Physics students’ reactions to an abrupt shift in instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

We present a preliminary analysis of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on students in the context of a large enrollment introductory physics course. During the spring of 2020, ours was one of thousands of courses forced to change abruptly from face-to-face instruction to online delivery. We report the effects of this change on students through the lenses initially available to us, including our online homework system, an online forum, and the course evaluations. While preliminary, our results suggest that students were generally unhappy with the transition, but this disappointment did not translate into significantly reduced effort or success. Their primary concerns were not technological but stemmed from behavioral considerations either internal to themselves or external, from the instructor. Although the event probed here was the pandemic, our observations and conclusions may be applicable to other situations in which instruction changes suddenly due to natural or human-caused disasters.