The emergence of the novel coronavirus
disease-19 (COVID-19) required
a rapid shift from in-person instruction to remote learning in our
second-semester general chemistry course at the United States Military
Academy (USMA), a predominantly undergraduate institution that takes
pride in faculty accessibility to students. The decision to conduct
remote instruction took effect when students were on spring break;
consequently, most students had limited academic resources in hand.
This represented a significant paradigm shift for both USMA faculty
and students since the institution places an emphasis on in-person
engagements with students, as reflected by our low student-to-faculty
ratio. We adapted our usual in-person, student-driven instructional
method to the remote environment within a 7 day period, which impacted
174 students and six faculty course-wide who were new to the technology,
resources, and methodology associated with remote instruction and
learning. This communication discusses lessons learned from the transition
to asynchronous remote teaching, with a critical focus on the advantages
and disadvantages of the adopted teaching methodologies, and includes
a discussion of course design and the corresponding adaptions to this
new pedagogical environment. We anticipate that these accounts can
be leveraged by the broader chemical sciences community to better
inform the planning and execution of instruction in future academic
terms under remote, in-person, or hybrid (partially remote and partially
in-person) environments.
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