Online STEM Courses Need More Real-World Interactivity - Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

What do students want in the learning activities for their online STEM courses? They'd prefer more real-life problems to solve and instructional resources such as simulations, case studies, videos and demonstrations. They'd also like the chance to meet and collaborate with other students as well as teaching assistants online. Finally, they'd appreciate clear and consistent information from instructors about instructions, assignments, assessments, due dates, course pages and office hours. That's what a research project found when it queried 537 students from 15 online STEM courses within a large, four-year public university in the southeast during spring 2016. A third of the students (36 percent) came from the college of engineering and computer science; other large groups included science majors (14 percent) and those pursuing degrees in the college of health and public affairs (11 percent). The study was done by three researchers from the Center for Distributed Learning at the University of Central Florida. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/07/09/online-stem-courses-need-more-real-world-interactivity.aspx