2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Student Anxiety and Belonging in a Mastery-Based-Learning Course
Presented at Reimagining Pathways: Nurturing Diversity and Identity in STEM Education
Anxiety and lack of belonging are two major obstacles college students face, particularly those from underrepresented and underprepared backgrounds. These obstacles are even more likely to impact students in demanding degree programs such as engineering. Mastery-based-learning (MBL) could help to lower students’ levels of anxiety and increase their sense of belonging in the classroom. MBL is a course structure in which students have more freedom to work at their own pace. Often, students are given several attempts to demonstrate mastery of topics and are not required to move on to the next topic until they are proficient in the previous. To determine if MBL affected students’ anxiety during exams and sense of belonging, students were surveyed three times throughout the semester. Surveys were distributed in Fall 2022 for students who took the course with a traditional course structure and Fall 2023 for the course with MBL structure. Initial results suggest that student testing anxiety is less in Fall 2023 (MBL) and that students feel like they belong more. The comprehensive results and their analysis will be included in the full paper.
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Meghan Williams Elizabethtown College [biography]
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