Using What's at Hand: The Creation of an Online Microbiology Outreach Program

Outreach programs lead to increased student interest to pursue careers in science fields. However, hosting existing programs during a pandemic has proven difficult. We used "The Seven Principles of Good Practice," which emphasizes interactions between the instructor and students, feedback, and peer interactions, to design an online microbiology program for high school students. Moreover, we incorporated diverse learning techniques to reach learners at disparate levels. While our program was primarily asynchronous, to accommodate for the schedules of our student population, synchronous sessions were held each morning to answer questions, ensure clarity of instructions, and encourage students to benefit from the content expertise of the multidisciplinary faculty. Student and faculty assessment indicated that the program was a success. Our online microbiology precollege outreach program demonstrated an effective way to expose students to infectious disease concepts and information literacy. In this paper, we describe some tips and tools from lessons learned in our outreach program for high school students that was offered online on the topic of microbiology and antimicrobial resistance.