Insights into student participation in a soil physics course during COVID‐19 emergency online learning

The recent novel coronavirus pandemic led to global changes in higher education as universities transitioned to online learning to slow the spread of the virus. In the United States, this transition occurred during the spring of 2020, and the compulsory shift to online learning led to frustrations from students and instructors alike. I studied student participation during the online portion of a university‐level soil physics course taught in Spring 2020. Participation was quantified using the number of student posts in weekly discussion boards, the number of student views of asynchronous videos, and the number of video views during each week of online instruction. Relationships between video length and number of student views and between student participation and final exam grades were also examined. My findings show that student views of mini‐lecture videos were low and decreased throughout the online learning period. Conversely, views of example problem videos and the number of posts on graded discussion boards were high and remained high throughout the online learning period, suggesting that students were more engaged with online material that affected their grades. I also found that the level of student engagement in online material was positively correlated with higher final exam scores. The findings presented here may be used to improve the development and delivery of online coursework in natural science disciplines, both during current and future emergencies.