Hybridized face-to-face and online laboratory content in the time of COVID-19.

This article describes strategies to adapt and ensure equivalency of content coverage for an existing protein assay laboratory practical for concurrent face-to-face and online deliveries during COVID-19 and beyond.

Using memes to promote student engagement and classroom community during remote learning.

As colleges moved to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, many instructors found it difficult to maintain student engagement and classroom community in the virtual environment. We developed a semester-long activity for a molecular biology research methodology course where students created, and shared original memes related to course content with peers through group chat. Surveys and semi-structured interviews revealed that the exercise was effective in promoting student engagement, a sense of community, and relieving stress.

A digital module-based experiential learning in protein biochemistry during the COVID-19 pandemic paradigm.

Experiential learning is compromised in meeting the educational demands of our students during the challenging time of the COVID-19 pandemic. A more inclusive, flexible, and objective-oriented experiential learning environment is required. In this context, module-based experiential learning that is executable on a digital platform was designed. The learning module focused on protein biochemistry, contained a combination of asynchronous and synchronous activities categorized into 'Knowledge Hub' and 'Lab-based Movie', across 5 weeks. Digital and module-based experiential learning provides equitable, inclusive, and flexible access to students at remote locations. Furthermore, it is an objective-oriented and highly organized experiential learning framework that encourages students to engage and participate more in the learning process.

An account of strategies and innovations for teaching chemistry during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt suspension of face-to-face teaching activities in higher education institutions across the globe. The instructors and faculty at most institutions have had to adapt, invent, and implement adjustments quickly to adopt an online learning environment. This has been an extraordinarily challenging time for both students and instructors, particularly as many were not aware of the affordances and weaknesses of the online learning environment before it was uptaken. Particularly for chemistry and related disciplines, this change in delivery mode is even more disruptive in courses that have laboratory components due to loss of access to laboratories. As a teaching community, it was our responsibility to respond quickly and effectively to students' learning needs during this unprecedented global crisis. In our course, we provided succinct pre-recorded lecture-videos by topic rather than live-streaming of lectures. The recordings were made available to students a minimum of 24 h before the scheduled lecture time. Students were then provided opportunities to attend live tutorial sessions (held on Zoom and live Q&A feature on Piazza) if they had any questions that they wanted to ask the lecturer directly. We believe that the asynchronous sessions were more equitable than synchronous ones. This meant that students with difficult and challenging home/learning environments (i.e., disruptions at home, work/family schedules, poor internet, limited access to devices, etc.) were minimally disadvantaged. The approach worked well in general for teaching chemistry to pharmacy students and we believe that it can be adopted for other subjects.

Mock grant application roleplay as an alternative to lab-based activities in molecular biology.

Many universities resort to online teaching due to COVID-19 pandemic. It is a challenging endeavor, especially in Molecular Biology courses that require lab access. Mock grant application roleplay is one alternative to lab-based activities. Students are engaged in three aspects: (i) targeted literature review, (ii) research proposal writing and (iii) 5-min project pitching. The design of this module is flexible and, other lab-based courses can adopt it. This module encourages undergraduate students to explore the lab techniques they learnt and concisely present their research proposal.