2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Evidence from a capstone design course in the Fall 2022 semester at the authors’ university showed that in-person attendance by senior ChE students was far below levels seen in previous semesters. It seems that this phenomenon is not isolated to one university; based on discussions with other faculty at the 2022 AIChE Conference, poor in-person attendance in senior ChE courses has been observed at many institutions. During these conference discussions amongst ChE faculty, various hypotheses regarding the reasons for poor attendance were discussed. For example, many faculty stated their course lectures were recorded and/or livestreamed for at-home viewing by students. Is it possible that students feel recorded lectures are a viable like-for-like replacement for classroom attendance based on their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic? Classroom recordings can typically viewed at accelerated rates (e.g. double speed) – do students view the time savings of watching recordings as more valuable than in-class benefits such as interacting with fellow students, participating in active learning activities, etc.? It was also noticed that some students did not regularly attend classes nor review video lectures, yet still performed passably on homework and even in-person exams – how could this be possible?

This work aims to investigate student perceptions on factors influencing their classroom attendance and engagement with the course from a phenomenological perspective. Survey data was collected during the Fall 2022 semester from students enrolled in a ChE capstone design course as part of end-of-semester course evaluations. The survey included two questions that are investigated in this study: the first question regarded what factors students felt contributed to themselves or others deciding not to attend classes in person, while the second question asked for perspectives on how students may have been able to perform well on assignments without attending classes or reviewing recorded lectures. The qualitative data collected via student responses to these questions was then analyzed using thematic coding analysis to elucidate themes and categorizations arising from responses. The resulting analysis provides a snapshot of the changing perspectives of students based on their compulsory experiences with virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.