Dispatches from the Dark: Student Perceptions of a University’s Response to COVID-19

Abstract

In March2020, faculty members at the University of XXXX a regional state university in XXXX,were given two weeks to move all coursework online due to COVID-19. The purposeof this qualitative case study was to examine student perceptions and attitudestoward academic and social engagement in the emergency online universityenvironment during spring 2020. The overarching research question was: How didstudents perceive their experience of higher education during a pandemic?Additional questions guiding the study include: 1) How did students perceivechanges in faculty engagement? 2) How did students perceive changes inengagement with student support staff? 3) How did students react intellectuallyand emotionally to their experience? In this project, the team focused on openresponse questions on the survey to learn more about the emotional andintellectual reactions to the student experience during the pandemic. Usingtextual analysis and “in vivo” coding, the team identified four themes: a) rawemotions; b) perceived injustice; c) confused and in the dark; and, d) ghosted.Discussion points compared the findings to other research studies that focusedon student perceptions of higher education experiences during the spring 2020semester.