

Social Network Consequences for Underrepresented STEM Students as a University Transitions to Remote Activities
Effective Years: 2020-2022
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted universities worldwide to abruptly shift to remote learning. This coincides with a critical social change as students are urged to leave campus, “social distance,” and shelter-in-place; practices that will disrupt social network functioning and could lead to feelings of isolation, reduced motivation, and poorer learning outcomes. Worse, the social and academic consequences could be more severe for less academically prepared students (e.g., underrepresented minorities, first-generation college, low socioeconomic status) and first year students in particular, who are still adjusting to college life (e.g., building social networks, learning university culture). Given the uncertainty of the current situation, it is critical to understand how the pandemic and the "social distance" triggered by it may influence student social networks and whether disparities in social and academic outcomes result. This RAPID was submitted in response to the NSF Dear Colleague letter related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This award is made by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program in the Division of Research on Learning, using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
The goal of this RAPID research project is to investigate how the shift to remote learning triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting social networks, psycho-social adjustment, and academic outcomes for first-year STEM majors, and whether disparities emerge for students from subgroups historically more likely to leave STEM. The research will examine these potential impacts, and how risks might be offset by an existing intervention at the University of California Irvine (UCI) -- the Enhanced Academic Success Experience (EASE) program. EASE is a learning community designed to improve academic outcomes for under-prepared students, with one-third of the approximately 1,000 first-year majors in the School of Biological Sciences (Bio Sci) participating each year. To date, research on the intervention has provided strong causal evidence that EASE has successfully increased motivation, engagement, and belongingness, with stronger effects for groups typically underrepresented within STEM. As part of the intervention, researchers have gathered longitudinal network data that are unique in both scale (~1,000 students/year within a major) and coverage (85-96% response rate). This research will characterize changes in friendship and study networks, psycho-social adjustment, and academic outcomes that result from the unprecedented shift to remote organizational activities. The new data collection and analysis will explore whether the shift to remote learning creates disparities in these important outcomes for subgroups of STEM students and whether the learning community provided by EASE may mitigate these effects. Through supplementary data collection, the study will consider how student networks have adapted to the organizational shift to remote learning and where students are obtaining the kinds of emotional and instrumental support they need. Mediation analysis will offer insight into which network characteristics explain psycho-social and academic consequences of the shift to remote learning. More generally, the unique data will enable assessment of how social networks adapt to societal-level disruption caused by the pandemic, and how well-implemented institutional support may offset the anticipated risks associated with the pandemic.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.