Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

As the COVID-19 pandemic globally altered the way education was accessed by students and facilitated by teachers. Educators understand the importance of students engaging in the learning experiences to promote achievement. In this paper, we address the following objectives: (1) provide a conceptualization of student engagement from the perspective of teachers, students, and families, (2) identify the factors that influence student engagement, (3) identify the distinctions and similarities between in-person and virtual learning, and (4) recommend practices to increase student engagement during virtual learning. Research plans were to collect data in Oujda, Morocco and Arizona, USA to examine educational experiences in two different contexts. In this paper, we present data from the Oujda participants. Results indicated various levels of students’ emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement due to factors involving technology, supervision, motivation, and teacher pedagogy. Results reflected various perspectives of teachers, students, and parents regarding student engagement, yet all the perspectives indicated that engagement and preference is higher for in-person learning than virtual learning.

As restrictions regarding the COVID pandemic began to be enforced in March 2020, the first celebrity announced they had tested positive. It was Tom Hanks. An American cultural icon and a household name in the United States since his role as Forrest Gump in the movie Forrest Gump (1994). My family loves all his movies, especially Big (1988), and I found myself concerned for his health like he was my family. Every time there was an update on social media or the news, I held my breath for the other foot to drop. When my parents told me that Hanks was getting better, I breathed a sigh of relief. I heard many other pandemic stories like those of President Donald Trump, American singer-songwriter Pink, and NBA player Rudy Gobert. However, I realized that I didn’t hear enough about how my community experienced this global pandemic. I wanted to know how the people I used to see all the time navigated the health issues, isolation, financial stress, and other issues that arose, and more specifically, I wanted to know how their beliefs had helped them navigate the crisis. The purpose of this project is to share the Covid-19 stories of ordinary people across ages and genders—from high school students to college students, parents to grandparents. While no one person experienced it the same way as another, there were common themes across the narratives of the 8 people that I interviewed, namely, their reliance on their Christian faith during these times of uncertainty and fear. My interviews with participants lasted roughly thirty minutes, and I always started with the initial question, “what was your initial reaction to COVID?” I would then follow up by asking the participant how Covid-19 impacted their life. How did it impact their education, career, family, and community? I asked what challenges arose and what opportunities or good came to them during this time. I also asked participants what they learned about God and how they grew over the past few years. Each participant shared with me a quote, verse, or lyric they held onto, used as a source of strength, or represents a theme of their life during that time (you will see these written as epigraphs for the stories). Rather than merely collecting and publishing their interviews, I wanted to transform their experiences into literary narratives, so I turned to a practice called art-based research (ABR), a practice that involves the translation of fieldwork (and interview) into creative art forms. ABR addresses research in more engaged ways, and it allows us to share information in more culturally appropriate ways. By using ABR, this collection of Covid stories will engage and appeal more to a general audience. The resultant collection of nine narratives revealed strong themes of faith and family. Each narrative gave light to how the pandemic was hard and/or fruitful for the participants’ relationships with God and relationships with their families. The five participants who were 25 and under rendered additional themes of community and isolation while the four who were 26 and up rendered additional themes of emotional and mental health. The six female participants rendered additional themes of education and community while the three male participants rendered additional themes of politics and self-improvement. It is important to note that four of the five participants who are 25 and under are female while the group of 26 and up were half female and half male. Also important to note is that four of the six female participants were 25 and under while two of the three male participants were 26 and up. Thus, the small number of participants does not allow the research to apply broadly to any group outside the study. I hope that this project unifies the American experience of COVID as well as highlights the differences that make each story special. The history books will hone in on the generic and standard research studies will focus on the numbers, but projects like this provide a layer of humanity to the history we will tell future generations. I also hope that in the more immediate future, this project will serve today’s generations well in processing the trauma and grief that occurred during these last few years as well as render empathy for one another.

The nonprofit sector exists as one of three working groups which contribute to the flow of the economy and society. Unlike the government and for-profit sectors, the nonprofit world has faced a growing responsibility alongside a lack of emphasis on the sector’s importance. Nonprofits have often faced a lack of resources needed to combat these gaps. However, since Covid-19, resources have been diminishing even further. These resources can be identified as a variety of elements, from volunteers and paid staff to funds and access to overseas goods and services. A case study of the world-renowned Make-A-Wish Foundation and its Arizona Chapter perfectly illustrates the journey back to full mission-accomplishment in present times through their actions taken to combat common sector struggles. This case study proves importance of the nonprofit sector, accompanied by a call for education and re-emphasis of the nonprofit sector.

Our thesis project is a 5-person group thesis that was created over the span of two years. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, our group first met and discussed our shared interests in mask-wearing and individual factors that we each thought had significant impacts on mask-wearing among Barrett students. We each decided on factors that we wanted to investigate and subsequently split into three main groups based on our interests: culture and geography, medical humanities, and medical and psychological conditions. Despite these different interests, we continued to treat our thesis as a five-person project rather than three different projects. We then constructed a survey, followed by several focus group sessions and interview questions to ask Honors students. In January 2021, we received approval from the IRB for our project, and we quickly finalized our survey, focus group and interview questions. In February 2021, we sent out our survey via the Barrett Digest, which we kept open for approximately one month. We also sent out advertisements for our survey via social media platforms such as Twitter and Discord. Following completion of the survey, we contacted all of the respondents who stated that they were interested in participating in focus groups and interviews. Focus groups and interviews were conducted in March and April 2021, and results were analyzed and correlated to our individual subtopics. Each of the focus group and interview participants received $50 each, and three randomly-selected students who completed the survey received $25 each. From April 2021 until April 2022, we analyzed our results, came to conclusions based on our initial topics of interest, and constructed our paper.

Our thesis project is a 5-person group thesis that was created over the span of two years. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, our group first met and discussed our shared interests in mask-wearing and individual factors that we each thought had significant impacts on mask-wearing among Barrett students. We each decided on factors that we wanted to investigate and subsequently split into three main groups based on our interests: culture and geography, medical humanities, and medical and psychological conditions. Despite these different interests, we continued to treat our thesis as a five-person project rather than three different projects. We then constructed a survey, followed by several focus group sessions and interview questions to ask Honors students. In January 2021, we received approval from the IRB for our project, and we quickly finalized our survey, focus group and interview questions. In February 2021, we sent out our survey via the Barrett Digest, which we kept open for approximately one month. We also sent out advertisements for our survey via social media platforms such as Twitter and Discord. Following completion of the survey, we contacted all of the respondents who stated that they were interested in participating in focus groups and interviews. Focus groups and interviews were conducted in March and April 2021, and results were analyzed and correlated to our individual subtopics. Each of the focus group and interview participants received $50 each, and three randomly-selected students who completed the survey received $25 each. From April 2021 until April 2022, we analyzed our results, came to conclusions based on our initial topics of interest, and constructed our paper.

While Covid-19 had severe impacts on education across the board, the goal of our research is to examine how virtual learning affected Business Data Analytics and Computer Information Students at Arizona State University. A survey was created to measure three key academic areas (student learning, communication, and student engagement) that may have experienced a notable change in quality. Forty Nine W.P. Carey students were surveyed and their responses were recorded in a Google Sheet. From there the results were transferred to excel and converted into a Numeric Likert scale. By establishing base scores for each of the survey statements we can isolate areas of virtual learning that underwhelmed or satisfied our target demographic. The objective of the subsequent analysis was to identify any areas within the three focal points that participants felt strongly impacted their performance with virtual schooling during the August 2020 to May 2021 school year.

Our thesis project is a 5-person group thesis that was created over the span of two years. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, our group first met and discussed our shared interests in mask-wearing and individual factors that we each thought had significant impacts on mask-wearing among Barrett students. We each decided on factors that we wanted to investigate and subsequently split into three main groups based on our interests: culture and geography, medical humanities, and medical and psychological conditions. Despite these different interests, we continued to treat our thesis as a five-person project rather than three different projects. We then constructed a survey, followed by several focus group sessions and interview questions to ask Honors students. In January 2021, we received approval from the IRB for our project, and we quickly finalized our survey, focus group and interview questions. In February 2021, we sent out our survey via the Barrett Digest, which we kept open for approximately one month. We also sent out advertisements for our survey via social media platforms such as Twitter and Discord. Following completion of the survey, we contacted all of the respondents who stated that they were interested in participating in focus groups and interviews. Focus groups and interviews were conducted in March and April 2021, and results were analyzed and correlated to our individual subtopics. Each of the focus group and interview participants received $50 each, and three randomly-selected students who completed the survey received $25 each. From April 2021 until April 2022, we analyzed our results, came to conclusions based on our initial topics of interest, and constructed our paper.