In Georgia, the recent "Protect Students First Act," or GA HB 1084, states that curricula and training programs should refrain from judging others based on race or advocate for divisive concepts such as "One race is inherently superior to another race," or that "the United States of America is fundamentally racist."…

By supporting student profiles, blogs, content curation, and HTML and scripting projects, Springshare's LibGuides CMS provides a flexible platform for student-led content creation in the distance learning environment. This paper describes how two librarians at Georgia Southern University opened up LibGuides CMS to host collaboratively developed…

Students gain a lasting impression of a course and of the instructor on the first day of class (Lang, 2019). In asynchronous online or hybrid classes, the equivalent of the first day of class is the Start Here module. This orientation module should contain essential information about class expectations and technology requirements and provide help…

This article describes a general education course offering, Physics and the Arts. During the development of this course, physics and arts faculty collaborated closely. We cover the usual physics phenomena for such a course--light, color, and sound--in addition to gravity, equilibrium, and spacetime. Goals of the course are to increase students'…

This article introduces the reader to the Unified Core Curriculum model developed and implemented at the University of Georgia (UGA). Four courses are taught as one course to the juniors coming into the Recreation and Leisure Studies major. An overview of the blended course and sample assignments are provided, as well as a discussion of challenges…

In our science for non-science majors course "21st Century Physics," we investigate modern "Hubble plots" (plots of velocity versus distance for deep space objects) in order to discuss the Big Bang, dark matter, and dark energy. There are two potential challenges that our students face when encountering these topics for the…

The physical science curriculum design at Georgia Gwinnett College requires a theme-based course (lecture and group work, and laboratory) for nonscience majors. Increased student engagement is anticipated when science topics are taught in the context of a topic of which students can select during course registration. This paper presents the course…

Health Information Technology (HIT) professionals are in increasing demand as healthcare providers need help in the adoption and meaningful use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems while the HIT industry needs workforce skilled in HIT and EHR development. To respond to this increasing demand, the School of Computing and Software Engineering…

The shortage of highly qualified special educators is most pronounced in rural schools serving populations characterized by poverty, low achievement, disability, and cultural diversity. The result is often untrained teachers serving students with the greatest education needs. This article describes efforts by a university in rural middle Georgia…

Despite a large increase in the number of students enrolled in online courses, published research on student experiences in these environments is minimal. This article reports the narrative analysis of a series of interviews conducted with a female student at a brick-and-mortar school enrolled in a single virtual school course. Her narratives…

The authors describe an interdisciplinary course team-taught by an economist and a sociologist. Historically mindful of the less than amicable relationship between these disciplines, these colleagues developed a course that attempted to illuminate the different perspectives of economics and sociology in relation to selected health themes. Such a…

A critical element of an introductory course in business law includes an understanding of the court process and dispute resolution. At Georgia State University (GSU), the authors have required undergraduate business students to make a "court visit" to witness this process in action and to broaden students' basic understanding of the role…

This article surveys research in the areas of aesthetics and design, usability, visual aesthetics in education, and recent statistics related to online education. The focus of the article is on defining the role of visual content and aesthetics in the user interface and exploring what importance aesthetics and visual content have to education.…

This paper documents how faculty from different departments at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business developed, implemented and successfully delivered a cross-functional cornerstone core MBA course. The course provides an introduction to fundamental business concepts from a global managerial perspective and is based on an…

The recently promulgated IT model curriculum contains IT fundamentals (ITF) as one of its knowledge areas. It is intended to give students a broad understanding of (1) the IT profession and the skills that students must develop to become successful IT professionals and (2) the academic discipline of IT and its relationship to other disciplines.…