The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted community colleges and created a new context in which they were forced to operate. Faculty, especially those who normally taught in-person, were required to transition quickly to fully online classrooms. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted at the start of the pandemic with 17 students pursuing degree…

This study explored STEM program quality prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, including differences based on learning setting. Program quality data was drawn from a national database consisting of 1259 program quality observations conducted between 2013 and 2021. Using the Dimensions of Success (DoS), an observation tool focused on informal…

Today, more than ever, innovations in university teaching are supporting universities to prepare students for their future careers, equipping them with the skills and experience they will need to succeed. The past decade especially has seen education providers expanding the use of digital enhancements to teaching. As well as the fully online…

The past two decades have shown a rising global trend to offer online K-12 STEM learning, necessitating teachers to have the knowledge and skills to navigate online teaching contexts. However, related professional development and online STEM best teaching practices remain to be fully articulated. This issue was exacerbated following the COVID-19…

With the global pandemic educators have had to move their courses to virtual spaces, and this quick change has brought up concerns, especially in STEM education where there are ongoing discussions of adapting laboratories and shifting lecture and assessment practices to online learning. One issue that has become more pressing, beyond the financial…

The majority of academic institutions were underprepared for a global pandemic, leading to spikes in instructor anxiety and drops in student engagement with STEM courses. With many STEM professors teaching online for the first time, they independently sought out training in distance education and inclusive teaching practices. Had institutions been…

Undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants (TAs) are tasked with instructing undergraduate courses with little to no professional development (PD). To better develop PD opportunities, it is important to understand the benefits of improving TAs' self-efficacy and the stressors associated with their roles. This study investigated how stress…

Informal STEM education (ISE) programs are known to foster heightened student engagement due to leveling the student-teacher hierarchy, free choice, self-directed learning experiences, and hands-on pedagogies. ISE has also been shown to be effective in helping to prepare the K-12 STEM teacher workforce by fostering STEM teacher identity. The…

This study examines pre-service science teachers' opinions about STEM-supported hands-on activities and emergency remote teaching performed in laboratory courses during the pandemic. It was conducted with 14 pre-service teachers; they were asked to design an experiment by integrating STEM concepts and hands-on activities. The participants designed…

Test anxiety is a common experience shared by college students and is typically investigated in the context of traditional, face-to-face courses. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of universities, and many students had to rapidly shift to and balance the challenges of online learning. We investigated how the shift…

This article reviews a virtual professional development program for STEM faculty conducted in 2020 in which, due to COVID, faculty participants had to adjust their teaching practices. The study found that the program's structure, focus, and ability to foster community helped sustain faculty members. Participants shared lessons learned through…

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced school closures, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers were left with the challenging task of devising ways for students to conduct experiments at home. This was necessary because experiments and other hands-on activities are integral to STEM education and are linked to the development…

Background: Valuable safeguards against fast-spreading conjectures about learning in times of fear and uncertainty are evidence-based approaches to the assessment of the impact of sudden and unforeseen disruptions on learning practices. The present research focused on physics learning in such times because conceptual and computational literacy in…

The effectiveness of interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum remains understudied in geography education. Accordingly, we deployed and evaluated an interdisciplinary sustainability and STEM module for in-person and online sections of a fall 2018 Human Geography course. Results indicate that sustainability knowledge improved after the…

Best practices for integrated STEM courses work well when teachers are adept at implementing them and when students are in a learning environment where they can communicate and collaborate while simultaneously working with and investigating manipulatives with their hands. When the COVID-19 Pandemic forced many K-12 schools to close in March of…