A growing body of research reveals that some scholars face online harassment and that such harassment leads to a wide variety of adverse impacts. Drawing on data collected from an online survey of 182 scholars, we report on the factors and triggers involved in scholars' experiences of online harassment; the environments where said experiences take place, and; the consequences it has for personal and professional relationships. We find that online harassment is heavily entwined with the work, identity, and in some cases, the requirements of being a scholar. The online harassment scholars experience is often compounded by other factors, such as gender and physical appearance. We build on prior research in this area to further argue that universities ought to widen their scope of what constitutes workplace harassment and workplace safety to include online spaces.

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Existing research highlights conflicting results attempting to capture gender preferences with respect to unimodal versus multimodal designs in online learning. As online learning continues to expand, more research examining the role of gender in multimedia design holds considerable potential. However, the presence of multimedia in online learning contexts presents a more complex problem when taking into consideration the concept of learner interest. The current study sought to investigate gender differences in situational interest (SI) with respect to three different but related designs of an online, multimedia learning environment for continuing, professional education in emergency medical services. The content in these designs was identical, but applied different combinations of the redundancy and modality multimedia principles. A two‐way analysis of variance was used to examine the types of SI by gender and type of multimedia design. While no significant difference or interaction effect was identified between gender and triggered SI, an interaction effect was observed for females and the different multimedia designs. Specifically, females reported a higher maintained SI when animation, narration and text were effectively combined. The findings of this study provide insight into best practices for instructional and media designers developing multimedia learning environments as well as future research implications.

Scholars, educators, and students are increasingly encouraged to participate in online spaces. While the current literature highlights the potential positive outcomes of such participation, little research exists on the sentiment that these individuals may face online and on the factors that may lead some people to face different types of sentiment than others. To investigate these issues, we examined the strength of positive and negative sentiment expressed in response to TEDx and TED-Ed talks posted on YouTube (n = 655), the effect of several variables on comment and reply sentiment (n = 774,939), and the projected effects that sentiment-based moderation would have had on posted content. We found that most comments and replies were neutral in nature and some topics were more likely than others to elicit positive or negative sentiment. Videos of male presenters showed greater neutrality, while videos of female presenters saw significantly greater positive and negative polarity in replies. Animations neutralized both the negativity and positivity of replies at a very high rate. Gender and video format influenced the sentiment of replies and not just the initial comments that were directed toward the video. Finally, we found that using sentiment as a way to moderate offensive content would have a significant effect on non-offensive content. These findings have far-reaching implications for social media platforms and for those who encourage or prepare students and scholars to participate online.

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