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The purpose of this study was to examine effective design elements for online courses in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields at a large four-year public university in southeastern United States. Our research questions addressed the influence of online design elements on students' perception of learning and learning satisfaction. An online survey was completed by 537 students from 15 online STEM courses in spring 2016. The survey results indicated that student perceptions of learning and satisfaction were correlated with their perceptions of the efficacy of specific design elements, such as integrated active learning activities, interactive engagement strategies, and robust assessment design. In particular, perception of assessment design efficacy was significantly correlated with students' self-perceived learning and learning satisfaction for students of all subpopulations. The findings inform instructors and instructional designers on how to design effective, inclusive, and engaging online STEM courses. Student survey responses were observed to support universal design for learning (UDL) and in light of this, online STEM instructors are also strongly encouraged to utilize UDL principles in course design, which benefit not only students with disabilities but all students.

Despite the pressure from potential employers and higher education administrators to develop students' global and intercultural competence, traditional study abroad programs simply are not feasible for many postsecondary students (Berdan & Johannes, 2014; Fischer, 2015). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an online delivery model for study abroad activities. Building upon the findings of an initial exploratory program using Adobe Connect web conferencing tools, this evaluative case study was the second in a series of design based research studies intended to identify effective practices and develop recommendations to further refine the model through an iterative evaluation process. Using the Online Learning Consortium's Quality Framework, each of the Five Pillars that support successful online learning (access, student satisfaction, faculty satisfaction, learning effectiveness, & scale) was evaluated through a combination of anonymous surveys, pre/post assessments, observations, and student & instructor interviews (Moore, 2005). Regarding access, 26 students who were enrolled in an intercultural communication course were able to participate in a study abroad experience in Italy; 10 students participated in the traditional study abroad trip in Italy while the other 16 participated virtually. The online students were able to join the live meetings, thus expanding their access to international experiences that normally would be closed to them. In terms of student and faculty satisfaction, both groups of students and the instructor reported specific areas of satisfaction, offered critical feedback, and felt that the concept was a viable one. While the students who traveled to Italy had a far more immersive experience, both groups demonstrated gains in learning. Using Morais and Ogden's (2010) global citizenship pre/post assessment, both groups showed improvement on the selfawareness and intercultural communication scales, and when comparing the two groups the online students improved more on the social responsibility scale while the students who traveled improved more on the global knowledge scale. Both groups submitted assignments of similar quality, engaged in communications between the abroad and online groups, and interacted with the instructor and experts in the field. In terms of differences in student engagement, students had differing opinions on the interaction with the technology and the online group asked more questions during live meetings. The implications of this pilot study should inform the planning of the next case evaluation and are important for other educators who wish to implement a similar approach to internationalizing the curriculum through online instruction.

Fostering metacognition can be challenging within large enrollment settings, particularly within STEM fields concentrating on problem-solving skills and their underlying theories. Herein, the research problem of realizing more frequent, insightful, and explicitly-rewarded metacognition activities at significant scale is investigated via a strategy utilizing a hierarchy of assessments. Referred to as the "STEM-Optimal Digitized Assessment Strategy (SODAS)," this targeted approach engages frequent assessment, instructor feedback, and learner self-reflection across the hierarchy of learning mechanisms comprising Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains. SODAS spans this hierarchy of learning mechanisms via a progression of (i) unregulated online assessment, (ii) proctored Computer-Based Assessment (CBA), (iii) problem-based learning activities assessed in the laboratory setting, and (iv) personalized Socratic discussions of scanned scrap sheets that accompanied each learner's machine-graded formative assessments. Results of a case study integrating SODAS within a high-enrollment Mechanical Engineering Heat Transfer course at a large state university are presented for enrollment of 118 students. Six question types were delivered with lockdown proctored testing via auto-grading within the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS), along with bi-weekly laboratory activities to address the higher layers of Bloom's Taxonomy. Sample assessment formats were validated through student use and schedules of responsibilities for instructors across four tiers of assessment levels (facts, concepts, procedures, and metacognition), two testing delivery mechanisms (electronic textbook exercises and proctored CBA), and three remediation mechanisms (self-paced, score clarification, and experiment clarification), which showed that learning achievement can increase by up to 16.9% compared to conventional assessment strategies, while utilizing comparable instructor resources and workloads.

The Teaching Online Preparation Toolkit (TOPkit) is an open educational resource (website and two free, customizable online faculty development courses) that faculty developers anywhere can use. Florida-funded and Florida-focused in support of the State University System of Florida Board of Governors 2025 Strategic Plan for Online Education, TOPkit is a comprehensive resource that provides instructional designers, faculty developers, and educational technologists with the essential tools required to support faculty in the development of high-quality online courses. This article describes the online toolkit and specifically highlights the toolkit's pair of sample courses that may be downloaded and customized.

The purpose of this study was to examine effective design elements for online courses in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields at a large four-year public university in southeastern United States. Our research questions addressed the influence of online design elements on students' perception of learning and learning satisfaction. An online survey was completed by 537 students from 15 online STEM courses in spring 2016. The survey results indicated that student perceptions of learning and satisfaction were correlated with their perceptions of the efficacy of specific design elements, such as integrated active learning activities, interactive engagement strategies, and robust assessment design. In particular, perception of assessment design efficacy was significantly correlated with students' self-perceived learning and learning satisfaction for students of all subpopulations. The findings inform instructors and instructional designers on how to design effective, inclusive, and engaging online STEM courses. Student survey responses were observed to support universal design for learning (UDL) and in light of this, online STEM instructors are also strongly encouraged to utilize UDL principles in course design, which benefit not only students with disabilities but all students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews The Teaching Online Preparation Toolkit located at TOPkit.org.

Unlabelled: Skeletal muscle, at 30 to 40% of body mass, is the most abundant soft tissue in the body. Besides its primary function in movement and posture, skeletal muscle is a significant innate immune organ with the capacity to produce cytokines and chemokines and respond to proinflammatory cytokines. Little is known about the role of skeletal muscle during systemic influenza A virus infection in any host and particularly avian species. Here we used primary chicken and duck multinucleated myotubes to examine their susceptibility and innate immune response to influenza virus infections. Both chicken and duck myotubes expressed avian and human sialic acid receptors and were readily susceptible to low-pathogenicity (H2N3 A/mallard duck/England/7277/06) and high-pathogenicity (H5N1 A/turkey/England/50-92/91 and H5N1 A/turkey/Turkey/1/05) avian and human H1N1 (A/USSR/77) influenza viruses. Both avian host species produced comparable levels of progeny H5N1 A/turkey/Turkey/1/05 virus. Notably, the rapid accumulation of viral nucleoprotein and matrix (M) gene RNA in chicken and duck myotubes was accompanied by extensive cytopathic damage with marked myotube apoptosis (widespread microscopic blebs, caspase 3/7 activation, and annexin V binding at the plasma membrane). Infected chicken myotubes produced significantly higher levels of proinflammatory cytokines than did the corresponding duck cells. Additionally, in chicken myotubes infected with H5N1 viruses, the induction of interferon beta (IFN-β) and IFN-inducible genes, including the melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5 (MDA-5) gene, was relatively weak compared to infection with the corresponding H2N3 virus. Our findings highlight that avian skeletal muscle fibers are capable of productive influenza virus replication and are a potential tissue source of infection., Importance: Infection with high-pathogenicity H5N1 viruses in ducks is often asymptomatic, and skeletal muscle from such birds could be a source of infection of humans and animals. Little is known about the ability of influenza A viruses to replicate in avian skeletal muscle fibers. We show here that cultured chicken and duck myotubes were highly susceptible to infection with both low- and high-pathogenicity avian influenza viruses. Infected myotubes of both avian species displayed rapid virus accumulation, apoptosis, and extensive cellular damage. Our results indicate that avian skeletal muscle fibers of chicken and duck could be significant contributors to progeny production of highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses., (Copyright © 2015, Baquero-Perez et al.)