In-person teaching activities at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus were curtailed in the midst of a semester as a result of the global shutdowns imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. All instruction shifted online, and this rapid transition to emergency remote teaching had negative impacts on student learning, engagement, and mental well-being. This phenomenological study describes the results of surveys and interviews used to assess the emergency remote teaching experiences of students enrolled in second-year chemistry courses. Major student challenges included issues with motivation and engagement, personal scheduling, faculty communication, and increased stress and anxiety. This research recommends clear communication and flexible teaching and assessment methods to accommodate the assorted complications faced by our students.

A growing body of educational research is demonstrating the improvements to learning gains and student performance that can be promoted by a flippedclassroom model in university chemistry courses. Usually, a core aspect of the flippedclass model is the student viewing of a preclass instructional video, allotting time for an in-class activity during the following lecture. Flipped-classroom instructional videos were prepared for a first-year general chemistry course at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus. Unlike many flipped-class video resources, these videos are not just narrated screen captures. Instead, they are anchored in live instructor recordings, complemented by three different presentation modes, each designed for pedagogical correspondence to a corner of Johnstone's triangle: narrated screen capture (symbolic), molecular animations (submicroscopic), and experimental laboratory demonstrations (macroscopic). Live instructor recording created a reliable persona for students to interact with, in keeping with tenets of social agency theory, and video format and design were informed by principles of cognitive load theory. Student responses to these videos and the associated flipped-class modules were assessed by using a mixed method approach. Semistructured interviews provided detailed student feedback regarding both student satisfaction and pedagogical utility. Quiz data assessing pre-and postvideo knowledge and student survey data on attitudes toward the flipped-class modules were also collected. Statistical analyses and coded interview data indicated general appreciation and higher satisfaction with flipped-classroom modules compared to traditional lectures, matched by a general student belief that the flipped modules enhanced their learning. Students feel that interactive questions embedded in the videos and the video segments aligned with the Johnstone's triangle framework contributed positively to their conceptual understanding, while the humor and enthusiastic tone provided by live-footage instructor segments promotes both viewer engagement and trust in the authenticity of the instructional material.

As part of a revision to the content and delivery of first-year chemistry instruction at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus, we have employed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) as a thematic framework. This framework was introduced to promote the achievement of affective learning outcomes, including a systems thinking approach to exploring the relevance of first-year chemistry content and concepts to societal and global challenges. Through this framework, sets of course concepts, which are traditionally limited in their application to isolated textbook chapters, are demonstrated, through various in-class group activities, to have collective applications to the environmental and societal systems embodied by specific SDGs. Student attitudes to this framework and its associated activities were examined via a course-end survey and in-depth semistructured interviews. Student responses were generally positive, indicating an appreciation for the relevance of course concepts to the global challenges described by the SDGs, and for many students, the SDG-framed learning activities aided in their understanding of course concepts.