Although online courses have been a part of academia for nearly 30 years, they are still perceived as "different" than face-to-face instruction. Through in-depth interviews with four instructors, we explored how STEM faculty approach teaching asynchronous online undergraduate STEM courses. The faculty interviewed for this study viewed…

Today's college students can choose from a multitude of learning modalities. Many students elect to earn their degrees through 100% online college programs; however, online learners present higher attrition rates than their on-ground peers (Grau-Valldosera et al., 2019). Many theorists attempt to explain how students can succeed in college,…

Many models of online student engagement posit a "more is better" relationship between students' course-related actions and their engagement. However, recent research indicates that the timing of engagement is also an important consideration. In addition to the frequency (how often) of engagement, two other constructs of timing were…

This study aims to investigate the effects of competition through a digital leaderboard in gamified online discussions on learners' behavioral and cognitive engagement in learning. Twenty-three graduate students pursuing master's degree in instructional technology in a public university in Indonesia were involved in a five-week quasi-experiment (N…

This article describes the design and evaluation of an online, asynchronous tool that mirrors the beneficial peer instruction process currently conducted in face-to-face classrooms. In the online Peer Instruction tool, students respond to a multiple-choice question with an answer and explanation. They are then exposed to peer responses to the same…

Amidst the disruptions caused by COVID-19, maintaining learner engagement in traditional and online courses has become a significant concern. This study explores the use of embedded video questions in an undergraduate Biology course grounded in the Learning Experience Design (LXD) pedagogical paradigm with the objective to reduce cognitive load…

Current approaches to assessing digital competence in education may be too broad to support teachers in developing their online learning designs in specific subjects. During the pandemic, studies have identified that the development of teaching practices (and subsequently their learning designs) has taken a leap. However, because digital cultures…

This study sought to address the gap in knowledge about the effect of UDL features on asynchronous online postsecondary learners' achievement, engagement, and self-efficacy. The study also described a process for redesigning an online course to incorporate UDL components and provided specific examples of the implemented UDL guidelines. The study…

Regulatory Sciences courses taught in an online asynchronous environment pose challenges for sustaining student engagement and encouraging active learning. Impediments include limited contact with the instructor and classmates, inadequate interaction with learning materials, content that can be ever-changing, and limited tools for assessing…

Technological innovations and changing learning environments are influencing student engagement more than ever before. These changing learning environments are affecting the constructs of student behavioural engagement in the online environment and require scrutiny to determine how to facilitate better student learning outcomes. Specifically,…

Designing experiential learning activities requires an instructor to think about learning outcomes. Using importance-performance analysis (IPA) can assist with the instructional design of the activities for implementing service-learning in distance education courses. This study used IPA in a fully online asynchronous graduate class to gauge…

This article provides several strategies for using a learning management system to engage online students and to promote the development of self-regulated learning skills in a 4-week accelerated summer course.

This reflective essay discusses my experience over one year during the COVID-19 global pandemic. I analyze my experiences teaching and my observations of students, concluding that the affordances of blended learning can be useful for engaging multilingual students, and that such engagement allows for more time for formative feedback for students.…

In February 2020, the author was offered a position as a postdoctoral teaching fellow at a large land-grant college in the American West. A couple weeks later, COVID-19 hit in full force. As the newly hired postdoctoral teaching fellow, the author's department chair tasked the author with a challenging assignment -- to develop an asynchronous…

Based on the elaboration of online learning, blended teaching and differences between the flipped classroom teaching and blended teaching, this paper addresses the fundamental principles that should be observed in the design of blended flipped classroom, and constructs a "three-stage asynchronous" teaching mode of online autonomous and…