Jaeyun Han

One model to foster institutional change and promote college student success is the Departmental Action Team (DAT) framework, which deploys a small discussion group of departmental faculty, staff, and students to identify challenges and implement solutions unique to their department contexts. There has been a suggestion to measure the within-department discussion network and examine DAT members’ positions in group dynamics that influence collaborative efforts. However, little is known about what can be identified through social network analysis on the structural roles of DAT members in the within-department discussion network and how it can be related to their post-DAT reflection. Using a case of an engineering department at a public urban U.S. university that engaged in a DAT initiative, this study examined the direct ties and brokerage roles of four DAT members across three years by analyzing the within-department discussion network involved in making changes for undergraduate students. Compared to the baseline, DAT members had some increases in centrality and showed more different types of brokerage roles, even though these patterns weakened one year after the end of facilitation. DAT members’ structural roles were aligned with their post-DAT reflections on individual learning on leadership, collaboration, or student success. However, some DAT members also reflected their limited values and resources at the department level. The combination of social network data and interviews is beneficial for future DAT researchers to proactively consider potential members’ structural roles for team formation and strategic facilitation.

Purpose: Understanding group dynamics is essential for promoting institutional change. The purpose of this brief article is to introduce the use of Yule’s Q to quantify group dynamics in a way that allows an individual’s tendency to associate with others based on their shared attributes to be captured as they evolve.Design/methodology/approach: Two academic departments at a large public urban university participated in ongoing meetings as part of the year-long change initiative. Field notes of these meetings were recorded for information on participants and the flow of conversations. Yule’s Q was calculated with responsive interaction network and attribute data coded from the field notes.Findings: Yule’s Q can be used to quantify group dynamics with a visualization of interactions among group members. The differences in the triggered divisions or faultlines in organizational change initiatives by shared common attributes (e.g. levels of positions within departments) can be related to group interactions and/or disruptions in collaboration.Originality/value: This study can contribute to broadening the research community’s analytic approaches to utilizing network and attribute data for understanding group dynamics and their patterns across meetings.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, courses in higher education have increasingly been delivered via asynchronous online modalities. Although such modalities may allow instructors and students greater flexibility in how they engage with their courses, they increase the self-regulatory challenges learners experience. Students may feel less capable of regulating their learning in web-based modalities, which may increase procrastination and lower academic performance. Alternatively, students who procrastinate in their asynchronous courses may become convinced that they lack the self-regulatory skills needed to succeed. Little research has examined these relationships. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine these self-regulatory processes, the challenges students experience in asynchronous classes, and possible effects on academic performance. Undergraduate students (N = 1,216) attending a public U.S. university responded to closed – and open-ended survey items in Fall 2020. A cross-lagged panel model revealed the interdependency of self-efficacy for self-regulation and academic procrastination, and their relationship with course performance. Findings suggest that students’ beliefs in their self-regulatory capabilities and their procrastination behaviors are related to each other and jointly contribute to course performance. Students described time management difficulties as the most challenging aspect of asynchronous online learning. Integration of quantitative and qualitative data revealed several unique challenges experienced by students who had relatively higher or lower self-efficacy and procrastination. Overall, this study suggests implications for the timely support of college students’ self-regulation in asynchronous online learning courses during and after COVID-19.

Learning environments that support a sense of belonging have been shown to help students fully and meaningfully participate in their learning. Less is known, however, about the social organization of online learning environments that support a sense of belonging, particularly in postsecondary contexts. With an explicit attention to issues of equity, this mixed-methods study examined what makes undergraduate students in the United States of America (N = 4,544) feel included in online learning environments during a global pandemic. Survey responses collected in the fall of 2020 were analyzed through a sociocultural learning theory framework. Rating scale and open-ended responses revealed that students’ sense of belonging and inclusion varied by student race and gender and by instructional modality (synchronous vs. asynchronous). Opportunities for discussion, interaction with peers, and feeling that one’s racial or ethnic group was represented in the curriculum were among the environmental affordances that supported a sense of belonging.