Teaching with Microbes: Lessons from Fermentation during a Pandemic

Area of Science:

• Anthropology
• Sociology
• Microbiology Education

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges to university teaching and exposed social and health disparities.
• These disparities influenced student interactions and learning outcomes in academic settings.
• Teaching human-microbial relations became a lens to examine these issues.

Purpose of the Study:

• To reflect on teaching human-microbial relations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• To analyze student learning trajectories regarding microbes.
• To introduce a microbiopolitical perspective to understand course outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Ethnographic data collection.
• Autoethnographic reflection.
• Analysis of student engagement with a hands-on fermentation experiment.

Main Results:

• Students evolved from demystifying to distrusting, then reacquainting with microbes.
• A hands-on fermentation experiment facilitated this shift in understanding.
• The learning process was influenced by the pandemic context and social disparities.

Conclusions:

• Microbes are valuable teaching tools across diverse academic disciplines, not just in microbiology.
• The perception and study of microbes are shaped by social, political, and economic factors.
• Contemplating microbial-level inequalities can transform worldviews and human-nonhuman relatedness.