Lessons from the unexpected adoption of online teaching for an undergraduate genetics course with lab classes

In the spring semester of 2020, colleges and universities adopted online teaching as the primary modality due to campus closure for social distancing. While lectures could be more readily converted to online classes, biology labs were challenging to handle since students could not physically conduct experiments in lab classrooms. In the present report, various online teaching materials, including educational and research videos, simulation labs, and real research data, were utilized to achieve the learning objectives of the originally in-person lab classes of an upper-level undergraduate genetics course. Furthermore, certain advantages of online teaching, such as detailed and high-quality annotation of lecture slides using the Apple Pencil and iPad, were observed. While online teaching has its unique strengths, it could not provide students with hands-on experience in performing real biology experiments to master technical skills; the latter are essential for students to develop a career in conducting research in an academic or industrial laboratory setting. Hence, a well-designed hybrid modality of using online teaching to complement conventional face-to-face instruction may allow for better teaching in undergraduate biology courses.