Students in Remote Instruction

Section 1: Introduction Students in Remote Instruction

In spring 2020, SRJC was forced into remote learning and services due to COVID-19 and will continue to operate in this manner at least through summer 2021. It is critical to know the impact this is having on the success of SRJC students, especially DI groups. We seek to learn the specific challenges students are facing in this new reality and what the District is doing to assist students with these challenges. And we hope to identify equity gaps that might surface, or are resurfacing because of remote learning.

Why It Matters

Through discovery, we hope to implement strategies to support students through the duration of the remote learning period. Though face to face instruction will resume one day, it has been said that SRJC’s online offerings may be at a much higher proportion than what was in place prior to the pandemic. This period of fully online learning provides an opportunity for us to research, begin to identify, and mitigate growing areas of achievement gaps so that we may begin a process to improve the students’ remote/online learning experience and systems of support.

Aims and Objectives

The aim is to learn how SRJC can adapt our systems to meet the needs of students in the remote environment. Through review of literature and survey responses, we hope to identify preferred methods of outreach to disseminate offers of assistance, the changes we need to make in our service delivery to serve students in the remote environment, and how to support students so they do not give up in the midst of non-ideal learning environment. We hope that the research reveals how we might address different learning/communication styles in the online environment.

A. Problem Statement

B. Research Question(s)

  • How are material, environmental, and psychological barriers impacting student success and engagement in remote learning?
    • Are these factors disproportionately affecting students of color, and specifically Black students? (white vs non-white and then specifically Black students).

Section 2: Research Methodology

A. Data Sources

  • Drop Survey
  • OIR Survey of Students 

B. Data Definitions

  • Barrier of Resources: Resources that are the required for one's education (money, physical items, space, time)
  • Environmental Barrier: the surrounding circumstances or conditions of a student
  • Physical & Psychological Health Barriers: the physical, mental or emotional state or mindset of a person, as related to concentrating on task, perceptions, or desire or ability to engage with one's education
  • Barriers by Educational Format: the educational mode did not fit the individual student
  • Remote Learning: Students enrolled in a fully remote/online course (count hybrid?) 

Section 3. DATA ANALYSIS/FINDINGS

Section 4. DISCUSSION/RECOMMENDATIONS (FOCUS ON POLICIES & PRACTICES)

A. Limitations of the Study

Section 5. CONCLUSION

A. Next steps, Next area to study