Sentiment and thematic analysis of faculty responses: Transition to online learning

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This project aims to understand physics faculty responses to transitioning to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. We surveyed 662 physics faculty from the United States following the Spring 2020 term; of these, 258 completed a follow-up survey after the Fall 2020 term. We used natural language processing to measure the sentiment scores of 364 Spring 2020 responses and another 134 Fall 2020 responses of physics faculty who completed an optional written prompt. Additionally, we determined the change in sentiment scores of the 100 individuals who responded to both surveys. These sentiment scores measured between -1 and 1 for completely negative and completely positive, respectively. Sentiment scores after Spring 2020 were slightly positive with a median value of 0.2347. The distribution of sentiment changes was approximately normally distributed with a mean centered near zero. Analysis suggests the average sentiment did not change from the initial to follow-up surveys. To identify major topics within the responses for both surveys, latent Dirichlet allocation analysis was applied to the data. The topic distribution for the initial survey is given as course modifications and technology, negative aspects of the transition - primarily with labs and cheating, exam and evaluation difficulties, and difficulties with student understanding. The topics were noticeably different in the follow-up survey with differences between Fall and Spring, cooperative learning strategies, strategies that worked in the remote space, and benefits of in-person labs.

Original languageEnglish
Article number010151
JournalPhysical Review Physics Education Research
Volume20
Issue number1
Number of pages15
ISSN2469-9896
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Awards No. DUE 2027958 and No. DUE 2027963. We appreciate the methodological help from Tor Ole Bigton Odden on Latent Dirichlet Allocation. We also greatly appreciate the time all survey respondents spent, particularly during a pandemic.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.

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