COVID 19 Student Survey

Spring 2020 COVID-19 Project

SJSU Team Members: Patricia Backer (PI), Dr. Laura Sullivan-Green (co-PI), Dr. Maria Chierichetti (co-PI), Dr. Liat Rosenfeld (co-PI), Cynthia Kato (co-PI)

The widespread move to 100% online instruction has different impacts on different groups of students. The SJSU College of Engineering wanted to ask its students and faculty specific questions as many of our courses include laboratories and/or projects. 

There are four parts to this study

  • Part 1 was a survey of all Spring 2020 students and faculty in the SJSU College of Engineering about their experiences after the move to 100% online instruction in March 2020. 
  • Part 2 was in-depth interviews with students and faculty volunteers to get more input into their experiences. In the survey, we asked for volunteers for the interviews. 40 students and 23 faculty were interviewed in Summer 2020. The results of these interviews are forthcoming.
  • Part 3 was a grade analysis. We asked each department chair to identify two lower division, two upper division and two graduate classes for each engineering major. We compared grades from Spring 2018, Spring 2019 and Spring 2020 to determine if COVID 19 impacted the grades that students earned. The results of this grade analysis are forthcoming.
  • Part 4 was to compare the 1, 2, 3, and 4 year retention levels of Spring 2020 students to students from prior years. We expect that this work will be done in the 2020-2021 academic year after the census is finished.

Spring 2020 Student Survey

There were 6,674 students who were enrolled as engineering majors in Spring 2020; each of these students was sent the survey through Qualtrics. 993 students responded to the student survey. 

There are four files with the survey results. The first file is the summary of the Spring 2020 Student Survey. Overall, 314 female and 582 male students responded to the survey. There were good responses from students from all departments in the College. Overall, over 900  students indicated their major.

Overall, SJSU College of Engineering students was pessimistic about the next few months, Fall 2020, and their long term plans.  For each of the time frames given, most students felt worse or much worse about the future.

Most of the students (65.3%) responding to the survey took three or more engineering classes in Spring 2020. This is not surprising since most of the students responding were upper-division and graduate students. However, 34% of the students felt that their engineering instructors did not use effective methods in all their classes. Students gave some suggestions on how online instruction could be improved. The top six categories of suggestions were (1) record lectures and post online, (2) use active learning in online classes, (3) utilize better online teaching methods, (4) use Canvas and Zoom more effectively, (5) better communication with students, and (6) give/use more practice problems.

Figure 8. Student responses to this question: Relative to your life before and after COVID 19, how would you rank your current

figure 8: student response

Figure 9. Student responses to Question: Overall, how much stress are you feeling about the consequences of COVID 19?

Figure 9. Student responses.

Figure 13. Student responses to the question: Given the unexpected changes in course instruction after the spread of COVID 19, how often do you worry about the following:
figure13_student response

Figure 10. Faculty Responses to the Question: What active learning pedagogies have you used in your classes?

Figure 10. Faculty Responses.

Figure 13. Faculty Responses to the Question:  How many more hours did you spend on course preparation after the move to 100% online instruction as compared to before for your average class?

Figure 13. Faculty Responses.

Student survey

Faculty survey