Using workplace thriving theory to investigate first‐year engineering students' abilities to thrive during the transition to online learning due to COVID‐19

Abstract

Background: During the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, universities rapidly pivoted to online formats and were often unable to adhere to the best practices of online learning highlighted in prior literature. It is well documented that a variety of barriers impeded "normal" educational practices.Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of first-year engineering students enrolled in an introductory engineering design course during the rapid transition to online working environments. We view students' perceptions through the theoretical lens of workplace thriving theory, a framework that allowed us to capture aspects of education required for students to thrive in non-optimum learning settings. Design/Method: This research employed semi-structured interview methods with 13 students enrolled in an introductory engineering design course that relies on project-based team learning. We analyzed interview transcripts using thematic analysis through an abductive approach and made interpretations through workplace thriving theory.Results: Results indicated that students' abilities to thrive are related to four intersecting themes that demonstrate how workplace thriving theory manifests in this unanticipated online setting. These themes demonstrate elements that must be optimized for students to thrive in settings such as this: relationships with others, building and sharing knowledge through interactions, perceptions of experiential learning, and individual behaviors. Conclusion:Our research, viewed through workplace thriving theory, highlights the mechanisms by which students tried to succeed in suboptimal environments.While not all our participants showed evidence of thriving, the factors required for thriving point to opportunities to harness these same factors in in-person instruction environments.

Investigating the tension between persistence and well‐being in engineering doctoral programs

“…Specifically, in engineering contexts, Ge and Berger (2018) proposed a framework for undergraduate engineering thriving, arguing that the field of engineering education has identified interventions that mitigate student failure but not those that foster the cognitive and personal outcomes required for student thriving (2018). In addition, Krishnakumar et al (2022) recently explored undergraduate hybrid education by applying Spreitzer's Socially Embedded Model of Thriving at Work (Spreitzer et al, 2005). This model has begun to be operationalized even more recently for doctoral engineering students, illuminating dynamic processes in which graduate students agentically work to thrive (Zerbe et al, 2023).…”

Evaluating the quality of interviews with a process-based, self-reflective tool

“…Semi-structured interviews similarly use a pre-determined interview protocol based on the phenomenon in question, however, it serves more as a guide rather than a strict script, resulting in deviations from the questions during the interview. Semi-structured interviewing has become the dominant structure of interviewing in EER, with numerous studies using the practice to gain deep understanding of participants' experiences across a variety of topics ranging from engineering student learning [27,28], thriving [29,30], and social capital [31] to faculty instructional approaches [32,33] and engineering culture [34].…”

“I haven't really made those connections that maybe most would their first year”: A qualitative study of the COVID-19 pandemic and student social capital among 3 Cohorts of first-year engineering majors.

“…While first-year engineering students faced many challenges with online learning, not all experiences were negative. Some students were able to adapt and sometime even thrive in online settings [14]. Through innovative teaching methods, online learning may actually be beneficial to students in some specific areas like spatial reasoning [34].…”