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Fear of Negative Evaluation and Student Anxiety in Community College Active-Learning Science Courses.

ABSTRACT: Student anxiety is a growing concern for colleges and universities. As science classrooms transition from traditional lecture to active learning, researchers have sought to understand how active learning affects undergraduate anxiety. However, although community colleges educate nearly half of all undergraduates, no studies have explored the relationship between anxiety and active learning in the context of community college science courses. In this study, we interviewed 29 students enrolled across nine community colleges in the southwestern United States to probe factors that increase and decrease their anxiety in active-learning science courses. Using inductive coding, we identified a set of common factors that affect community college student anxiety in active learning. We found that community college student anxiety decreased when students perceived that active-learning activities enhanced their learning by providing them with multiple ways of learning or the opportunity to learn from others. We also identified fear of negative evaluation as the primary construct underlying student anxiety in active learning and described factors that mediated students' fear of negative evaluation in the community college science classroom. This work highlights how instructors can create more inclusive active-learning science classrooms by reducing student anxiety during active-learning instruction.

SUBMITTER: Downing VR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8697658 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:For over 50 years instructor humor has been recognized as a way to positively impact student cognitive and affective learning. However, no study has explored humor exclusively in the context of college science courses, which have the reputation of being difficult and boring. The majority of studies that explore humor have assumed that students perceive instructor humor to be funny, yet students likely perceive some instructor humor as unfunny or offensive. Further, evidence suggests that women perceive certain subjects to be more offensive than men, yet we do not know what impact this may have on the experience of women in the classroom. To address these gaps in the literature, we surveyed students across 25 different college science courses about their perceptions of instructor humor in college science classes, which yielded 1637 student responses. Open-coding methods were used to analyze student responses to a question about why students appreciate humor. Multinomial regression was used to identify whether there are gender differences in the extent to which funny, unfunny, and offensive humor influenced student attention to course content, instructor relatability, and student sense of belonging. Logistic regression was used to examine gender differences in what subjects students find funny and offensive when joked about by college science instructors. Nearly 99% of students reported that they appreciate instructor humor and reported that it positively changes the classroom atmosphere, improves student experiences during class, and enhances the student-instructor relationship. We found that funny humor tends to increase student attention to course content, instructor relatability, and student sense of belonging. Conversely, offensive humor tends to decrease instructor relatability and student sense of belonging. Lastly, we identified subjects that males were more likely to find funny and females were more likely to find offensive if a college science instructor were to joke about them.

Dataset Information

Fear of Negative Evaluation and Student Anxiety in Community College Active-Learning Science Courses.

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