Learning by Doing: Studying the COVID Generation’s Academic Experiences and Attitudes

• In Event: Teaching Sociology in an Age of Disruption

Abstract

This presentation addresses my integration of a collaborative research project into my undergraduate lower division qualitative research methods class to maximize student engagement and understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student performance and motivation. Many examples of “learning by doing” in qualitative methods courses are available in Teaching Sociology and other journals that focus on pedagogy (Winn, 1995; Raddon, Nault, & Scott, 2008) and have been shown to enhance student learning and engagement. In our course, I collaborated with enrolled students to design a study that sought to understand how their peers’ experiences during and after the COVID-19 pandemic have affected their present academic performance and motivation. As collaborators, the students reflected on their own experiences during COVID to inform which questions to include in the interviews and served as interviewers for data collection from their peers. The result of incorporating this process was enhanced student engagement in the course and tentative results from the interview data they collected.

Author

• Anna Muraco, Loyola Marymount University