As undergraduate students in a Health Sciences Program we were selected as teaching assistants (TAs) in a freshman introductory Cellular and Molecular Biology course that we had all taken in a standard format. The course was tightly focused on cell communication (Adv Physiol Educ 36: 13–19, 2012, Biochem Mol Biol Educ. 2013 May‐Jun;41(3):145‐55). The new version was offered synchronously on‐line to 273 students who were in different time zones (within Canada and abroad, Africa, Asia). Didactic sessions (both flipped/non‐flipped) were followed by TA sessions (60‐90 mins.) designed to help students consolidate content and prepare them for active assessments used (The FASEB Journal, 31: 575.2‐575.2.). Each tutorial Group had on the average, twenty students. For the tutorials, we met them in virtual break‐out rooms where we had considerable flexibility to organize our sessions. Larger groups were reconvened to meet the instructors either on the same day or on a separate session. These sessions served to further consolidate their learning. In addition, we had the options of organizing office hours on our own to deal with our students. We were taking several of our own on‐line courses in parallel. These dual obligations as teachers in one course and learners for several others posed many challenges. As teachers, we had to foster engagement, promote interactions, gauge comprehension, maintain enthusiasm, identify individual learning needs despite lack of verbal, non‐verbal cues as many students remained both silent and invisible and also deal with technical glitches. To prepare for our own courses we faced similar technical issues, maintained enthusiasm, battled online fatigue, engaged with our Professors and TAs, dealt with conflicting schedules, found resources, remained flexible, and stayed focused as the lack of a distinct campus environment blurred boundaries between home and academia. We adapted rapidly to cope with these concurrent contrary demands.

Healthy human bodies are inhabited by over 100 trillion bacterial cells [1]. The study of the symbiotic relationship between humans and these unicellular organisms has become of great importance in the medical field. In fact, the pathology of many diseases involves perturbation of the intestinal flora [1]. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychotropic ingredient of cannabis, has caught the attention of healthcare researchers given its ability to increase appetite, and reduce nausea and inflammation [2]. THC has also been associated with modulating the effects arising in the endocannabinoid system (ECS), however, its ability to affect bacteria growth has not been studied [3]. This proposed experiment seeks to explore the growth and vitality of beneficial gut microbiota (Lactobacillus acidophilus (LA), Akkermansia muciniphila (AM), Bifidobacterium bifidum (BB), and Streptococcus thermophilus (ST)) upon exposure to THC [4]. Through utilizing an experimental approach, beneficial bacterial cultures will be collected to study the growth of the microorganisms incubated with THC, relative to a positive and negative control. The results of the proposed study could inform future experiments investigating the treatment of a range of diseases with cannabis. The benefits of these treatments could also be extended to improving the daily health of the general population.