This article discusses how three assistant professors have worked to address the challenges their undergraduate and graduate students are facing as a result of changes made to distance learning in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many educators, they were faced with decisions regarding synchronous or asynchronous instruction. The authors…

At its heart, design is a studio-based discipline, which makes it difficult for design educators to adopt technology-driven changes into an online teaching and learning environment. Globally, few universities offer online undergraduate degree design courses, despite an overall growth in online higher degree curricula. Anecdotal evidence and…

The aim of this study was to explore whether Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE) improve the creativity of users regardless of their creative potential profile. The study involved brainstorming sessions in two settings: a real meeting room (RE) and a similar meeting room in a virtual environment (VE). Twenty groups of three users of public…

Building a sense of community (SoC) is an important process in the success of distance education and students' retention. However, developing a community in online learning environments is not an easy task. The purpose of this research study is to explore perceptions of graduate students on SoC and learning after using different collaborative…

Online courses are often criticized for having lower retention rates than traditional courses, especially introductory courses. This study aimed to determine whether there was a relationship between online and traditional instructor personality traits and course completion rate for introductory course instructors at a higher education institution…

This article provides a case study of tutor's reflection on practice leading to a different approach to teaching an introductory course on politics and policy at a major Australian university, aimed at better reaching disengaged students. The overhaul led to higher levels of constructive student engagement in the tutorials, resulting in improved…

Purpose: Teaching and learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic has forced university instructors to consider online alternatives to the classroom. It is possible to facilitate students' learning in the digital environment in similar ways to the traditional face-to-face classroom. The inclusion of e-guests in the digital learning space presents…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the online pedagogical practices and technological tools that influenced the attainment of skills and knowledge associated with professional multicultural competence in a graduate student online course focused on social justice and inclusion. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative case study…

What does it mean to be a productive professor in higher education? What would it feel like to have more peace and productivity? To have nothing fall through the cracks? "The Productive Online and Offline Professor" is written for today's busy higher education professional. Through an exploration of what it means to make work meaningful,…

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition to online learning, with synchronous e-learning becoming a critical modality in higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide. This shift, while ensuring educational continuity, has unveiled numerous challenges, especially in developing nations where resources and infrastructure…

While teachers often monitor and adjust their learning design based on students' emotional states in physical classrooms, synchronous online environments often limit their ability to perceive the emotional climate of the class. Drawing from the concept of social translucence, it is suggested that making students' emotional states…

Nontraditional college students comprise a growing majority of college students with a unique set of needs and some of the highest attrition rates. Collaborative learning practices, such as peer review of writing, have been linked to improvement in students' academic, social, and professional skills necessary in the 21st century, global market.…

This study evaluated the similarities and differences in 50 preservice teachers' (PTs') literacy pedagogy learning outcomes when they engaged in video-based discussions that were both face-to-face (F2F) synchronous and online asynchronous. Across PTs' response sheets, 396 idea units were collected and coded to identify their reports of learning…

The implementation of an integrated medical neuroscience course by technologically pivoting an in-person neuroscience course to online using an adaptive blended method may provide a unique approach for teaching a medical neuroscience course during the COVID-19 pandemic. An adaptive blended learning method was developed in response to the…

This essay describes the concept of access needs as a tool for improving accessibility in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education broadly, from the classroom, to research group meetings, to professional conferences. The normalization of stating access needs and creating access check-ins is a regular practice used in…