Introductory classes are often a student's first exposure to foundational knowledge, careers, and faculty in an academic major. The characteristics of introductory exercise science courses, as well as faculty impressions of course benefits and areas for improvement, were explored in this study. Electronic survey data from 181 universities around…

Higher education is going through a significant period of change following the COVID-19 pandemic. The increased technological capacity and desire for online modalities are both a great opportunity and a potentially challenging burden. Although they serve the most marginalized students, community colleges are often vastly under-resourced, leaving…

The demand for college faculty to teach online has increased substantially over recent years (Jaschik & Lederman, 2022; Perrotta & Bohan, 2020). However, online courses are often ineffectual (Hart et al., 2018; Su & Waugh, 2018) and expand gaps in equity and student achievement (Sublett, 2022). These problems may be linked to…

Our research team worked with Wake Technical Community College to evaluate an intervention to redesign the delivery of a set of introductory online courses. To obtain unbiased estimates of the treatment effects of the intervention, we conducted a randomized control trial in which students who enrolled in the study courses were assigned randomly to…

Online learning provides students greater access to higher education opportunities when regular, on-campus options are not viable. However, for administrators and educators, online learning can be difficult to assess and ensure quality, which leads institutions to use quality assurance frameworks such as the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program…

The Texas community college systems served culturally diverse students in asynchronous courses. However, attrition rates remained low for culturally diverse students. Instructors had the potential to increase attrition rates of culturally diverse students. However, there was limited research exploring the implementation of such approaches by…

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine experiential training as a best practice for preparing community college faculty to teach online. Using the TPACK framework, the study reviewed the impact of providing faculty training related to technology tools and pedagogy for course design to learn about participants'…

With the increase of technology in day-to-day lives, online college education is sweeping the nation as numbers of students enrolling online is consistently on the rise. Unfortunately, because of the nature of open enrollment at the community college level, students often enroll without necessary skills to be successful at the college level,…

The work of instructional design in community college settings is woefully understudied. This study documents that work in three community colleges in the southeastern United States while placing it in the theoretical context of neoliberalism, and in line with that theoretical context, takes a post-structuralist stance in its methodological…

Building community is essential to achieving optimal learning conditions. Failure to build community in online courses is linked to higher drop-out rates, feelings of isolation, and lower academic success rate (Adams & Wilson, 2020). Although there is research on building a sense of community in online course settings, much of this work has…

Asynchronous online learning has grown in popularity due to its flexibility in providing higher education access to learners regardless of distance, transportation, and scheduling constraints. However, for successful online learning, students must adapt and intensify the self-regulated learning (SRL) skills they developed in face-to-face settings…

Research has illustrated the role visual design plays in effective communication and instruction. However, more research has yet to investigate how online course designers (i.e., anyone who designs online courses) add visual appeal to online courses. This study explored the visual design process in online course development. It examines how…

The North Dakota University System "2022-2023 Annual Enrollment Report" is an effort to report system wide, duplicated and unduplicated student headcount by combining degree credit, non-degree credit, and non-credit enrollments across the eleven NDUS institutions for an entire academic year. The academic year is reported as preceding…

The article presents a case study on institutional change within the context of an online improvement initiative. As part of its quality enhancement plan (QEP) improvement process in support of accreditation reaffirmation, Wake Technical Community College (Raleigh, NC) implemented a multistage change process to engage the college in data-driven…

Online learning at Pennsylvania community colleges increases access to education throughout the commonwealth and delivers programs of local interest to students globally. The academic technology leaders at these institutions find ways to promote and support quality online learning courses and programs, often with few or no additional staff,…