Tales of the Transition to Temporary Remote Teaching: The First-Year Chemistry Laboratory Edition
Hi Everyone! I’m Jennifer MacDonald and I’m the First Year Chemistry Lab Coordinator at Dalhousie. Chem 1011/1021 and Chem 1012/1022 are the largest gateway courses at Dalhousie University. The laboratory component of these classes supports approximately 1000-1300 students through 16 hands-on laboratory experiments each academic year. To do so, the program delivers ~30 lab sections (~50 students in each) supported by 4 instructors and ~35 teaching assistants (undergraduate and graduate students).
In February 2020, after many terms of contemplating and tinkering with the possibility of an online version of a Chem 1012 experiment, I piloted Experiment 14: A Clock Reaction. This afforded students the opportunity to interact with this experiment in a mode of their choosing: as an in-person traditional experiment, as a virtual experiment, or both! Little did I know, that a few weeks later my students and I would be facing the reality of completing the rest of our laboratory work virtually.
On March 13, 2020, Dalhousie announced the suspension of in-person classes. I was devastated when I had to hang up my pink tie-dyed lab coat, lock the lab door a full 3-weeks earlier than planned, and venture off to my basement to gain a new office mate (a 50 lb border collie who thinks he’s a cat) and begin migrating our remaining lab content and assessments online.
Throughout this process, there were several things that supported a “as-smooth-as-possible” transition for all involved.
Fast and Clear Communication
Within an hour of the official suspension of in-person classes, our team posted a full tentative plan to Brightspace and emailed it directly to students. By no means was this tentative plan perfect and we certainly made adjustments to the plan as we generated syllabus amendments. However, the tentative plan release was incredibly powerful. Student concerns were answered in advance and this allowed them to continue working towards their goals in chemistry before classes launched online on March 23, 2020. Ultimately, this seemed to ease a lot of student worry. From the instructor perspective, a calm was created, allowing me to focus on building clear, robust online laboratory modules, and it became fast and easy to field student questions and concerns via email.
Staying Consistent and Connected
In our large first year chemistry class, our team has found that consistency in content delivery and staying connected with students by frequently checking in (and having some fun along the way!) has helped to generate a sense of community in the classroom. While our classroom space has certainly changed for the time being, our team strived to maintain ALL course functions and standards that our students had become accustomed to. For instance, continuing with (and increasing the frequency of) regular Brightspace announcements to check-in with students and remind them of timelines and submission deadlines, helped to keep us all on task. I’m a heavy user of time-released Brightspace Announcements, so much so that I generally have every announcement programmed at the beginning of term. This allows me to keep an online presence and adjust on the fly, even if the term gets busy. Our First Year Chemistry transition to online temporary teaching, from the student, TA, and faculty perspective, has recently been featured in DalNews.
So your class is moving online…you have one week…GO!
In the days leading up to the suspension of in-person classes, I began to think through the “what-if’s” that would come with the necessity for social distancing and completing the First Year Chemistry Lab under a temporary remote teaching model.
There were two experiments remaining in our course. The learning outcomes of these experiments were centred around making observations, data collection and interpretation rather than on specific hands-on laboratory skill acquisition. Therefore, moving to a virtual environment, while not ideal, was certainly attainable. I also recognized that this would not be perfect, particularly since everything was to transition within one week of development time.
First, I assessed the requirements for images and video for these experiments and made a quick “must record or photograph list.” Did I or my colleagues have older footage/images that I could draw on? Were there any observables that absolutely required video to observe (for example, evolution of gas)?
Images/Video Recording
To record all images and video, I set my phone on a tripod and went to work. To ensure the best possible quality of video and images in this quick timeframe, I rallied the very affordable recording equipment that I have collected over the past year (while working on a virtual laboratory pilot project that released in Chem 1012 in March 2020). The use of a Photo Studio Light Tent (~$60) provided good lighting and neutral backgrounds creating crisp, high quality video and images.
Audio Recording
Recording video from my phone certainly didn’t create quality audio, especially since I would have needed a significant number of takes to get my audio and experiment working together, so all these videos were recorded, then turned into silent movies so audio could be added later. All audio was recorded using the set-up pictured, a Blue Yetti Microphone, Neewer Sound Shield, Pop Filter, and Desktop Microphone Stand (~$240).
Putting it all together!
All virtual laboratory modules were assembled using Articulate Storyline. Why choose Articulate Storyline? In the summer of 2017, I downloaded the Articulate 360 trial software and was amazed by the endless options for developing highly interactive virtual experiences. If you have any previous experience with PowerPoint or basic video editing software, you’ll find that this technology is very intuitive and easy to use. In fact, if you already have a bunch of PowerPoint slides already prepared, they easily import into Storyline. In addition to ease-of-use, this technology has the ability to integrate with Dalhousie’s current Learning Management System (Brightspace), websites, and other course management systems (in Chemistry’s case, CAPA). The technology handles cross-platform issues by automatically formatting the content to work on mobile devices, tablets, and computers (both Mac and PC). This is a massive asset when delivering online content to a class as large and diverse as First Year Chemistry. While the Articulate suite of programs is not currently institutionally supported, the department of chemistry has purchased an academic team license.
The modules were built with Universal Design for Learning principles in mind. A screen shot of the Experiment 16 Virtual Lab is shown below and a short video snapshot of the module in action can be found here.
The “menu” tab allows students to navigate all module content areas with ease, the “resources” tab at the top contains useful files/information for the experiment and a transcript of any module audio because the modules are closed captioned. Within the experimental section of the modules, students are able to access results to chemical tests that they deem relevant to their experiment (as all possible results are available for each unknown set). The module pace is controlled by the student and they may revisit any section of the module they wish, as many times as they want, prior to finalizing their post-lab submissions.
Was it perfect? No, but it didn’t need to be because our little first year chemistry community was in this together. I’m still in disbelief that the last Chem 1012/1022 lab rotations were completed with our students and teaching team scattered around the world rather than together in the laboratory. I am incredibly proud of our students and teaching team (many of whom are students themselves!). Their ability to quickly adapt and support each other in this new environment was truly inspiring.
If you have any questions about the technology referenced in this article, you can email Dr. MacDonald at Jennifer.L.MacDonald@dal.ca.
*Header and last photos are used with permission from Nick Pearce (Dalhousie University). All other photos are courtesy of the author.