Paper ID #32729

WIP: Understanding the Communication Preferences of First-Year StudentsBefore and During a Global Pandemic

Dr. Oziel Rios, University of Texas at Dallas

Dr. Oziel Rios earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008where his research focused on design of robotic systems with an emphasis on kinematic and dynamicmodeling for analysis and control. Dr. Rios teaches the first-year and CAD courses in the MechanicalEngineering Department at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Rios has also taught kinematics anddynamics of machines and graduate-level CAD courses. Dr. Rios’ research and teaching interests include:robotics, design, kinematics and dynamics of machines and engineering education.

Prof. Dani Fadda P.E., University of Texas at Dallas

Dr. Fadda is Associate Professor of Practice in Mechanical Engineering. His background includes twodecades of engineering practice in the energy industry where he has held numerous positions. Dr. Faddahas worked in product research and developed patented products for chemical, petrochemical, and nuclearapplications. He is an ASME Fellow and a Professional Engineer.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

Work In Progress: Understanding the Communication Preferences of First-Year Students Before and

During a Global Pandemic

In this work in progress paper, the communication preferences among first-year engineering students are

investigated before and during the global pandemic of 2020. A 5-point Likert scale survey was developed

to determine the preferred communication method of students while working on an open-ended design

activity. Using this survey, 421 students pre-pandemic (Fall 2018, Spring 2019, and Fall 2019 semesters)

and 26 students during the pandemic (Fall 2020 semester) were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of

email, in-person meetings, phone calls, social media, text messages and video conferencing. Pre-

pandemic results show that a majority of students (above 70%) considered in-person meetings and text

messages to be ‘very effective’ or ‘extremely effective’ forms of communicating. Pre-pandemic results

also show that approximately half of students (about 50%) considered social media and 40% of them

considered video conferencing to be ‘not at all effective’ or only ‘slightly effective’ forms of

communicating. Results obtained during the pandemic (Fall 2020) indicate that 79% of students sampled

now consider video conferencing to be a ‘very effective’ or ‘extremely effective’ form of communicating.

Results during the pandemic resemble pre-pandemic results for social media indicating that over half of

the students didn’t think it was an effective form of communication. These preliminary results

demonstrate our expectation that students are fundamentally changing the way they communicate

during this pandemic. The intent of this study is to continue monitoring the trends during the pandemic

and post-pandemic to understand how students prefer to communicate and allow us to incorporate those

preferences so course content can be more effectively delivered to them. This paper also provides a

description of the student population sampled and a description of the team activities.

Introduction

Pre-pandemic studies have described how social media, when implemented in a structured manner, can

help increase engagement in course topics [1], encourage communication [2], and facilitate

communication between group members [3]. Social media is defined as [4]: “forms of electronic

communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create

online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos).”

The work described in this paper was originally started to better understand how students at our

university communicate with each other when working in a team to complete a graded activity. The goal,

in part, was to understand if students still perceived social media – which has, in recent years, undergone

a sea change in how people implement it – to be an effective form of communication. We also wanted to

understand the perceived effectiveness of other forms of communication such as email, in-person

meetings, phone calls, text messaging, and video conferencing within the context of working together on

an open-ended design activity.

When the pandemic hit, instructors and students were forced to very quickly adapt to online teaching, or,

in some instances, teaching under strict social distancing measures. The use of video conferencing

increased during the pandemic to deliver course content and we expected our students to also make use

of this when communicating with their teammates. We continued to survey our students during the

pandemic and we wanted to see if the perceived effectiveness of each form of communication changed

during this time.

In this work, we considered students working in a team, as defined by [5,6], as “groups that perform a

defined, specialized task within a definite time period, and whose members … disband after project

termination.” In the next sections, we present the survey questions, the student population sampled, a

description of the team activities, and survey results. We also present future work.

Survey Questions and Student Population Sampled

The 5-point Likert scale survey shown in Figure 1 was deployed to first-year engineering students enrolled

in either the first or second semester courses offered by the Mechanical Engineering Department at our

university. In our department, first-year students must take two introductory courses. The first is typically

taken during the first semester and focuses on topics relevant to all engineering majors while the second

course is typically taken during the second semester and focuses on topics relevant to the Mechanical

Engineering profession [7-10]. The survey was deployed pre-pandemic in the Fall 2018 semester in the

first semester course, in the Spring 2019 semester in the second semester course, and in the Fall 2019 to

the first semester course. The survey was not deployed in the Spring 2020 semester due to course

reorganization arising from the pandemic. The survey was deployed during the pandemic in the Fall 2020

semester in an offering of the second semester course. In total, 447 students (421 pre-pandemic and 26

during the pandemic) participated in the survey (see Appendix A).

Figure 1. Survey questions.

The first semester course is taken by students who are new to university and are generally students who

recently completed their high school education. The second semester course is taken by students that

successfully completed the first semester course as well as students transferring to the university from

community colleges or other universities.

Description of Team Activities

In the first semester course, students are tasked with working in a team of 4 students on a wind turbine

power generation project. Students have to go through several stages of the design process [11] including

to conduct research and brainstorm, to develop concepts, and to build and test prototypes for maximum

power generation. In the second semester course, students have to work in teams of 2 to 4 students to

generate concepts for an original mechanism or tool, create 3D component and assembly models of their

concept, and perform computer simulations [9,10].

Social loafing is defined as “a behavior in which some team members do not contribute their fair share to the project” [5]. This behavior can be detrimental to the team’s overall performance and can become unruly if left unchecked especially if all students in the team are remotely participating. Best practices for time management will need to be updated to account for students’ increasingly unstructured and disparate schedules and for students working in different time zones. Direct and immediate communication among team members is essential for mitigating this behavior.

Pre-pandemic, students were required to work on their activities outside of class time but would also be

allowed to work in a design studio, which is specially created for and used by the two first-year courses

[7]. Students during the pandemic were required to work on their activities outside of class time since

the course was offered in an online, asynchronous teaching modality. Following the best practices

outlined by Borrego et al [5], these activities were sufficiently complex requiring teamwork to successfully

complete it with the intent of better preparing students for rigorous work in future courses and fostering

interest in their engineering education and career.

Survey Results

The results of the survey are shown in Figure 2, where responses regarding the use of email, in-person

meetings, phone calls, social media, text messages, and video conferencing are plotted in Figures 2a, 2b,

2c, and 2d, respectively. The percentages are plotted in the split bar chart while the mean values are

superimposed as a dashed line.

As seen from Figures 2a, 2c, and 2d, there was only a minimal change in the way students perceived email,

phone calls, or social media. These forms of communication were perceived as moderately effective pre-

pandemic and they continued to be perceived as moderately effective during the pandemic.

It is interesting to note that in previous works [1-3], social media has been reported to be an effective

form of instructor’s communicating course information to their students and for students to build their

network. When faced with communicating detailed information about a group design activity, we see

that social media is only considered to be a moderately effective form of communication based on our

survey.

As can be expected, students in the pre-pandemic setting considered in-person meetings to be the most

effective form of communicating (see Figure 2b). A decline is observed during the pandemic since this

form of communication is not considered safe. However, we expect this to increase back to pre-pandemic

numbers when students are back on campus where in-person communication is facilitated.

Interestingly, students also considered text messaging to be less effective during the pandemic. The need

to communicate by text is less important during the pandemic when students sit in front of a computer

for extended periods of time.

(a) email (b) in-person meetings

(c) phone calls (d) social media

(e) text messages (f) video conferencing

Figure 2. Survey results between 2018 and 2020 for the different means of communication. The mean values are also provided.

The most dramatic results are observed in Figure 2f, where the students express their dependence on video conferencing for communication during the pandemic. The use of video conferencing in synchronous classes and corresponding projects, in addition to the availability of reliable software

provided by the university and other software available for free may be the main drivers for this dramatic change.

Future Work The global pandemic has altered how students communicate with each other. Although they still consider meeting in-person to be an effective means of communicating with each other, they also are starting to see the importance of video conferencing. Important questions for us to consider are as follows.

1. Will these trends persist, or will students revert back to their pre-pandemic communication preferences?

2. How do we best deliver the course content if students adopt a hybrid work structure for team

activities where some students are meeting in-person and others are working remotely? How do we ensure that social loafing is minimized in this hybrid work structure?

Moving beyond the pandemic, it is expected that an increasing number of engineering and computer science faculty will adopt hybrid or fully online teaching modalities1 [12] primarily due to the fact that course content has been developed for online course delivery during the pandemic. This will translate to an increased number of students working on team-based course projects in a hybrid work structure. References [1] Junco, R., Heiberger, G., and Loken, E., “The Effect of Twitter on College Student Engagement and Grades,” Journal of Computer-Assisted Learning, 27(2), pp. 119-132, 2011. [2] Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., and Lampe, C., “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends:’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 2007. [3] Gannod, G. C. and Bachman, K. M., “A Characterization of Social Networks for Effective Communication and Collaboration in Computing Education,” American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, 2012. [4] Anon., “Definition of Social Media,” www.merriam-webster.com, (accessed April 2021). [5] Borrego, M., Karlin, J., McNair, L. D., and Beddoes, K., “Team Effectiveness Theory from Industrial and Organizational Psychology Applied to Engineering Student Project Teams: A Research Review,” Journal of Engineering Education, 120(4), pp. 472-512, 2013. [6] Chiocchio, F. and Essiembre, H., “Cohesion and performance: A Meta-Analytic Review of Disparities Between Project Teams, Production Teams, and Service Teams,” Small Group Research, 40(4), pp. 382-420, 2009.

1 A hybrid teaching modality is considered here as implementing a combination of in-person and remote online (either synchronous or asynchronous) instruction. A fully online teaching modality is considered here as implementing only remote online (either synchronous or asynchronous) instruction.

[7] Rios, O. and Fadda, D., “A Mechanical Engineering Activity-Based Freshman Course,” ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, 2017. [8] Rios, O. and Fadda, D., “A First-Year Design-Based Activity for Mechanical Engineering Students,” ASEE Gulf-Southwest Section Annual Conference, University of Texas at Dallas, 2017. [9] Rios, O. and Fadda, D., “Using Computer Simulations in a Freshman Mechanical Engineering Course to Make Informed Design Decisions,” ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Tampa, FL, 2019. [10] Rios, O. and Fadda, D., “A Conceptual Design Activity for a First-Year Mechanical Engineering Course,” ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Salt Lake City, UT, 2018. [11] Wickert, J. and Lewis, K., An Introduction to Mechanical Engineering, Fourth Edition, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA, 2017. [12] Fadda, D., Rios, O. and Vinay, R., “Teaching Modalities During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” ASEE Gulf-Southwest Section Annual Conference, Baylor University, 2021.

Appendix A

The tables below show the results to the survey question. Responses were recorded on a 5-point Likert

scare with the following: (1) Not at all effective, (2) Slightly effective, (3) Moderately effective, (4) Very

effective, and (5) Extremely effective

Table 1. Results for Fall 2018. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Mean StDev Respondents

1 Email 11.19% 19.58% 32.17% 25.87% 11.19% 3.06 1.16 143

2 In-Person Meetings 0.00% 4.20% 12.59% 32.17% 51.05% 4.30 0.84 143

3 Phone Calls 12.06% 25.53% 34.75% 20.57% 7.09% 2.85 1.20 141

4 Social Media

(Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

23.08% 28.67% 23.08% 17.48% 7.69% 2.58 1.52 143

5 Text Messages 0.71% 7.80% 16.31% 37.59% 37.59% 4.04 0.91 141

6 Video Conference (Skype, Facetime,

etc.) 17.61% 23.24% 26.76% 24.65% 7.75% 2.82 1.46 142

Table 2. Results for Spring 2019.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Mean StDev Respondents

1 Email 7.46% 14.18% 29.85% 32.09% 16.42% 3.36 1.24 134

2 In-Person Meetings 1.49% 2.99% 12.69% 35.82% 47.01% 4.24 0.89 134

3 Phone Calls 12.78% 18.80% 36.09% 21.05% 11.28% 2.99 1.17 133

4 Social Media

(Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

31.58% 33.08% 21.80% 8.27% 5.26% 2.23 1.13 133

5 Text Messages 5.26% 6.02% 16.54% 31.58% 40.60% 3.96 1.13 133

6 Video Conference (Skype, Facetime,

etc.) 19.55% 23.31% 27.82% 18.80% 10.53% 2.77 1.25 133

Table 3. Results for Fall 2019.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Mean StDev Respondents

1 Email 9.40% 32.89% 27.52% 20.13% 10.07% 2.89 1.14 149

2 In-Person Meetings 0.00% 4.70% 12.08% 29.53% 53.69% 4.32 0.86 149

3 Phone Calls 25.00% 25.00% 30.41% 10.81% 8.78% 2.53 1.22 148

4 Social Media

(Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

31.97% 20.41% 21.77% 20.41% 5.44% 2.47 1.27 147

5 Text Messages 0.00% 2.70% 12.16% 41.22% 43.92% 4.26 0.77 148

6 Video Conference (Skype, Facetime,

etc.) 22.30% 20.27% 35.14% 14.86% 7.43% 2.65 1.19 148

Table 4. Results for Fall 2020.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Mean StDev Respondents

1 Email 3.33% 10.00% 50.00% 23.33% 13.33% 3.33 0.94 30

2 In-Person Meetings 7.69% 11.54% 11.54% 30.77% 38.46% 3.81 1.27 26

3 Phone Calls 17.24% 17.24% 20.69% 37.93% 6.90% 3.00 1.23 29

4 Social Media

(Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

25.00% 32.14% 21.43% 17.86% 3.57% 2.43 1.15 28

5 Text Messages 3.45% 13.79% 37.93% 24.14% 20.69% 3.45 1.07 29

6 Video Conference (Skype, Facetime,

etc.)

0.00% 6.90% 13.79% 55.17% 24.14% 3.97 0.81 29