Students’ Concerns and What They Look Forward to: A Comparison of COVID-19 Versus Pre-COVID-19

Students' Concerns and What They Look Forward to: A Comparison COVID-19 versus Pre COVID-19 This survey-based study investigated what engineering students were looking forward to and concerned about when entering college and whether differences existed between the cohort of students who started college during the COVID-19 pandemic and those who started college before the pandemic. The study also investigated students' beliefs on their ability to develop social networks and learn course material while taking courses delivered in different formats. Results showed the students in the 2020 cohort were less likely to experience what they were looking forward to in college and more likely to experience what they were concerned about when compared to students who started college before fall of 2020. Less than 50% of the students surveyed felt they could grow their social network while taking a classes online asynchronously. Around half of the students thought they could learn course content in an asynchronous online class and about 64% thought they could learn in a synchronous online course.