Instructor perspectives on the emergency transition to remote instruction of physics labs

Laboratory courses are an important part of the undergraduate physics curriculum. During physics labs, students can engage in authentic, hands-on experimental practices, which can prepare them for graduate school, research laboratories, and jobs in industry. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, colleges and universities across the world rapidly transitioned to teaching labs remotely. In this work, we report results from a survey of physics lab instructors on how they adapted their courses in the transition to emergency remote teaching. We identified three common themes in the instructors’ responses: (i) using a variety of simulation tools, (ii) changing learning goals of the courses to be more concept focused, and (iii) reducing group work due to equity and technological concerns. We discuss the common challenges and successes reported by instructors, which leads to themes and lessons that can impact future remote and in-person instruction.

Figure 1

An example question from the instructor survey, where instructors could check boxes to indicate the activities that happened in their courses before and/or after the transition to remote learning.

Figure 2

The successes referenced by instructors in the open responses of the survey. The error bars were calculated using the 95% binomial confidence interval with $n=91$, number of references to any success by the instructors. Note, there were 22 success subcodes—we present only the subcodes that are statistically above zero (using the 95% confidence interval) in this figure.

Figure 3

Instructors were asked to “Rank how much you agree with the following statements.” We show the mean response from 121 survey responses and the uncertainty, which represents one standard error of the mean. We calculated the mean by assigning a response of strongly disagree $=0$, disagree $=1$, and neutral $=2$, agree $=3$, and strongly agree $=4$.

Figure 4

Sankey diagram showing the change in learning goals of the instructors who completed the instructor survey from before (left side of plot) to after (right side of plot) remote instruction. The lines represent the direction of change from before to after and the width of the line is proportional to the number of courses that reported that type of transition.

Figure 5

Sankey diagram showing the change in courses designed for group work versus individual work during lab from before (left side of plot) to after (right side of plot) remote instruction. The lines represent the direction of change from before to after and the width of the line is proportional to the number of courses who reported that type of transition.

Figure 6

Instructor reported lab activities used after the transition to remote instruction in Spring 2020.

Figure 7

Instructor reported student choice and self-regulated learning opportunities used after the transition to remote instruction in Spring 2020.

Figure 8

Instructor reported scientific communication activities used after the transition to remote instruction in Spring 2020.

Figure 9

Instructor reported equipment and technology used after the transition to remote instruction in Spring 2020.