Online learning has been widely adopted in STEM higher education, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. To better understand STEM students' needs and preferences of online learning, this study recruited over 1,100 CSUSB and UCR students in a variety of STEM disciplines. Both universities are Hispanic-Serving Institutions, but CSUSB has a substantially larger concentration of Hispanic students. Participants completed a questionnaire that focused on five core themes: lecture approaches, rehearsal strategies, testing approaches, laboratory strategies, and student inclusion. Students from both institutions agreed on many aspects of online learning, including the quality of online lectures and preference for specific instructional strategies (polling during lectures, review quizzes, etc.). However, there were considerable differences between CSU and UC students, particularly in the areas of exams and inclusion. For example: CSUSB students reported a stronger preference toward online exams, whereas UCR students reported greater use of optional study materials. CSUSB students reported stronger feelings of belonging in online classes compared to UCR, especially among students from under-represented groups. Overall, the results highlight institutional differences in online instruction that reflect both student and university characteristics. These findings emphasize the importance of considering institutional needs and resources in "best practices" for online teaching.

There are two common orders in which general chemistry is taught. The “regular” method and the atoms first method. Both of these teaching methods have heavy math coverage by the third week of the semester. While this works for many students, for students who may struggle with math, this can be defeating. There is a noticeable shift in the classroom dynamics where student’s level of participation drops in response to the material. To help students at CSU Channel Islands succeed, the General Chemistry I course was re-ordered to focus on concepts before math. Math was introduced and students were allowed to practice the math each week, building up math skills before the math heavy material was covered. The analysis of this method, the process of redesign, and best practices are covered. Redesigning courses to best support the student body at the institution is vital to our culturally informed teaching practices.

Despite the call for enhancing creativity in STEM fields, and the relationship between creativity and inclusion demonstrated previously, creativity remains largely absent in STEM education. Developing creativity-supportive environments in science education requires understanding students’ creativity, their perception of its role in STEM education, and their creative self-efficacy. We share preliminary results from three semesters, comparing students’ perception about the importance of creativity in STEM and their own self-efficacy for STEM creativity with course grade and examining the influence of gender on this relationship. Surprisingly, most students value the role of creativity in STEM, regardless of their perception of their own creativity. One troubling result is that in two of the three semesters female students value creativity, yet expressed lower creative self-efficacy than male students. In courses that intentionally utilized creativity-supportive activities, the perceptions of male students about the importance of creativity and their own STEM creativity correlated with course grade, while neither was related to grade for female students in these classes. More research is needed to understand this gender difference, to elucidate the relationship between creativity-supporting and culturally responsive pedagogies, and to identify particular classroom practices that support STEM creativity and creative self-efficacy for both male and female students.

In 2019, the Kinesiology & Health Promotion (KHP) department underwent a substantial strategic planning process to guide departmental operations. A core action in our new strategic plan was to redesign the graduate curriculum to better align with our faculty strengths, industry needs and student demands. As part of this redesign, we reintroduced comprehensive exams as a culminating experience option. The new exam option contains three components delivered across two semesters; a critical analysis presentation (Sem. 1), written exams and an oral defense (Sem. 2). The structure of the exams was designed to provide more inclusive culminating experiences for our students, meet student needs and ultimately improve graduation rates. An interdisciplinary team of KHP faculty convened to create standardized rubrics to score the three components. The team implemented an inclusive, equity-minded framework to provide students with transparent assessment processes, maintain the rigor of the exam option and facilitate quality program-level assessment. This presentation will share the lessons learned from this process and provide actionable recommendations to other faculty engaging in similar assessment activities.