2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, collegiate-level educators developed numerous interventions and resources to maintain student learning in a remote environment. Many of the interventions took significant faculty time and effort, as remote teaching and learning was new for a large number of faculty and students. After pandemic-induced isolation and social distancing restrictions were lifted, many educational institutions returned to in-person teaching and learning. The return to an in-person environment provided an opportunity for educators to assess which COVID-19-realted interventions can (or should) be maintained. This study examines interventions used during various teaching modalities employed in a high enrollment (> 200 students) introductory environmental engineering course over the span of four years (2019 – 2022) prior to and through the post-pandemic. Due to changes in pandemic control measures, each year’s course offering had a different teaching modality: in-person (2019), remote (2020), Hyflex (2021), and in-person / hybrid (2022). Assessment metrics used to identify the most useful interventions included student surveys, faculty surveys, and direct assessment of performance on graded events. The most useful interventions identified included narrated slideshow presentations, recorded class presentations, and virtual laboratories and field trips. Many of the practices introduced during the remote and Hyflex course offerings, such as the ability to teach remotely, were beneficial for faculty members and will be carried forward for future course offerings. This study suggests that student performance (as a proxy for student learning) remained largely unaffected despite the changes in teaching modalities over the four-year span.