Intensifying Engagement and Connectedness in Response Student Pandemic Stress: Three Cases

Keywords: student stress interventions, stress, COVID, pandemic, well-being, faculty/student connectedness, student engagement, instructional style

Abstract: This roundtable session will increase our collective toolkit for supporting student engagement despite the stress of ongoing pandemic conditions. Using three short case studies of interventions made in Fall 2020 courses at a single small private New England university, we will illustrate how students can react positively to small tweaks to course delivery to increase connection and focus. Student reactions to these approaches are provided within a theoretical frame based primarily on principles of engagement. We then separate into breakout rooms, so that workshop attendees may share their own diverse approaches with each other before summarizing those experiences with the whole group. We finish the roundtable with a discussion about lessons learned mid-pandemic that have the potential to strengthen our connectedness with students in our post-pandemic classrooms. That is, we will collectively answer the question, “What will we do differently moving forward? How will we do things better than before?”