Repurposing Best Teaching Practices for Remote Learning Environments: Chemistry in the News and Oral Examinations During COVID-19

The Spring 2020 semester will be marked in our history as one of the most challenging semesters for higher education, although through the adversity, we were presented with opportunities for classroom innovation. A reflective account of the teaching insights gained from implementing a COVID-19 miniunit and utilizing remote oral examinations is presented. In Physical Chemistry II, the best practices of context-based learning and oral examinations were repurposed to match our current pandemic and remote learning environments. A context-based unit inspired by Chemistry in the News projects was designed from open-source ACS COVID-19 resources, which addressed chemists’ role in the pandemic response, the efficiency of face masks, and treatment avenues. The teaching insight gained was that students truly appreciated discussing the relevance of science to current events. This miniunit will be improved by making explicit connections between course topics and the pandemic response in future semesters. Also, in Physical Chemistry II, individual and team remote oral exams were conducted over Microsoft Teams video conferencing software. The benefits from observing students’ thought processes and problem-solving strategies make up for the significant instructor time commitment, and oral exams will be utilized in future semesters. Last, a remote oral final exam was also utilized for General Chemistry II pass/fail students.