How Technologies Assisted Science Learning at Home During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

As most other aspects of life, education was strongly affected by the lockdowns imposed to slow down the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers at all levels of education suddenly faced the challenge of adapting their courses to online versions. This posed various problems, from the pedagogical and psychological components of having to teach and learn online to the technical problems of internet connectivity and especially of rethinking hands-on activities. The latter point was especially important for subjects who involve very practical learning, for which teachers had to find out alternative activities that the students could carry out at home. In the subjects dealing with natural sciences, impaired access to instrumentation and reagents was a major limitation, but the community turned out very resourceful. Here I demonstrate this resourcefulness for the case of undergraduate chemistry and biology courses, focusing on how do-it-yourself open technologies, smartphone-based instruments and simulations, at-home chemistry with household reagents, online video material, and introductory programming and bioinformatics, which helped to overcome these difficult times and likely even shape the future of science education.

An Upper-Division, Remote Microbiology Laboratory That Blends Virtual and Hands-on Components to Promote Student Success during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The COVID-19 pandemic irreversibly changed the way we see online teaching, especially for laboratory courses. In the future, it is imperative that we incorporate successful elements of online pedagogy used during ERT in our in-person courses ( 3 , 5 , 55 – 57 ). The primary lesson learned from adapting a microbiology laboratory course to the online learning environment is that we must be flexible in all aspects of our teaching.…”

Using Comics to Teach the Human Digestive System: Its Effect on Student Learning Outcomes during a Pandemic

“…Memanfaatkan teknologi untuk digunakan dalam pembelajaran biologi adalah ide baik dan inovatif. Teknologi dapat membantu siswa untuk belajar dari rumah (Abriata, 2021;Aladesusi & Akindiya, 2021). Aktivitas siswa meningkat saat mereka terlibat dalam suasana pembelajaran yang memanfaatkan teknologi (Musa et al, 2021;Rahman, 2021).…”

C19MOOC: A Remote Learning Reference Framework for Science and Technology Education

“…We may comprehend the importance of scientific breakthroughs and inventions in contributing to the growth of countries and forming the foundation of scientific and technological improvements if we associate the world in which we live with a rich S&T class. Furthermore, a viewpoint such as this encourages science and education to grow significantly throughout time, thus pushing all nations to emphasize scientific development [10,11]. Therefore, S&T courses are deemed essential for education.…”

“…Existing platforms are not designed or built to handle such a massive number of users, and they are too general for operational and technical functionalities. Thus, it was expected that educators and learners would experience several challenges in using these platforms to manage course materials, evaluations, and assessments [11,21]. For example, educators face many challenges while conducting online exams.…”

“…Therefore, the institutions could not provide remote lab facilities through these platforms. As a result, learners complete S&T courses without any practical experience [11,21,28].…”