Impact of COVID-19 on General Chemistry Education at the United States Military Academy

The emergence of the novel coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) required a rapid shift from in-person instruction to remote learning in our second-semester general chemistry course at the United States Military Academy (USMA), a predominantly undergraduate institution that takes pride in faculty accessibility to students. The decision to conduct remote instruction took effect when students were on spring break; consequently, most students had limited academic resources in hand. This represented a significant paradigm shift for both USMA faculty and students since the institution places an emphasis on in-person engagements with students, as reflected by our low student-to-faculty ratio. We adapted our usual in-person, student-driven instructional method to the remote environment within a 7 day period, which impacted 174 students and six faculty course-wide who were new to the technology, resources, and methodology associated with remote instruction and learning. This communication discusses lessons learned from the transition to asynchronous remote teaching, with a critical focus on the advantages and disadvantages of the adopted teaching methodologies, and includes a discussion of course design and the corresponding adaptions to this new pedagogical environment. We anticipate that these accounts can be leveraged by the broader chemical sciences community to better inform the planning and execution of instruction in future academic terms under remote, in-person, or hybrid (partially remote and partially in-person) environments.