A comparative study on undergraduate engineering student socialisation before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Student socialisation into the norms and environment of their institution is a crucial process during their college experience. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these processes were disrupted, and little published research exists exploring comparisons of these student socialisation processes before and during the pandemic. Accordingly, we report on a quantitative study conducted at a large mid-western university in the United States, which compared survey data from 2018 to data collected in 2021. We operationalised student socialisation processes using Ashford and Black’s proactive behaviours scale to explore how these behaviours and relevant socialisation outcomes changed from before to during the pandemic. The primary socialisation outcomes of interest were engineering identity and social capital. During the COVID pandemic, students reported lower levels of social capital. However, we simultaneously observed higher ratings of students’ engineering identity. Next, using multivariate linear regression, we examined which proactive behaviours best predicted socialisation outcomes in both datasets. We found all proactive behaviours were significant predictors of social capital. Proactive behaviours did not influence student’s sense of engineering identity. This study contributes to the growing literature on the pandemic's impact on engineering undergraduate students and how proactive behaviours are related to their socialisation outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Undergraduate
• regression
• socialisation
• COVID

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number EEC-1640417. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Moreover, this work was also supported by an internal grant from the University of Michigan.

Notes on contributors

David Reeping

David Reeping is Assistant Professor in Engineering and Computing Education at the University of Cincinnati.

Cynthia Finelli

Cynthia Finelli is Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Professor of Higher Education, and Director of Engineering Education Research at the University of Michigan.

Joanna Millunchick

Joanna Millunchick is Dean of the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University.

Fatemeh Mirzahosseini Zarandi

Fatemeh Mirzahosseini Zarandi is a PhD student in Engineering Education at the University of Cincinnati.