College Students Need Connection, Routine, Equity to Thrive in Online Coursework

Fostering a sense of community and connection for college students will ensure a better remote learning experience in the fall, according to researchers from Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

“Faculty may need to develop connections in different and more conscious ways than they have in the past,” said Vikki Katz of Rutgers’ School of Communication and Information, who co-led a nationwide survey about college students’ remote learning experiences in April and May. “This is not just about tech support, but rather about creating a sense of trust and connection, evaluating in ways that feel fair to students, and understanding that many have chronic issues of digital inequality. What students miss most tells us what they value most.” 

The majority of students said they craved the human connections they lost when leaving their schools amidst the pandemic. The survey, administered to more than 3,000 undergraduates across 31 U.S. universities, found roughly two-thirds of the participants had trouble keeping track of deadlines or clearly understanding what was expected of them; 55 percent couldn’t communicate with their professors as much as they would have liked; and 71 percent had trouble concentrating on schoolwork due to at-home interruptions.

Katz and co-researcher Amy Jordan, a professor and chair of Rutgers’ Journalism and Media Studies department, share evidence-based recommendations for educators in their newly created platform: “Left To Their Own Devices.” 

By signaling awareness of digital inequality—or, what Katz calls under-connectedness—faculty can build student trust.

“For instance,” said Katz, “Zoom is great for enabling the class interactions that build community. Knowing students cannot manage long meetings, need strong internet or may share a computer, faculty shouldn’t waste precious interactive time by lecturing live. Instead, build breakout sessions into live video sessions, so that students can connect with one another.”

Undergraduates also struggled without their routines such as picking up coffee before a lecture or meeting friends to study in the library.

According to the researchers, faculty can provide structure by setting a schedule and committing to a specific weekday to release lectures and set the pace by holding back content instead of releasing the full semester at once.

The researchers created the new platform so that educators could quickly benefit from their recommendations and adapt lesson plans as needed.

“We were preparing for a remote fall ourselves and saw a lot of material that focused on faculty-to-faculty advice,” said Jordan. “In reality, lessons from the students are an invaluable source to a more successful remote semester.”

Left To Their Own Devices is a cross-departmental collaboration at Rutgers’ School of Communication and Information. The project’s authors are Katz, Jordan, and Alyvia Walters, a Journalism and Media Studies doctoral student, and Luna Laliberte, an undergraduate in communications. The site will be updated with new content as the semester continues.

For more information, visit: medium.com/left-to-their-own-devices.