| Description |
Previous studies in the Frey group have shown that students' social belonging affects their grades and persistence in the general chemistry series and introductory physics 1 course at the University of Utah. These studies have also identified two main components for social belonging: sense of social belonging and belonging uncertainty. A sense of social belonging is the sensitivity of an individual's connectedness with people such as peers and instructors and the significance of the course environment that helps build an interpersonal relationship of how they feel they fit in the course. Belonging uncertainty describes the stability of a student's sense of belonging in the course in relation to factors such as race, gender, class environment, and academic performances. While these recent studies show that social belonging affects student performance and retention in introductory STEM courses, there are very few studies that ask students what factors they look at when describing their belonging in STEM courses and none in these introductory STEM courses. The objective of this study is to determine the factors that students use to describe their level of comfort with their peers in the classroom, which is one question students answer when determining their sense of belonging in a course. In this study, student responses from General Chemistry 1 were analyzed to generate a codebook that contains 8 codes from remote and non-remote categories: Course Environment, Common Academic Experience, Identity, Perceived Ability, Student-Student Relationship/Interaction, Student-Instructor Relationship, Non-Specific, and Non Codable. These qualitative coding data will then be transformed into quantitative frequency data to identify the most recurrent themes across the participants on each of two surveys: early and late semester General Chemistry 1. By using a mixed-method approach, I plan to evaluate student's responses in order to understand the factors associated with 2 students' level of comfort with their peers in their course. Ultimately, the themes observed for course-level social belonging will be used to provide instructors with a better understanding of creating an inclusive STEM course. |
