Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Sense of Belonging in Higher Education for STEM Students in the United States and Mexico

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic generated worldwide negative effects on college students’ stress levels and motivation to learn. This research focuses on the lack of development of a sense of belonging in engineering students due to online classes during the pandemic and possible differences experiencing online classes between students from different contexts and cultures. Data were collected from 88 Mexican and 139 U.S. engineering students during the Spring 2021 semester using ten survey items asking students’ perceptions of the effects of taking online courses during the COVID-19 pandemic on their sense of belonging in their major. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted, aiming to determine the effects of taking online classes on students’ sense of belonging in engineering. Findings stressed the poor sense of belonging that engineering students may have after taking online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic when they missed opportunities to develop meaningful relationships with their peers and professors due to the lack of good communication. Consequently, students had uncertainties about successful learning during the pandemic in both Mexico and the U.S. Thus, activities such as accessible office hours, study groups, and meetings with mentors and tutors should be promoted to help students recover from the lack of a sense of belonging in the engineering major generated during online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

How did the landscape of student belonging shift during COVID‐19?

“…In their seminal paper, Baumeister and Leary (1995) established a belonging hypothesis based on the premise that belonging is a fundamental human motivation preceded by frequent positive (or at least neutral) interactions with others and a stable framework of care surrounding those interactions. This hypothesis is the foundation of the conceptual framework inspired by Morán‐Soto et al (2022) for our research (Figure 1). In this study, the frequency of two types of interactions (i.e., between faculty and students and between TAs and students) in traditional and ERT settings was studied.…”

Extending Learning and Collaboration in Quantum Information with Internet Support: A Future Perspective on Research Education beyond Boundaries, Limitations, and Frontiers

“…Research required, in many cases, access to specialized laboratories; this was solved through controlled access, laboratory automation, and remote computer services via the Internet. Nevertheless, research was intimately linked to education through the academic degrees of graduate students and the motivation of new generations of students waiting to experience the field of scientific research [54]. For many research groups, the pandemic accelerated digital scientific collaboration worldwide, reforming science, technology, and innovation.…”

College belonging among university students during COVID-19: An online interpretative phenomenological (OIPA) perspective

“…Research has highlighted the myriad challenges faced by university students during the pandemic (Fruehwirth et al, 2021;Giuntella et al, 2021;Haliwa et al, 2022;Lee et al, 2021;Mooney & Becker, 2021;Wang et al, 2020). These challenges have cast a shadow over students' sense of school belonging (Demir et al, 2022;Morán-Soto et al, 2022;Son et al, 2020). Therefore, amidst the paradigm shift induced by COVID-19, there is an urgent need to understand the impact of online, hybrid, and face-to-face education and training activities on students' sense of school belonging.…”