A New School Environment
by Emma Unekis, Tori Howe and Jared Butterman
Our category was environment, which refers to someone's surroundings and conditions. We think the most pressing problem for college students is being back in an environment which is not necessarily academic and may lead to mental health/grade/stress problems. We think that these problems would not be present in a regular college environment and would be a result of remote learning. We decided to focus on the students and the problems they may be experiencing in home environments and came up with questions such as “How has not being in a college environment affected your learning?”, “Do you feel issues focusing on school due to the stay in place order?” , “How does being in a home/highschool environment take away from college level learning?”. We hope that these questions will lead to an understanding of how the environment affects learning related to college students experiencing the typical college classes versus remote learning at home. Here are the questions we initially came up with:
- How has not being in a college environment affected your learning?
- What are some challenges of remote learning that come with being in an environment not dedicated to learning?
- How does being in a home/highschool environment take away from college level learning?
- What new distractions do you face in your new work environment?
- How does your environment affect your mental health?
- Do you feel issues focusing on school due to the stay in place order?
- Does your home environment cause you stress?
- Have you noticed a change in your grades since making a change in your usual environment?
In order to gain responses we created a survey using the website SurveyMonkey, which we all sent out to our individual circles of first year college students that we know, whether they went to CU or not. We will try to gather as many responses to our survey as possible. We adapted our initial questions to be less open ended and better fitting for a survey format. Here are the questions we sent out to people:
- On a scale of 1 to 10 how has being in a home environment affected your learning? (1 not at all and 10 being a lot)
- On a scale of 1 to 10 how difficult do you find learning while online? (1 easy, 10 most difficult)
- On a scale of 1 to 10 how distracted are you in your new work environment (1 not at all and 10 being a lot)
- (Yes, No) Does your environment affect your mental health?
- (Yes, No) Do you feel issues focusing on school due to the stay in place order?
- (Yes, No) Does your home environment cause you stress?
- (Yes, No) Have you noticed a change in your grades since making a change in your usual environment?
Summary of student’s responses from given survey:
1) On a scale of 1 to 10 how has being in a home environment affected your learning? (1 not at all and 10 being a lot)
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Total | Weighted Average |
4.76% 1 | 0% 0 | 4.76% 1 | 4.76% 1 | 0% 0 | 14.29% 3 | 9.52% 2 | 23.81% 5 | 19.05% 4 | 19.05% 4 | 21 | 7.43 |
2) On a scale of 1 to 10 how difficult do you find learning while online? (1 easy, 10 most difficult)
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Total | Weighted Average |
0% 0 | 0% 0 | 9.25% 2 | 4.76% 1 | 4.75% 1 | 14.29% 3 | 19.05% 4 | 19.05% 4 | 4.76% 1 | 23.81% 5 | 21 | 7.24 |
3) On a scale of 1 to 10 how distracted are you in your new work environment (1 not at all and 10 being a lot)
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Total | Weighted Average |
4.76% 1 | 4.76% 1 | 0% 0 | 0% 0 | 4.76% 1 | 9.52% 2 | 9.52% 2 | 9.52% 2 | 14.29% 3 | 42.86% 9 | 21 | 8.00 |
4) Does your environment affect your mental health?
Yes | 71.43% 15 |
No | 28.57% 6 |
Total | 21 |
5) Do you feel issues focusing on school due to the stay in place order?
Yes | 85.71% 18 |
No | 14.29% 3 |
Total | 21 |
6) Does your home environment cause you stress?
Yes | 52.38% 11 |
No | 47.62% 10 |
Total | 21 |
7) Have you noticed a change in your grades since making a change in your usual environment?
Yes | 57.14% 12 |
No | 42.86% 9 |
Total | 21 |
From this data we can recommend that university faculty understands the immense pressures that quarantine and stay at home orders can place upon students. It would be great if faculty understood that for a situation like Covid-19 and other future compromising circumstances, that students need to have a supportive and understanding environment. Environment is extremely important to college performance as exemplified by our data. If the university and professors can recognize the importance of providing an environment in their classes even online and being able to give students leeway in assignments. Basically what we have learned is that being at home and not having a college environment is extremely disruptive to students learning and professors need to have a degree of understanding and a willingness to accommodate to these disruptions.