The global pandemic of COVID-19 brought about the transition to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) at higher education institutions across the United States, prompting both students and the faculty to rapidly adjust to a different modality of teaching and learning. Other crises have induced disruptions to academic continuity (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), but not to the same extent as COVID-19, which has affected universities on a global scale. In this paper, we describe a qualitative case study where we interviewed 11 second-year Integrated Engineering students during the Spring 2020 semester to explore how they adapted to the transition to remote learning. Our results revealed several student challenges, how they used self-discipline strategies to overcome them, and how the faculty supported students in the classroom through a compassionate and flexible pedagogy. Faculty members showed compassion and flexibility by adjusting the curriculum and assessment and effectively communicating with students. This was especially important for the women participants in this study, who more frequently expressed utilizing pass/fail grading and the personal and gendered challenges they faced due to the pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis, we found that a key element for supporting students’ well-being and success is the faculty members communicating care and incorporating flexibility into their courses.

BACKGROUNDConcern for workforce needs, social justice, and the diversification of the engineering profession make it critical to understand how different metrics may overestimate or underestimate the success of various race-gender populations in engineering. PURPOSE (HYPOTHESIS)While earlier work found that women in nearly all racial groups persist to the eighth semester at rates comparable to men, results vary in studies that use other measures of success, providing an incentive to compare multiple measures of success in the same population. DESIGN/METHODThe eight-semester persistence and six-year graduation rates are compared for various race-gender populations using a longitudinal, comprehensive dataset of more than 75,000 students matriculating in engineering at nine universities from 1988-1998. RESULTSGender differences in persistence of Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and White students are far outweighed by institutional differences. Racial differences are more pronounced, however, revealing some patterns that transcend institutional differences. CONCLUSIONSOur work demonstrates that trajectories of persistence are non-linear, gendered, and racialized, and further that higher education has developed the way in which persistence is studied based on the behavior of the majority, specifically the White, male population. Even if institutions were to treat all students equally, the outcomes will not necessarily be the same because various populations respond differently to the same conditions. Using eight-semester persistence may result in a "systematic majority measurement bias." Therefore, multiple measures may be needed to describe outcomes in diverse populations.

Investigations of the relationships between contexts in which learning occurs and students' behaviours, cognitions and motivations may further our understanding of how instruction is related to students' development as self-regulated learners. In this study, student self-regulated learning strategies in problembased learning and project-based learning environments were examined to determine whether student selfregulation outcomes differed depending on the instructional design. Quantitative results showed that student motivations and behaviours were not statistically different in the two settings. Differences in cognitions associated with self-regulated learning were, however, observed in the two settings, with students in the project-based environments reporting higher levels of elaboration, critical thinking and metacognition. In addition, students in the project-based courses reported higher perceived autonomy support, or the degree to which they perceived their instructors provided them with supportive opportunities to act and think independently compared to students in the problem-based courses. These findings indicate that different non-traditional student-centred learning environments may support different outcomes related to selfregulated learning.