Looking Ahead: From Driving Cars in the Lobby to Online--Using Open Creative Expression to Understand Student Emotions about Transitioning to Remote Instruction during the COVID-19 Crisis

In response to COVID-19, students in a first-year general engineering program rapidly transitioned from a highly interactive, hands-on model with large remote-controlled cars in the lobby to an asynchronous, online model without face-to-face student interaction. The instructors designed an assignment to encourage students to creatively express how the course interruption and transition online was affecting them. The assignment encouraged complete freedom of expression and choice of media. The intent was to keep a personal connection with students and to create a feedback opportunity to make up for the lost in-person informal connections and observations. The instructor of each section viewed submissions, and offered encouraging, individual feedback on each. Afterwards, instructors developed and applied a coding system for applicable media and moods to help understand overall student response. The instructors were left with the perception that the responses were very powerful, and successful at strengthening the recently weakened student-instructor bond. We found the assignment gave students a chance to express themselves more creatively than assignments such as reports. This paper will introduce the assignment and give an overview of student submissions. We believe similar assignments could be useful in any course where the instructor has an interest in the well-being of their students, and we ourselves plan to use this style of assignment to explore topics including students' desire to continue to pursue engineering, or comfort level during their first year of college.