On January 31, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 virus a global health emergency and three days later, the U.S. followed suit by declaring the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency. On March 11, 2020, the WHO not only declared COVID-19 a pandemic but also expressed serious concern regarding inaction on the part of many countries around the globe to stem the spread of the pandemic. On March 19, California became the first state to issue a stay-at-home order (AJMC, 2021) and by the end of May, 42 states and territories had followed suit, impacting 73% of U.S. counties in doing so (Center for Disease Control, 2020). Remote instruction became the norm for many colleges and universities in the U.S. during the pandemic despite the fact that less than 5% of budgets associated with colleges and universities is dedicated to IT support (Gallagher & Palmer, 2020). Because of the abrupt transition, remote instruction triggered by COVID-19 was fundamentally different from most on-line instruction, leading to the use of the term "emergency remote teaching" (ERT) to describe teaching and learning conducted by traditional higher education institutions during the pandemic (Hodges et al., 2020).

Because of the abrupt transition from traditional classroom teaching to teaching remotely, the assumption was frequently made that the quality of education would drop. Faculty would struggle to support students over on-line channels. Teaching assistants (TAs) would not have effective nor regular access to working side-by-side with students. And access to peers would drop dramatically as libraries, coffee shops, and informal spaces for studying and congregating disappeared during lockdowns and closures. In the second year of the pandemic, however, we have found these assumptions to be true in some but not all cases. Nevertheless, the transition to emergency remote teaching has resulted in a shift in student expectations of how, when, and how much faculty and TAs will be available to them for help as well as how many and what types of resources will be made available to students to support their learning. Students have also adjusted how and how much they interact with their peers and some of the tools they have acquired and acclimated to are likely to remain in their toolbox as they head back into in-person learning in the traditional classroom.

We conducted surveys of a wide range of engineering courses to understand what happened to instructional support during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey included both Likert-scale items to measure faculty, TA, and peer support as well as short answer questions. For quick insight into student responses regarding faculty support, refer to our Faculty Support Infographic. Results regarding overall student perceptions of faculty, TA, and peer support are summarized below. More detail regarding student responses to short answer questions regarding expectations for instructional support are also available for faculty, TA, and peers.

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Faculty support represented how well students thought that a professor in a particular class supported their learning. Eleven Likert-scale items were used to measure faculty support and included such statements as “The professor in this class is interested in helping me learn.” A complete list of items used to measure faculty support is provided on our RPubs page on instructional support. A total of 19 courses were studied in emergency remote teaching and traditional settings in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. Among those 19 courses, seven were taught in both remote and traditional settings (for a total of 14 or 74% of all courses studied). No statistically significant differences in faculty support were found between remote and traditional courses for the entire dataset (19 courses). However, when the analysis was restricted only to courses that were offered both in traditional and remote settings, significant differences emerged. Among these seven pairwise comparisons, all rejected the null hypothesis. In four of the seven courses (ME2, ME3, EE1, EE2), students perceived significantly higher faculty support in traditional compared to emergency remote teaching and in the remaining three courses (ME1, EE3, EE4), the opposite was true. ME1, ME2, and EE4 were not only offered in both settings but were also taught by the same instructor.

Take-Aways: What faculty do and how they choose to support students can readily overwhelm any fundamental differences between learning in traditional classroom settings vs. emergency remote teaching. A deeper dive into our short answer survey data suggests that student priorities for what faculty do and how they support them are very similar between the two settings. Almost half of students consider it to be the highest priority for faculty to provide organized and plentiful out-of-class resources and interactions with students to support student learning, with particular attention to examples that complement and supplement class sessions. During emergency remote teaching, concerns about assessment appeared to replace some students' concerns about in-class delivery. Students appealed to faculty to be flexible and patient with them during emergency remote teaching. These expectations are likely to persist through the return to traditional learning as the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

TA support represens how well students thought that the TAs in a particular class supported their learning. Twelve Likert-scale items were used to measure TA support and included such statements as “At least one of the TAs or secondary instructors in this class has clearly explained course goals and requirements..” A complete list of items used to measure TA support is provided on our RPubs page on instructional support. Like faculty support, no statistically significant differences in TA support were found between remote and traditional courses for the entire dataset (19 courses). However, when the analysis was restricted only to courses that were offered both in traditional and remote settings, significant differences emerged. Among these seven pairwise comparisons, four rejected the null hypothesis. In three of those four courses (ME1, ME2, EE4), students perceived significantly higher TA support in remote compared to traditional learning and all three of these courses were taught by the same instructor. In the remaining course (EE2), students reported significantly higher TA support in the traditional classroom compared to the remote setting. Different instructors taught the remote and traditional offering of EE2.

Take-Aways: based on follow-up interviews as well as survey data, TAs did an excellent job of supporting students during remote learning. In all but one class, TAs maintained or improved upon the level of support provided to students. A key ingredient to TA's contribution during emergency remote teaching was their commitment and ability to come alongside students frequently, responding to e-mails and forums quickly, and holding frequent office hours. 44% of students in emergency remote teaching stated that these out-of-class interactions were their top priority for TAs in supporting their learning. In transitioning from traditional classroom settings to emergency remote teaching, many students shifted their priorities for TA support from better in-class delivery to more frequent and higher quality out-of-class interactions. On the TA side of the table, TAs realized during emergency remote teaching that they did not have to be on campus to help students. Zoom and other platforms allowed them to help students without increasing hours spent commuting to and from campus. Student expectations for TA availability are likely to remain as campuses return to traditional or hybrid classroom settings and TAs should be encouraged to maintain the instructional support that they successfully carried out during the pandemic.

Peer support represented how well students thought that their peers in a particular class supported their learning. Four Likert-scale items were used to measure peer support and included such statements as “In this class, other students are helpful to me." A complete list of items used to measure peer support is provided on our RPubs page on instructional support. Like faculty and TA support, no statistically significant differences in TA support were found between remote and traditional courses for the entire dataset (19 courses). However, when the analysis was restricted only to courses that were offered both in traditional and remote settings, significant differences emerged. Among these seven pairwise comparisons, four rejected the null hypothesis. In three of those four courses (ME1, ME2, ME3), students perceived significantly higher peer support in the traditional classroom setting compared to emergency remote teaching. In the remaining course where significant differences emerged (EE4), students reported significantly higher peer support during emergency remote teaching compared to the traditional classroom setting. The same instructor taught the remote and traditional offering of ME1, ME2, and EE4.

Take-Aways: when students were asked to identify their needs and expectations for peer support, regardless of the course in which they were enrolled, students responded in ways that suggested what they valued had indeed shifted significantly as they moved from traditional learning to emergency remote teaching. Students shifted their attention from physical spaces to interact with their peers to on-line tools for communication, both formal and informal. Many students preferred both a formal forum for asking questions and exchanging ideas and a more informal tool (e.g. Discord) where they can interact and access peers 24/7 without a faculty or other person of authority looking over their shoulder. By acting as agents in their own learning through the use of these tools, students play a significant role in fostering cooperative learning. Many of these students appealed to their peers to use online collaborative tools more efficiently, to engage more, to communicate clearly, to be accountable for assigned work, and to be flexible when organizing online meetings. Faculty can help nourish peer support by facilitating and encouraging the use of these tools and also supporting codes of conduct and individual accountability for students to use in leveraging and optimizing the use of interactive forums, both on-line and in physical spaces.