Teaching and Managing Remote Lab-based Courses

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, instructors and students were asked to carry on with online learning during the shutdown as of mid-March 2020.Emergency remote laboratory classes had to replace the in-person labs, which left the instructors with too many adaptations to do, in very short time.Instructors of lab courses had to convert all the contents to online platforms.Moreover, they had to assemble lab kits and mail them to the students' homes.Students were also new to the remote-learning experience, let alone the experience of having laboratory sessions at their homes.In this article, the experience of two lab instructors with transforming four lab courses to remote format is presented.The specifics of the labs' setup procedures are discussed, along with the pros and cons of the applied methods.A survey-based study is included to reveal the students' opinions about the remote labs, and their suggestions for improving the process.The viability of remote labs replacing traditional in-person labs will be debated.