The lab In A box: A take‐out practical experience for an online invertebrate biology course

Abstract

Hands‐on experience is critical to teaching invertebrate zoology, as students are unfamiliar with many animals and theoretical concepts are sometimes difficult to assimilate. As part of a fully online course, we decided to give students a box of take‐home materials so that they could do hands‐on work in their homes under the guidance of the teacher or at their own pace following the lecture scripts and presentations. The box contained whole specimens fixed in ethanol for observation and dissection, dried material such as skeletons and shells, and microscope slides. We also included a USB digital microscope to facilitate visualization of details and slides. The experience was very satisfying and proved to be not only a good alternative for mandatory online classes in times of pandemic, but also an interesting resource to supplement face‐to‐face classes.

Providing interactive and field laboratories while teaching university marine biology classes in an era of COVID‐19

“…The articles in this special issue of Invertebrate Biology provide many innovative ideas of how to teach about invertebrates under different circumstances. Some articles, such as Lindsay (2021) and Nova et al, 2021) provide ideas for situations in which the students retain some access to campus or to specialized equipment. Others, such as Eugene et al (2021), Middlebrooks and Salewski (2021), and Schulze et al (2021) work well for situations in which students cannot access campus but retain some access to the field sites being studied.…”

The Do-It-Yourself Electrocardiogram

“…We are not the first to develop a ''lab-in-the box''. 6,7 There have also been other portable and student-built circuits to measure EKGs. [8][9][10][11] Recent work has demonstrated the possibility of a low-cost Arduino-based EKG using Bluetooth, which could be beneficial in underdeveloped communities.…”

Oportunidades y desafíos de los docentes en programas de biología con asignaturas teórico-prácticas de dos instituciones colombianas de educación superior bajo restricciones de pandemia

“…En el mismo orden de ideas, se tiene que estos entornos virtuales de enseñanza permiten a través de sus plataformas de aprendizaje la comunicación del docente y el estudiante, bien sea en vivo o de forma asíncrona, empleando procedimientos asociados con TIC sin limitaciones de tiempo y espacio (Figueroa et al, 2021). Algunas de las opciones para considerar se encuentran en Vargas-Straube et al (2021) para el caso de microbiología experimental, ecología acuática (https:// doi.org/10.24918/cs.2021.34), e invertebrados (Novo et al, 2021). No obstante, se deben tener presente las percepciones de los estudiantes con base en las nuevas alternativas de (auto)aprendizaje e interacción con el docente (Ortíz-Moreno et al, 2020;Urzúa et al, 2020;Vargas-Straube et al, 2021), al igual que las características de los programas y asignaturas (créditos prácticos); es decir, si estas últimas se imparten(ían) de manera regular o concentrada, con presencia de un elevado número de alumnos, y sobre todo las necesidades asociadas con la infraestructura y material de laboratorio para una adecuada realización del trabajo experimental (Argel et al, 2020;De la Sen y Díaz, 2009).…”