Growth Mindset as a Student Support Tool during a Pandemic

Supporting students in their learning is important at any time but especially so during the Covid-19 pandemic. One way to help students feel supported is to encourage them to develop a growth mindset for their learning. In this paper, we present data collected during the Fall 2020 to Spring 2022 semesters from a general biochemistry course, where frequent short activities were completed to help students foster a growth mindset. Survey responses indicate that 73.6% of all students felt they had more of a growth mindset at the end of the course compared to only 29.6% of students knowing about growth mindset before the class. Further, the fact that the start of the semester activities were rated the most helpful by students shows a need for early, and even the first day of class, interventions on growth mindset.