Personas of stem students completing online instructions during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, instructors quickly transitioned to online teaching to protect themselves and their students. Due to this abrupt transition and lack of communication between instructor and student, instructors had little time to create online teaching methods that successfully adapt and teach the material to best meet the student's needs. Some students did well with online teaching methods, while others seemed to struggle to engage with the material in classes. Without immediate face-to-face feedback from students, we believe that background information such as learning styles, goals, motivations, and expectations of the potential students- will help teachers improve and increase classroom engagement and comprehension. We surveyed and interviewed STEM introductory-level courses online to collect data to create personas in STEM students. Personas are "life-like models whose characteristics are driven by the various goals and motivations of real or potential users." We used persona methodology to survey the diverse learning group in a STEM classroom to create four personas found in STEM classrooms. These personas represent real-life students enrolling in introductory STEM classrooms, allowing instructors to use these personas as a novel tool to design online courses that better engage undergraduate students across STEM disciplines.