This study of 2111 undergraduates examined the impact of online science courses on their anxiety. More than 50% of students reported experiencing at least moderate anxiety in online science courses. Aspects of online learning that increase and decrease anxiety are identified, and actions that instructors can take to lessen anxiety in online science courses are offered.

Depression is a top mental health concern among college students, yet there is a lack of research exploring how online college science courses can exacerbate or alleviate their depression. We surveyed 2,175 undergraduates at a large research-intensive institution about the severity of their depression in large-enrollment online science courses. The survey also explored aspects of online science courses that exacerbate or alleviate depression and we used regression analyses to assess whether demographics predicted responses. Over 50% of undergraduates reported experiencing depression and LGBTQ+ students, financially unstable students, and lower division students were more likely to experience severe rather than mild depression compared to their counterparts. Students reported difficulty building relationships and struggling to perform well online as aspects of online science courses that exacerbated their depression and the flexible nature of online courses and caring instructors as aspects of online courses that alleviated their depression. This study provides insight into how instructors can create more inclusive online learning environments for students with depression.

In this study of more than 400 students, the impact of an LGBTQ+ instructor revealing her identity in an upper-level biology course was assessed. Most students perceived a positive impact on their confidence and sense of belonging from this short intervention, and LGBTQ+ students and women perceived it to be particularly impactful.

Student incivility, defined as a student behavior perceived to be disrespectful or disruptive to the overall learning environment in a course, can negatively affect the science learning environment and instructors. The transition to online science courses during the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique environment for student incivility to take place in undergraduate courses.

Sharing personal information has been recognized as an effective way for instructors to build relationships with their students and foster a sense of community in their courses. Revealing personal identities may be particularly impactful for students with concealable stigmatized identities (CSIs), defined as identities that can be kept hidden or invisible and that carry negative stereotypes, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) students. Students with CSIs often struggle to find similar others in science, which can negatively affect their sense of belonging. Previous studies have assessed the factors leading to LGBTQ+ instructors or students revealing their identity in the classroom, but we know of no studies that have looked at the impact of an instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity on students. We hypothesized that LGBTQ+ students would benefit from the instructor revealing a shared identity. In this study, the instructor revealed that she was a member of the LGBTQ+ community using a single PowerPoint slide and taking 3 seconds to describe that she was a member of the LGBTQ+ community in the same course in two separate years. At the end of the semester we surveyed the 580 students in the two iterations of the course to assess to what extent the instructor revealing her LGTBQ+ identity impacted students’ (1) willingness to approach the instructor for mentorship, (2) feelings of connectedness with the instructor, (3) confidence in their ability to pursue a career in science, (4) sense of belonging in the course, and (5) sense of belonging within the scientific community. Using a linear regression and controlling for gender, race/ethnicity, history of anxiety and depression, and year of enrollment, LGBTQ+ students reported greater gains in each of these outcomes compared with their non‐LGBTQ+ peers. Notably, we found that the majority of students, both LGBTQ+ and non‐LGBTQ+, in the course agreed that the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity significantly increased their willingness to approach for mentorship, feelings of connectedness, and sense of belonging in the class and scientific community. Further, our results indicate that LGBTQ+ students in particular are positively impacted across all five outcomes by instructors revealing their LGBTQ+ identities, and that revealing this information enhances the relationship between the instructor and most students in the class. This study is the first to demonstrate an impact of instructor LGBTQ+ identity on students, which supports the assertion that a brief intervention could have far reaching potential effects on students.