In March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, teaching labs at Stevens changed teaching styles from in-person to online-virtual in the middle of the semester. Virtual labs then became the new norm in the following semesters. The impact of the transition from in-person to virtual biology lab teaching environments on college students is unknown. The goal of this study is to assess the effectiveness of biology teaching labs utilizing different educational programs and platforms. In this study, an anonymous opinion survey was conducted among Stevens students who took in-person and online-virtual biology teaching labs during the last two years. 50 undergraduate students responded to an online survey and answered questions regarding their lab experience, preferences, likes and dislikes, and knowledge retention. The collected data were analyzed to determine if there was a statistically significant difference between in-person and online-virtual teaching labs. Among this group of 50 students, 74% of students stated they preferred in-person labs over virtual labs. 60% of students explained how they appreciated the hands-on experience in-person labs provided them with and felt as though they retained the lessons learned in biology labs better through interacting with the equipment and materials hands on. However, 44% of the participants also noted some slight issues they have with in-person labs including a small room for error, increased difficulty, and longer completion times. For the students that preferred virtual labs, the main reason was based on time. Students who preferred virtual labs admired the independence virtual labs allowed them to have including allowing them to work at their own pace. It is evident from the results of this study that students prefer in-person labs over virtual and they value the interactive and experiential aspects of in-person labs. For 3 out of the 4 specific labs surveyed, students that took the virtual version of the lab were more likely to answer correctly than students who took in-person labs. However, for each of the 4 labs, the percentages for answering correctly differed no more than 15%. For the lab in which more in-person students answered correctly, 78% of the questions were answered correctly by in-person students and only 63% of the questions were answered correctly by virtual students. Although the analyzed data shows that students tended to retain more knowledge from virtual labs versus in-person labs, 13 students stated they felt as though they learned more from in-person labs. These results will ultimately allow alterations to be made to biology teaching labs based on student feedback and overall lab effectiveness in order to better suit the learning needs of the students both during and after the pandemic. This opinion survey received Stevens IRB Approval for Protocol No: 2021-011(N) and extension 2021-011(22-COAS1) on 10/25/2021 and conducted in October 2021.
Stevens Institute of Technology, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, School of Engineering and Science, Hoboken, NJ 07030
