The varied experience of undergraduate students during the transition to mandatory online chem lab during the initial lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The radical global shift to online teaching that resulted from the initial lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic forced many science educators into the predicament of translating courses, including teaching laboratories, that were based upon face-to-face or practical goals and conventions into ones that could be delivered online. We used this phenomenon at the scale of a research-intensive, land-grant public institution to understand the various ways that the switch was experienced by a large cohort of 702 undergraduate students taking General Chemistry Laboratory. Data was collected over 3 weeks with identical surveys involving four prompts for open-ended responses. Analysis involved sequential explanatory mixed methods where topic modeling, a machine learning technique, was used to identify 21 topics. As categories of experience, these topics were defined and further delineated into 52 dimensions by inductive coding with constant comparison. Reported strengths and positive implications tie predominantly to the topics of Time Management Across a Lab Activity and a Critique of Instruction. Consistent with other reports of teaching and learning during the pandemic, participants perceived Availability of the Teaching Assistant for Help as a positive implication. Perceptions of weakness were most associated with Having to Work Individually, the Hands On Experience, a Critique of Instruction, and Learning by Doing. Hands on Experience, which was interpreted as the lack thereof, was the only topic made up nearly entirely of weaknesses and negative implications. The topic of Learning by Doing was the topic of greatest occurrence, but was equally indicated as strengths, positive implication, weakness, and negative implication. Ramifications are drawn from the weaknesses indicated by students who identified as members of an underrepresented ethnic minority. The results serve as a reminder that the student experience must be the primary consideration for any educational endeavor and needs to continue as a principal point of emphasis for research and development for online science environments.

Beliefs, Practices, and Challenges of Integrating Multimodality in Science in the New Normal

“…Translating multimodal laboratory activities into contextual athome learning activities has become a challenge. The lack of conventional hands-on activities and the rapid and forced change in modality produced a unique situation for students and teachers in laboratory education (Watts et al, 2022). One participant shared:…”

Peningkatan Keterampilan Dasar Laboratorium Kimia Teknik melalui Praktikum Mandiri Berbantukan Media Laboratorium Virtual di Masa Pandemi Convid 19

“…Menyikapi hal tersebut, berbagai upaya telah dilakukan oleh banyak pihak untuk memberikan pengalaman praktikum kepada peserta didik selama proses pembelajaran dilaksanakan secara daring ketika pembelajaran praktikum tidak memungkinkan untuk dapat dilaksanakan di laboratorium sekolah ataupun perguruan tinggi seperti: 1) memberikan tugas untuk melakukan praktikum sederhana di rumah dengan panduan video (Mojica & Upmacis, 2021;Wicaksono, 2022), 2) praktikum secara virtual melalui laboratorium kimia online (Watts et al, 2022), 3) laboratorium virtual (Antrakusuma et al, 2021;Chan et al, 2021;Muslim et al, 2022), dan 4) augmented reality (Mazzuco et al, 2022).…”

Experiences of engineering thermodynamics students during online learning: Lessons for post-pandemic

“…Hence, tertiary educational institutions, especially those offering engineering courses, needed to adopt new ways of bringing learning to their teaming students. According to Watts et al (2022), modules or subjects that were traditionally facilitated using face-to-face were redesigned to be presented online. This is because failure to do so was envisaged to be pregnant with devastating effects in the long run (Asgari et al, 2021) as the mode of delivery of most subjects had to be changed from physical to virtual.…”