Abstract
This project explored how the COVID-19 Emergency Response Teaching that occurred last spring impacted STEM students’ anxiety and engagement. Twelve different STEM instructors and 425 of their students were surveyed to gauge what instructional practices were used last spring, which online activities made students most anxious, and what factors prevented students from participating in their online courses. Trauma-informed teaching was used as a theoretical framework to categorize specific practices that instructors used into four constructs: Inform, Connect, Protect and Redirect. Results indicate that instructors used a variety of trauma-informed teaching practices to varying degrees. Students found that activities that were more intrusive (unmuting to answer a question, turning the video on) were more anxiety-provoking than less intrusive activities (taking a poll, participating in a discussion). Distractions from personal technologies and the environment were the biggest factors that hindered students’ engagement and participation in their courses. These data informed an expanded study that is ongoing this semester.