The Effect of Learning Assistants on Undergraduate Sense of Belonging in an Anatomy and Physiology Lab Course
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of whether or not Learning Assistants created sense of belonging among students enrolled in an Anatomy and Physiology I Lab course during the Fall 2022 semester. A one-group, pretest-posttest quantitative design was used to collect survey data using Qualtrics, and several analyses were performed including paired sample t-tests, Pearson correlations, repeated measures ANCOVA and ANOVA, along with one-way ANCOVA using SPSS. Students completed the Departmental Sense of Belonging and Involvement Questionnaire before working with Learning Assistants, and then throughout the semester, they worked with Learning assistants both in and out of the classroom to strengthen their understanding of the material. At the end of the semester, students were asked to complete the same survey again. When post-test survey scores were compared to pre-test scores, statistically significant changes in sense of belonging occurred in all three sense of belonging survey subscales (valued competence, social acceptance and involvement). This analysis was confirmed by several statistical tests. Additionally, when data from three groups of students (new students with no prior experience with LAs, returning students with no prior experience with LAs, and returning students with prior experience with LAs) was analyzed, all three significantly changed in sense of belonging from pre-test to post-test, with the returning students with prior experience with LAs displaying the largest change in two of the sense of belonging subscales (valued competence and social acceptance), and the smallest change in the third subscale (involvement). The means of all students decreased for the involvement subscale, which prompted the involvement survey items to be rewritten for my artifact. These new items will be used in a future implementation of the survey.
Subject
Learning AssistantsLearning Assistant Program
Anatomy and Physiology Lab
sense of belonging
biology
Departmental Sense of Belonging and Involvement questionnaire
Collections
Citation
Darhower, Sarah Elizabeth (2023). The Effect of Learning Assistants on Undergraduate Sense of Belonging in an Anatomy and Physiology Lab Course. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /203053.