Investigating the effects of course structure on students' sense of belonging and course performance

Abstract

Students’ sense of belonging contributes to success at universities. Studies hint that students’ sense of belonging in their introductory STEM courses may be tied to the course structures. In this study, we compared students’ sense of belonging and letter grade between four semesters of an introductory calculus-based electricity and magnetism course. The course structures varied throughout the four semesters with hybrid versus in-person instruction and midterm exams versus quizzes for assessment, but all implementations used research-based instruction. Here, we compare students’ sense of belonging and letter grades within these different course structures. Students expressed a stronger sense of belonging and earned higher letter grades with the lower-stakes quiz structure than in prior semesters with midterm exams. However, students’ sense of belonging did not measurably change when attending hybrid compared to in-person.