Reflections on the 2020 and 2021 teaching periods

To accommodate students during the ongoing pandemic, I offered the Fall 2020 lecture of BIOL
403 (Human Anatomy & Physiology) as a hybrid synchronous course: students could choose to
attend in-person or virtually as needed. The laboratory sections were offered exclusively
virtually. Conducting the course as a hybrid with both synchronous lectures "zoomed" for some
students while simultaneously holding a face-to-face lecture was incredibly challenging: I never
felt truly prepared for each class, knowing that a technological issue might disrupt the class at
any time (this happened throughout the semester). Many of the students who opted to attend
virtually stopped coming about 2/3 through the semester. The laboratory curriculum was
seriously compromised by the virtual format as would be expected for a heavily exercise and
dissection-based course like anatomy. I did my best to make the experience beneficial for
students: for example, I performed live dissections and provided access to a 3D virtual anatomy
program, but both the students and I felt the disconnect strongly. These issues, along with
rampant cheating on virtual exams led me to offer the spring semester laboratory sections
(BIOL 404) as exclusively in-person. However, the "break days" scattered across three weeks
during the spring 2021 semester seriously compromised the laboratory component of BIOL 404.
The lab is taught exclusively on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and as these days were the
ones during which classes were canceled, the course curriculum had to be extensively cut for
each section to remain on the same schedule.

Despite the numerous hurdles faced by both students and myself during this academic year, by
the end of the spring semester, I felt more connected to this group of students than I had the
previous year, when Covid-19 struck. Our mutual efforts to return to some semblances of
normalcy were obvious and made for an overall more pleasant teaching experience than I had
faced from the previous two academic years. Encouraging reviews and comments also helped
me to feel that, perhaps, there was a light at the end of the Covid tunnel.

Looking ahead to the fall semester of 2021, I was thrilled to see familiar names on my roster for
the upcoming course: a handful of students enrolled in my upcoming Human Anatomy &
Physiology had taken General Biology with me as freshman two years ago. This group of
students was bright, engaged and dedicated: thus far, those characteristics have remained the
same. Teaching such students is a delight: I’m reminded why I chose this profession in the first
place.