Life at home: Learning and teaching during COVID-19

How students and professors are navigating STEM education

By California State University, Bakersfield

May 11^th, 2020

On a typical day, California State University, Bakersfield’s School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering is bustling with energy, as students learn in labs and soak up lectures, and professors give it their all to foster student brilliance.

That hasn’t changed as classroom doors have closed and courses have moved online amid the COVID-19 quarantine. We might not see them on campus, but students, faculty and staff are doing what they always do: working hard and facing challenges head-on, just from the safety of their homes.

Like many CSUB students, Linh Nguyen has found the transition stressful, but with a few weeks of at-home learning, he is beginning to feel better. The biotechnology major, who will graduate in the fall, has had a few additional challenges to overcome when taking online classes. Originally from Vietnam, English is Nguyen’s second language, which requires him to have more time to read and write assignments.

“It is harder for me to understand the prerecorded and online lectures compared to in-person lectures,” Nguyen explained. “The direct vision to speakers (their gestures and mouths) helps me a lot in listening and understanding.”

As a parent, Nguyen is also tasked with filling the role of an elementary school teacher, helping his 10- and 5-year-old kids with their schooling while working on his own when his wife is at work.

“Before, I only cooked dinner for them and helped them sometimes with their homework at night,” he said. “But now, I have to teach them based on the requirements in their study packs from school including math, reading, stories, painting and physical exercises, as well as making breakfast, lunch and dinner for them every day. Thank God, my kids hardly argue with each other.”

Professors have always done more than teach but now especially, their students are also looking to them for moral support. Nguyen said biology faculty like Dr. Amber Stokes and Dr. Isolde Francis have been particularly helpful as he navigates online learning.

“Although I have had a lot of hard times during this transition, I have very nice and understanding professors,” he said. “They really understand and sympathize a lot. The way Dr. Stokes delivers her lectures is so friendly, which makes me feel like I am right there, sitting in front of her in the classroom.”

Life at home: Learning and teaching during COVID-19

The transition has been a learning experience for all students and faculty, but classes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics studies pose a unique challenge: how can professors recreate the hands-on lab experience that is so crucial to a STEM education for their students who are stuck at home?

Dr. Stokes has had to get creative for her course on comparative vertebrate structure. In addition to lecture, the class also includes a lab, where students work with animal skeletons to identify bones and, later in the course, dissect a cat and shark to learn specific muscles and organs. A large part of this class is memorizing parts, which Dr. Stokes said is best done without access to books and notes – something that doesn’t really work when students are at home.

“Beyond that, I think that students learn much better when they are able to actually do the dissection themselves,” Dr. Stokes said. “They learn what tissues look and feel like in real life. And it translates much better to real organisms than an image will.”

To replicate the experience, Dr. Stokes has been using a program called Froguts, which simulates a dissection.

“It will show the students where to cut, and they’ll have to actually grab virtual scissors and ‘cut’ along those lines,” she said. “This will be combined with pictures and images, as well as some videos of dissections to help students get as close to the real thing as possible.”

Lecturer Rebecka Zepeda teaches integrated life science, a large lecture class that also has a weekly lab. For both parts, Zepeda has been using Zoom. In one lab, she had her students create simple machines like a see-saw and incline plane using a ruler, a pen, and different items for masses.

“This lab worked out particularly well because a good chunk of students had those materials,” she said. “Some of them got really creative with their masses. With the see-saw machine they had to find a way to pick up a heavy mass using only the weight of a lighter mass. I had some students using keys taped together or nail polishes as their masses. But hey! It worked!”

Zepeda has also taken advantage of Zoom’s break-out rooms to divide the class into groups like she would in an ordinary lab setting. The function lets her visit each group to check on its progress and answer any questions.

“This is a really good tool to use because there is a lot of discussion happening in the groups,” she said. “It’s a way for the students to stay as connected as they can through this and it kind of resembles how a regular lab would run.”

Adapting classes for an online format is just part of the challenge for faculty and students. More than ever, students need support and understanding from their professors. Both Dr. Stokes and Zepeda are using some of the same tools for teaching, like Zoom and email, to keep in touch with their students.

“I’ve had several students email me just to express their anxieties over all of this,” Dr. Stokes said. “This can be overwhelming, because I truly don’t have all of the answers. But I do my best to assure them that things are going to be OK, and that we’re in this together.”

Zepeda has expanded her office hours to make herself more available for her students, and she understands for many of them, online classes are just one stressful factor in a difficult time.

“We have 20- to 30-minute discussions after lecture where some of them just vent a little about their current stresses, which I think has been helpful for them to talk with each other and know that they are all experiencing the same stresses,” she said.

For biology major Nancy Negrete Perez, taking care of her family and working for her classes is a difficult balancing act.

“When I'm in Zoom meetings, my son is with me all the time,” she said. “Therefore, it is not the same as an in-person class where you just go and focus on learning.”

Negrete Perez appreciates the professors who have allowed for some flexibility during this time and make the most of tools like Zoom and Canvas to help students. To really push through this, though, she has had to tap into a well of strength she never knew she had. She encourages her peers to persevere.

“The only thing that has helped me is the determination to be able to graduate this semester,” she said. “Each step I take is full of sacrifice and tears. If I can do it, you can too. I know that everyone is fighting their war, and that there are different battles, but in the end your sacrifice will be worth it.”