Using Collective Wisdom to Enhance Experimental Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The explosion of the COVID-19 hit all education institutions unprepared in Spring 2020. Many had to pivot to online instruction with little preparation and no response time. The summer, while most universities offered few courses, was the time for faculty to regather resource and prepare for the fall semester. Many anticipated the likelihood of teaching online again and saw challenges associated with this instructional model, especially for laboratory courses. A group of enthusiastic and experienced faculty members in the College of Engineering and Technology at XXXX University congregated and started a weekly Faculty Connection Hour (FCH) to network the college faculty and share pedagogical ideas for remote teaching. Multiple of these sessions focused on innovative ways to provide remote laboratory learning experiences comparable to their conventional face-to-face alternatives. A large number of faculty members contributed to and benefited from these discussions. The FCH started with identifying challenges imposed to laboratory learning by the remote instruction model and was able to discover fifteen strategies that can potentially facilitate the adaption of laboratory learning to the new model. It also recognized that, although there may not be a single strategy that can resolve all the issues existing in a course, laboratory learning objectives can often be achieved by using a combination of different strategies. Collective wisdom gathered from FCH discussions seemed to have equipped faculty with pedagogical ideas for the pivoting. Equally importantly, the connection built through these virtual meetings helped isolated faculty to recognize that they were not fighting the hardships alone; instead all members shared the same adversities. In a sense, it reduced stresses and allowed faculty time to reset and unwind.