Useful Teaching Strategies in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine) Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. COVID-19
1.2. STEMM Education in the Time of COVID-19
2. Compilation of Teaching Lessons and University Profiles
- (1)
- Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (School and Location), Private (Type of Institution), Semester (Academic Calendar), 5433 (Total Undergraduate Enrollment, Fall, 2020), and with a population of 385,382 (2019);
- (2)
- Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX (School and Location), Public (Type of Institution), Semester (Academic Calendar), 33,269 (Total Undergraduate Enrollment, Fall, 2020), and with a population of 253,851 (2019);
- (3)
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC (School and Location), Public (Type of Institution), Semester (Academic Calendar), 19,399 (Total Undergraduate Enrollment, Fall, 2020), and with a population of 60,998 (2019);
- (4)
- University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, La Crosse, WI (School and Location), Public (Type of Institution), Public (Type of Institution), Semester (Academic Calendar), 9479 (Total Undergraduate Enrollment, Fall, 2020), and with a population of 51,666 (2019);
- (5)
- Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC (School and Location), Public (Type of Institution), Semester (Academic Calendar), 4406 (Total Undergraduate Enrollment, Fall, 2020), and with a population of 73,334 (2019).
- (a)
- introduction to biology, genetics, and molecular biology to undergraduates (Cooper and Glasscock),
- (b)
- biomedical sciences (disease biology, immunology, and hematology) to undergraduates and graduate students (Cooper, Fortenberry, Glasscock, and Church),
- (c)
- immunology and hematology to medical students (Church), and finally,
- (d)
- exploring the experiences of STEMM faculty and their learning assistants (LAs) in undergraduate STEMM courses, such as Calculus II (Hite).
3. Results
3.1. Useful Teaching Strategies for STEMM Teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic
- (1)
- safety of students and teaching faculty/teaching assistants/staff;
- (2)
- transferring content from an in-classroom setting to an online setting;
- (3)
- keeping students engaged;
- (4)
- mitigating technology-related issues;
- (5)
- ensuring fair grading/assessment.
3.2. Safety of Students and Teaching Faculty/Teaching Assistants/Staff
Stay Informed of Changing University Policies When Teaching from a Distant Site
3.3. Transferring Knowledge from an In-Classroom Setting to an Online Setting
3.3.1. Use a Variety of Technology and Teaching Methods
3.3.2. Creating Active Learning Online Material with Zoom
- When using Zoom breakout rooms, keep the same students in the same group throughout the class term. This consistency helps to facilitate camaraderie among students and fosters a peer support system. There is a new feature in Zoom that facilitates group assignments in breakout rooms.
- Task students with meeting their groups outside of class to complete their group assignments via Zoom. This group accountability creates a structure to prioritize their class assignments and further supports the concept of the group as team.
- Post recorded lectures and labs the same day they are given (if possible).
- Record and post exam review sessions for review and if students miss them.
- If a teaching assistant (TA) is available, ask them to compile the most relevant messages/questions posted to your institution’s Learning Management System (LMS). By having your TA curate questions from the LMS, you will have more information to prepare for the lecture. Furthermore, this gives the professor a good check on level of comprehension/confusion from the previous lecture that can be used to inform the next lecture.
- Some faculty disable the messaging feature in Zoom because it can be a distraction during the lecture; however, enabling the messaging feature encourages the participation of the quiet/reserved students. Thus, we recommend keeping the message function on during all lectures after class norms are discussed in regard to proper chat etiquette (e.g., no use of profanity, no cyberbullying classmates, report any disruptive actions to the instructor or professor). In addition, the pop-up feature for messaging can be disabled so the instructor can check messages when they choose during a lecture.
- If one utilizes games in one’s teaching, search for online updates as many companies have adapted quickly to the altered teaching landscape created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Do note that some interactive programs/games/tools are not adaptable for a Zoom platform.
3.3.3. Laboratory-Based Sections/Courses
- Professors may use a combination of simulated lab exercises widely available online, and lab exercises recorded in-house, using a GoPro camera. Video recorded from a GoPro is from a first-person view so that students can watch as the professor performs the lab exercise from the professor’s point of view. The recorded labs are ideal for small groups to pause and rewind periodically to discuss, analyze the data, and form conclusions.
- An online synchronous lab experience allows the professor to work with students in small groups to discuss various laboratory techniques and review multiple primary research articles that utilize these techniques. The professor introduces the technique, and students review multiple primary research articles utilizing the techniques, analyze data generated by the techniques, and critique statistical analyses and conclusions. Although this does not replace the bench-top lab experience, students gain experience analyzing and critiquing multiple data sets using different data sources. Students can also be given results from previous semesters or existing data sets to analyze. Bioinformatics and statistical analysis are also good online synchronous options for labs.
3.4. Keeping Students Engaged
3.4.1. Organizing Student Meetings Using Zoom
3.4.2. Creating Ways for Students to Remain Engaged in an Online Class
- Recruit a graduate teaching assistant (GTA) who can assist the professor with scoring class assignments, and act as a liaison between the professor and students. During a Zoom lecture, the professor cannot see all of the students or be able to respond to their questions in real-time; the GTA can be tasked with interacting with students via the chat function. Students may pose their questions to the GTA. The GTA can try to answer the question and if they cannot, they should summarize major questions for the professor. Plan to have time following the end of the lecture to answer these questions aggregated by the GTA. By employing your GTA in this fashion, the student can remain anonymous. This practice is critical because some students hesitate to ask questions in a large group, especially in the whole class Zoom format.
- Randomly call on students to engage in the discussion to help them articulate their ideas aloud as an effective way to think about an idea or concept. Thus, calling on individual students to answer a question or expand on the topic is critical to the student’s ability to grasp the concept. Using this practice is particularly important in STEMM because some of the topics are complex. Having students think through how they understand a concept will aid other students in co-constructing their understandings. Additionally, teaching using Zoom will ‘force’ the students to remain engaged and not become distracted by their phones or surf the web during class time, especially if they realize they may be the next person called to respond to a question. Alternatively, one could adopt the “Think-Pair-Share” approach where students first formulate their own explanation, then pair with another student or group to discuss. Then the instructor can ask groups to share their answers with the entire class.
- Establishing a classroom culture of keeping cameras on during Zoom presentations prevents students from disengaging from other activities (e.g., email, social activity media). This practice is essential for the professor and GTA to gauge to what extent students are grasping the lecture content/concept and not due to visual and social cues.
- Ask students to submit a one-minute paper before each class as a formative assessment. Teaching via Zoom often necessitates recording lectures or posting lectures for the students before class. To ensure that the students review these lectures beforehand, consider requiring students to submit a 1-min paper consisting of one or two questions about the lecture, particularly the complex topics. The one-minute papers are due before class so that the GTA can synthesize their replies. This practice allows the professor to focus on the topics that the students find especially difficult to understand. In addition, one may wish to ask the students to submit a one-minute paper after class to determine how well concepts were understood and the direction of future lectures within the topic.
3.4.3. Organization of Daily Schedule
3.4.4. Increase the Number of Office Hours
3.4.5. Universal Design for Learning Improves Accessibility
3.4.6. Remain Positive
3.5. Mitigating Technology-Related Issues
3.5.1. Maintain all Online Material for Future Use
3.5.2. Flipping a Class from Recorded Lecture Files
3.5.3. Make Sure to Have Adequate Tools to Lecture Online
3.5.4. Research on Undergraduate STEMM Education
3.6. Ensuring Fair Grading/Assessment
Give Examinations Online and with Flexible Start Times
- Diversify one’s assessment responses when deploying tests online. For declarative knowledge, utilize questions that provide immediate feed-back and grading, such as multiple-choice, matching, and true-false questions. For process-orientated question items, one can use rubric scoring for short-answer and essay questions.
- Furthermore, consider giving the class the option of when they may take the exam. We recommend allowing the students to sign in individually at any given time to begin the examination (for instance, offer the exam to be taken at sometime between 9:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m. on examination day). The exam computer program keeps track of their time and then time out at the appropriate time (for example, you allow the class 55 min to take an exam for a class that meets for 50 min). By providing this flexibility, there are fewer issues in having students log in at a specific time to complete their examination.
4. Discussion and Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Church, F.C.; Cooper, S.T.; Fortenberry, Y.M.; Glasscock, L.N.; Hite, R. Useful Teaching Strategies in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine) Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 752. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11110752
Church FC, Cooper ST, Fortenberry YM, Glasscock LN, Hite R. Useful Teaching Strategies in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine) Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Education Sciences. 2021; 11(11):752. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11110752
Chicago/Turabian StyleChurch, Frank C., Scott T. Cooper, Yolanda M. Fortenberry, Laura N. Glasscock, and Rebecca Hite. 2021. "Useful Teaching Strategies in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine) Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic" Education Sciences 11, no. 11: 752. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11110752