Teaching Biology Online During a Pandemic
The COVID pandemic hit NYC hard in the spring of 2020. All CUNY classes were rapidly moved fully online, including laboratory classes. As a faculty member in the Queens College Biology Department and course director for Bio105 I moved the lecture online and worked with the lab instructors such as Allan Edmond, pictured above, to create online content that best matched the in class learning experience.
For context, Bio105: General Biology: Physiology and Cell Biology, is the first half of a two semester series for majors. There are 300 students registered in the class in any given semester with one large lecture class in a large campus lecture hall, while for the lab, the students are divided into groups of 20 for a 3 hour lab session. About 100 students are first semester freshman, about half have declared biology as their major and many are taking the class as a part of the requirement for graduate or professional program in the health professions. The student body at Queens College is diverse, with ancestries from 139 countries and 50% of the students are PELL grant recipients.
As we transition to online and to best support the adjustment for our students, we made several modifications to our usual class. For the lecture, videos were pre-recorded in 20 minute learning modules and posted on our LSM system as well as on a YouTube channel (sample video). Students were asked to watch the videos before class and could refer back to them at any time during the semester. During lecture time I reviewed the lecture content, provided guided questions for students to work on and answered questions students had regarding the lecture material. The lecture tests are usually 2 tests and a final with mostly multiple choice questions. Once we moved fully online, I decided to convert the exams to quizzes to reduce stress and increase academic integrity. This was explained to the students in a class and also in a YouTube video (seen here).
The challenge of moving the lab content online was a much bigger hurdle. Traditionally students would attend the in person lab where the instructor would discus the topic of the day, any issues of safety would be clarified and then students would conduct the experiment with assistance as needed. As the experiments were completed the lab instructor would work with the student to summarize the findings and explain the expected lab homework. Using the online classroom to review the lab material was possible but identifying alternative to the hands on activities presented certain challenges. We were not allowed on campus to create new educational materials. In some cases we were able to use existing material to craft student resources.
