Zooming into the Lab: Perspectives on Maintaining Undergraduate Biological Research through Computationally Adapted Remote Learning in Times of Crisis

Parrington, Brianna; Giardino, William J.

doi:10.1128/jmbe.v22i1.2563

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The R workshops and the subsequent optional spring-semester research papers were non-intimidating ways to test the waters on gaining quantitative skills that would allow students (who might initially be hesitant) to gauge interest in further coding or statistics training. This serves a different purpose than other virtual coding workshops held for life science students, which are often geared towards graduate students or to undergraduates working in computational research groups (Carey et al, 2022;De la Fuente et al, 2021;Jensen-Ryan et al, 2021;Parrington and Giardino, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two plant biology programs were able to have students do at-home data collection, in addition to using data from past years (Cridland et al, 2021;Jensen-Ryan et al, 2021). Some computational programs were able to keep the same projects planned pre-pandemic (Parrington and Giardino, 2021). Other programs changed from wet-lab projects to having students do dry-lab projects, write literature reviews, draft research proposals, or create open education resources such as podcasts (Berr et al, 2021;Boury et al, 2021;Michel et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Building Undergraduate Life Science Research Skills Remotely, During and Beyond a Pandemic

Cheng

Falvey

Stefanovic

et al. 2023

JSTEM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

During the COVID-19 pandemic, undergraduate research experiences were deeply impacted-either canceled or pivoted to a range of remote experiences. In Summer 2020 and Spring 2021, we designed two rounds of remote programming aimed to build students' life science research skills and provide opportunities for mentoring and networking. Building skills, resumes, and connections in our students -many of whom are first-generation college students and/or from historically marginalized communities -are key to retention in the STEM "leaky pipeline." We created 33 online events including R workshops, journal clubs, and career panels featuring 25 alumni. Participants received a certificate of completion for their resumes and a letter of recommendation, which could be used to apply for future research experiences. Our program was non-selective, flexible, and accessible to all students, while being low-cost to our institution, allowing us to accommodate a sizeable number of students (87 total). This program serves a different purpose than summer internship programs, which are impactful and intensive experiences, but are highly selective and limited in capacity. Through this work, we gained insight into key features of this virtual programming, which could be adapted by other institutions seeking to design programming to prepare students to future undergraduate research experiences.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building Undergraduate Life Science Research Skills Remotely, During and Beyond a Pandemic

Cheng

Falvey

Stefanovic

et al. 2023

JSTEM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the field of biology at the tertiary level, although online instruction was offered, students preferred to have faceto-face meetings for laboratory experiments and group meetings (Sarvary et al, 2022). In support of implementing laboratory instructions for undergraduate biology subjects, Parrington and Giardino (2021) recommended nine (9) points to the institutions, faculty, and undergraduate students to keep up the quality of biological experiments.…”

Section: Laboratory Instruction Through E-learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Laboratory Instruction as Alternative and Supplementary Mode: Students’ Assessment of the BS Agricultural Biotechnology Program

Pamplona,

Ancho

2023

IJODeL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the education sector, the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) faculty started to tailor-fit their lectures and laboratory activities in the form of course packs to continue the delivery of various academic programs. The BS Agricultural Biotechnology (BS ABT) program is one of the courses in hard science that relies heavily on laboratory exercises. To assess the remote learning of the courses with laboratory exercises, BS ABT students were randomly surveyed to evaluate the effectiveness of their laboratory classes in the remote learning set-up. Based on the results, 94.5% of the BS ABT student-respondents were generally satisfied with the teaching style of the faculty, and implementation of the laboratory activities remotely. Experiments in all exercises were conducted synchronously and asynchronously through Google Classroom, and commonly accomplished with simplified experiments, simulations online, and supplemented by online videos via their personal laptops and smartphones. Regular synchronous meetings (96.4%) were religiously done every week with classes meeting once (49.1%), or twice (85.5%) a week. Ranking the three major courses of the ABT program that require laboratory exercises, ABT 104 (51%) obtained the highest satisfaction rating, followed by ABT 103 (47.3%), and ABT 106 (40%), respectively. Aside from ABT subjects with laboratory, Agriculture core subjects such as AGR21 (27.27%), AGR22 (27.27%), AGR31 (27.27%), AGR32 (27.27%), AGR41 (32.74%), AGR42 (23.64%), and AGR51 (20%) were the most enrolled courses. The findings of the present study serve as inputs in enhancing implementation of laboratory classes remotely in hard science particularly in the BS ABT program.

show abstract

“…There was little warning prior to the sudden school closures as COVID-19 began to spread across the country. Parrington and Giardino [1] note, "Due to this unexpected change, universities had quickly transitioned from an in-person classroom experience to a remote format" (p.1). As educators and students were forced to adapt to completely remote classrooms, educators began to use different online platforms to interact with their students.…”

Section: Remote Laboratories During the Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This was a difficult time for many as schools closed and daily routines were drastically affected. As classroom routines came to a halt during these unprecedented times, teaching and learning took on many new forms [1,2]. Most universities and colleges were not prepared for classes to be taught remotely and had to adjust quickly while providing a 'quality' education.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Student Preparedness for Returning to In-Person Laboratory Courses

Phillips,

Bowden

2022 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Prior to the pandemic, remote laboratories were gaining popularity for some universities because they were able to enroll students in laboratory courses while saving money on equipment. However, depending on the resources provided by each university, some students were unable to gain 'hands-on experience.' The Analog Discovery Kit (ADK), a USB connected device, is a useful tool that allows students to work on their laboratory experiments remotely while still having the opportunity to build and test electrical circuits. Unlike simulation only resources, students with USB connected devices still gain hands-on experience in a remote setting. When the pandemic started, transitioning to a remote work environment was no longer an option, but a necessity. A large public university in the eastern United States was able to seamlessly transition from in-person courses to remote electrical engineering laboratory courses during the pandemic because the engineering laboratory experiments had previously been designed to run in both electrical engineering laboratories as well as with a student purchased USB device at home. Students were mailed a few additional electrical components and were able to complete the laboratory experiments from home using the ADK and breadboard while meeting for the laboratory session via Zoom. The combination not only allowed students to still have hands-on learning experiences, but also provided the opportunity to ask questions even amidst the pandemic. As students transition back to in-person laboratory courses, there was a unique opportunity to evaluate student comfort with in-laboratory use of the bench-top equipment after only utilizing simulation along with and the ADK in the fully remote setting.Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the ease of transition for students switching from only using the ADK and building circuits in a remote setting to also using bench-top laboratory equipment at a public facility. MethodThe quantitative study surveyed 227 students from Circuits II, Electronics I, and Electronics II laboratory courses. Students were emailed a survey regarding their experiences returning to in-person laboratory courses. The data was then analyzed using SPSS. ConclusionEighty-two (82%) of participants prefer in-person laboratory courses and a majority of students believed that using the ADK and building and testing circuits remotely helped with the transition back to in-person labs and using bench-top equipment.

show abstract

Zooming into the Lab: Perspectives on Maintaining Undergraduate Biological Research through Computationally Adapted Remote Learning in Times of Crisis

Cited by 6 publications

References 13 publications

Building Undergraduate Life Science Research Skills Remotely, During and Beyond a Pandemic

Building Undergraduate Life Science Research Skills Remotely, During and Beyond a Pandemic

Online Laboratory Instruction as Alternative and Supplementary Mode: Students’ Assessment of the BS Agricultural Biotechnology Program

Evaluation of Student Preparedness for Returning to In-Person Laboratory Courses

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About