As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, all of our upper year Biology lab courses at UBC have been offered fully online. The uncertainty of vaccine production and immunization schedules suggest that we will remain online for several more months. While some students have expressed appreciation for the convenience of the online space (e.g. saving commute time; ability to work at own pace), others have expressed concern about how the loss of hands-on experiences may impact their career goals. Thus, we are surveying students on their goals and perspectives at the start of the term, and will assess how these perspectives may have changed with the actual online lab experience. We will also discuss how our lab courses have attempted to provide experiential learning and appropriate training in experimental research in the absence of face-to-face learning. The findings of this study can a) shed light on the student experience of online labs; b) identify aspects of online labs that facilitate the development of skills; c) help further the development and use of online lab offerings, and how best they may be deployed.
Keywords: online, student perception, upper year
Virtual ABLE (ViABLE) (2021)
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