Moving biochemistry and molecular biology courses online in times of disruption: Recommended practices and resources ‐ a collaboration with the faculty community and <scp>ASBMB</scp>

Abstract

The 2020 Covid-19 outbreak prompted institutions of higher education to rapidly provide remote options for instruction. Faculty around the world have been, rather suddenly, required to move their teaching online. Recognizing the need for support during this unexpected transition, a group of experienced faculty came together to create biochemistry- and molecular biology-specific recommendations and provide resources to support the community during the shift to remote learning. This team was composed of individuals with extensive experience teaching online, educational/pedagogy experts, and experienced faculty from a range of backgrounds and institutional contexts. The guidelines and resources reported here are supported by the literature and/or team members' extensive experience with online learning. The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), a long-standing and vociferous advocate of life science education, played a key role in supporting this effort by hosting the information on their website.1 This dynamic webpage of resources for biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB) classrooms and teaching labs includes an open invitation for instructors to continue to contribute to this list, making this resource an evolving, community-driven source of knowledge. The goal of this work is to provide a starting point for instructors as they revise their course design for remote education. Instructors who are new to teaching online will find methods to evolve their instruction as they become familiar with the mechanics and technology of teaching remotely. This document also includes specific advice for those needing to create a virtual, remote biochemistry or molecular biology laboratory. Depending on the instructor's experience, institutional resources to support moving instruction online, and the level of engagement of students, some practices may be more effective for a particular situation than others. At the time of writing this article, the world is in the midst of a pandemic; however, it is important to recognize that institutions have faced disruptions before, from natural disasters such as flooding, hurricanes, and even fires. Thus, instructors need to have a plan on hand to adapt their teaching, engage students, and provide structure and continuity while the physical site of a university is closed. In addition, while this resource was generated in response to a global pandemic, the resources and promising practices described here will likely be of interest to instructors seeking to refine and improve the student experience in their courses. We anticipate that, when the community returns to the classroom, they will be enticed to adopt lessons learned from remote teaching to reinvent their face-to-face teaching into more blended learning environments. Therefore, a secondary goal of this article is to expand the teaching toolkit of BMB educators to invigorate their teaching and actively engage students in their learning. The following resource includes guidance for instructors, from the basics of designing your online course to a discussion of the typical types of assessments used in remote instruction. Suggestions for collaborative class activities and alternatives to in-person laboratories are included to help foster an online community during this time of disruption and beyond. When considering the organization of your course, think of the key learning outcomes/objectives you already have in place.2 Drill down to the most critical and essential learning outcomes and use these as your guide. It is easy to focus on how to deliver the content, but do not lose sight of the larger goals for your students—the outcomes you have already created when designing your course. Take the “backward design” approach, starting with the outcomes and how you want to cover this and then think about the technology that will help you achieve these goals (e.g., References 3, 4). Use your existing syllabus to pinpoint and create content areas that are readily identifiable to students. For example, if your syllabus indicates that the next three lectures are focused on lipid metabolism, then create a content area with that same title and keep all resources associated with those lessons together. Providing the students with a guide for where to find everything within the learning management system (LMS) in a “Navigating this Online Course” section is helpful. This can be sent to students as an email or can be placed in a “Start Here” content area on the LMS. If you have screen recording software, you could even walk your students through the course setup and post a welcome video. It is tempting to think that students will find the transition to remote learning intuitive. Yet, it is likely our students will be finding the transition as bumpy and distracting as we do! Err on the side of over-, rather than under-, communicating with your students. Identify official channels for communication; for example, encourage your students to enable notifications from your LMS or to check for new announcements and course materials daily. Some students will opt out of LMS notifications to keep their inbox from being flooded. Make it very clear how you will communicate: a Monday announcement summarizing the week's activities can be useful. While communication is key, students displaced during the pandemic may not have access to the same infrastructure for distance learning that they would in their native campus environment. Consider surveying students about their access to technology and the available ways to communicate from a distance. This will help you understand the potential barriers faced by students in your course and devise the most effective strategies to mitigate them. Let students know in advance the multiple ways that they can reach you if they are facing challenges in meeting course expectations. Remember that you and your students are navigating unanticipated and uncharted waters, and unlike faculty, students likely have not had the benefit of peer support or tutorials to help them figure out quickly how to adapt to remote learning; they will need clear and structured guidance from you. For example, for students who anticipate having unstable internet connections, it may be advisable to provide access via text messaging for rapid real-time communication when other modes of communication fail. This can be done without sacrificing privacy by using various apps (e.g., Remind, Slack, Google chat, and GroupMe). Alternatively, you may be able to forward office calls, so students can reach you by telephone without making a personal cell phone number public. It is unreasonable to assume that every student has access to the same tools for learning. Some students may have vacated campus for spring break, not anticipating the inability to return, and therefore may not have access to basics like their textbook. Similarly, dedicated access to a computer or high-speed internet in a distraction-free environment may be a stretch for students sheltering at home or in rural areas. Given the likelihood that students will have variable access to necessary resources, anticipate the ways in which you may need to be flexible and the ways that your students will interact with your materials. Simplify, both for your students and for yourself, and consider using materials that students are already familiar with (i.e., using a current online homework system for quizzes or exams) so that there is not a steep learning curve on software or a complicated setup. Before you invest yourself in new tools and gadgets, consider how you will grade assignments and how long it will take to get them back to students to improve their learning and understanding. There are several options for online learning platforms; choose one and stick with it. Vary the times you are available but maintain control of your time. It is easy to expand to help all students one on one and find your own time has evaporated. Ideas for interaction include: (a) open LMS- (or Zoom)-facilitated live sessions, (b) a recorded test review, (c) message-based chats (e.g., through Google chat), and (d) a calendar reservation application (i.e., www.reserveme.com or through Google calendar) that allows you to designate times during which students can schedule 10–20 min one-on-one meetings. Creating your own content is invigorating and best done with some careful deliberation and planning, including scripting and choreography. However, detailed planning may not be a luxury you have at this time, and if you are unfamiliar with content creation, this could be quite a hill to climb. Therefore, this team recommends those unfamiliar with creating content to outsource your content at first, so you can spend time planning interactive assignments and working on your course assessments. There are wonderful resources and talks from experts available online, and we have aggregated links that you can use from resources you can lean on, including ASBMB. Did you find a video on a topic you need to teach, but it contains an error? Use this as a teaching tool. Your LMS will have a way for you to provide a description of the resource, and you can provide students with the timestamp and explain the error. For those familiar with content creation, be sure to create small bites of content based on the learning objectives that you have already streamlined. Think about the multiple topics that you would cover in a standard lecture period and create content for those topics separately. Linked within the ASBMB website,1 there are several content links for you to use, including a comprehensive set of lecture videos from Professors Pratt and Cornely. Consider how you will ensure that students are working through this material in a timely manner (i.e., quizzes and/or homework assignments with specific deadlines). There will be a fine balance between flexibility, especially for students with slower technology or limited access, and making sure that students are making progress. Most LMSs have limited space for uploaded content; however, YouTube is an excellent way to deliver videos to your students. When you upload, there will be an option for your video to be unlisted. This means that only individuals with the link can view it, and you can provide this link to your students through the LMS without it being able to be viewed publicly. Social distancing practices may promote feelings of isolation, so focus on ways to engage your students in a collaborative discussion. Students can discuss practice problems (to save time, you might assign some from the text or reuse existing problems you have). Your textbook may also come with online resources you can use to facilitate discussions. Be clear on your expectations for participating in discussions and how students will be evaluated (if at all). To minimize academic integrity issues, consider evaluating students on how well they collaborate in the discussion (by number/content in posts) rather than how correct the final answer is. That being said, if the correct answer is not heavily weighted, you can feel free to use this as your teaching time, guiding students toward the correct answer once they have grappled with the problem for an appropriate amount of time. The discussion tool in your LMS can also be used to promote self-regulated learning and community. Create a discussion thread entitled “Urgent questions” or similar. As the instructor, post questions you are emailed, along with the answer, so that all students can benefit from the information. Encourage students to use this thread to post and answer questions about technology or course material. Set expectations that students should be playing the vital role of “first responders” to any question that is asked; you may even incentivize this with a participation grade. Often, students can help each other and gain confidence in their abilities to navigate the content within the online environment. You can then review student questions and responses and affirm or clarify as needed. This method significantly lightens the burden on the instructor, who may feel like he or she needs to check the online space continuously. Collaborative projects and peer review are still possible at a distance. Begin by considering what interactions absolutely must be synchronous. Given the likelihood that students will be accessing from various time zones and with unstable connectivity, it will be likely that at least some activities will need to be adapted for asynchronous interactions. For synchronous activities, set break out rooms and set up times to meet virtually (using your LMS to have a nonrecorded meeting without you) or allow students to gather to work on Google Docs/Sheets/Slides, Facetime chats, or LMS-mediated collaborative events. Synchronous meetings with the instructor can be used to receive each group's report and give feedback. Recorded mini-presentations from students could also be employed to evaluate asynchronously. Some who use peer evaluations in their face-to-face classrooms may want to do more of the same for group activity.5 In many ways, this is a mechanism to help students be connected and create a culture of learning. Studies indicate that active participation in collaborative learning correlates with learners' satisfaction6, 7. You may be thinking, “I can certainly deliver content and engage my students at a distance, but how do I accurately assess their learning?!” Some institutions may already subscribe to a video proctoring service. These services often charge by the assessment and therefore can be quite expensive, so they might be best used for final exams only and not each and every test. Every LMS has the option to build a test, quiz, or assignment. If you already have a large bank of assessment items, you can load them into your LMS and autogenerate a quasiunique assessment for each student.8 The first assessment of every semester is anxiety provoking for students, in part because students must familiarize themselves with the modes of assessment for a particular instructor and course. Many students will be unfamiliar with the technology needed for online assessment and will therefore benefit from an opportunity to become familiar with the new format of a quiz or other evaluation. Therefore, we recommend a practice quiz to help them get used to the format.9 Alternatively, the first quiz (or new assignment type) can be worth fewer points than a typical quiz will be. This allows the student to become comfortable with the new tool in a lower-stakes environment. As an instructor, you may be concerned about issues related to academic integrity, particularly given the myriad repositories of archived course materials available to students (e.g., Chegg and Course Hero). For each of the assessments below, we provide points of consideration for minimizing the potential for violations of academic integrity. Assignments can be created to assign the students projects, papers, and problem sets. 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