Abrupt disruptions to academia, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, have brought unprecedented challenges in teaching, yet it has brought many lessons, driving the development of new strategies in response to the crisis. Some of these innovations have been proven to be beneficial for in-person’s learning. The general chemistry laboratory course is often considered difficult to teach, due to students’ heterogeneous chemistry backgrounds and learning levels, and transitioning from in-person to remote teaching made it even more challenging. Several novel innovative approaches have been developed and implemented to our remote teaching of a general chemistry course at Brown University. For example, animated and interactive lab videos were created during the pandemic through a collaborative effort between undergraduates and the faculty to engage students and help them better visualize the experimental procedures, enabling a less stressful transition to remote teaching for the large laboratory course. The hybrid lab reports, embedded with useful online materials such as videos, further helped students to better understand how experiments are conducted. These innovative approaches applied in fall 2021 and spring 2022 were found to effectively enhance the student’s in-person learning since students were best prepared for the in-person lab as a result of applying these innovative approaches.

Enhancing in-person learning of the General Chemistry Laboratory course at Brown University via the innovation created for remote learning

Where thousands of chemistry professionals meet to share ideas and advance scientific and technical knowledge. Spring 2023 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch at the end of March.

ACS Spring 2023

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.