Bio At-Home Lab Kit Team

Biology

Team members

Course Coordinators Alastair Tracey and Sajeni Mahalingam; Technician Tracy Rerecich; Biology Administrator Rebecca Woodworth; and Instructors Rosa da Silva and Lovaye Kajiura

Course

BIO1A03 | Cell and Molecular Biology | 1856 students

Their story

The BIO1A03 (Cell and Molecular Biology) Course Team provides instruction for ~1600 students each academic year. This team has created a unique course that includes independent self-paced online modules, effective classroom time for activities, reviews, and application-based lectures, and an innovative personalized, project-based lab in which students evaluate genetic variation in their own DNA.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic posed particular challenges in engaging 1st year students in active investigation and hands-on lab inquiry. To overcome this obstacle, the BIO1A03 Team developed an ‘at-home lab’ kit, that has now been shipped to over 2500 students enrolled in the course over the Summer 2020, Winter 2021 and Spring 2021 academic terms.

Creating the at-home lab kits required an extraordinary effort that included overhauling the entire lab manual; developing, testing and assembling the kits themselves; and modifying all laboratory and tutorial exercises for the course, to ensure that such that students were able to experience the best hands-on lab experience and analytical skill development opportunity possible outside of an in-person lab environment.

Many members of this team worked through vacations and weekends in order to create and deploy the at-home lab kits. At a time when first year students had not yet set foot on campus, this incomparable level of dedication is a testament to the mandate of a team that has student well-being at the top of their list! Thank you!

Helpful support: This initiative was a tremendous success thanks to the support received on many levels. This included tremendous collaboration between the listed staff, faculty, student volunteers and teaching assistants, together with support from McMaster’s EDI Office, the EOHSS team, our legal advisors, shipping and receiving, customs and traffic, the Campus Store, the Office of the Provost, and especially with incredible support from the Office of the Dean of Science and our Dean Dr. Maureen MacDonald.

Please direct your inquiries to: rosa.dasilva@mcmaster.ca

License

Good News Stories in Online Teaching in the Faculty of Science Copyright © by A collaborative initiative between MacPherson Institute & Faculty of Science. All Rights Reserved.

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