled at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) at the time of data collection. Participants were members of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, a program designed to facilitate, enhance, and support the learning experience of underrepresented minority students in the STEM field. We hypothesize that: a) student sense of community will be negatively correlated with perceptions of COVID-19 disruption; that is, the higher students’ sense of community, the less they perceive disruption due to COVID-19, and b) students who reported lower disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic will report positive perceptions of online learning. Correlation, t-tests, and mediation analyses will be conducted to test our hypotheses.
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