The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a high level of scientific illiteracy and mistrust that pervades the scientific and medical communities. This finding has proven the necessity of updating current methods used to expose undergraduates to research. The research in traditional course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) is limited by…

"Toward Self-Directed Learning in the Secondary Classroom" explores the challenges teachers have faced and continue to face in a pandemic and post-pandemic context while attempting to implement self-directed learning in the secondary classroom. Drawing on contemporary research from around the world as well as candid interviews with…

The practice of self-designed or self-directed learning (SDL), is one approach outside the mainstream education system that can be applied by anyone, and in any circumstances. SDL means, first and foremost, that learners--from a young age on--decide what to learn based on their own interests and passions, how they want to learn it, how long they…

Background: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers found themselves making a rapid and often challenging shift from in-person classroom teaching to teaching in an online environment. As teachers continue to learn about working in this new environment, research in cognitive and learning sciences, specifically findings from cognitive…

Amidst a steady clamor about "learning loss" during the pandemic, a minority of educators have cautioned we must, in the words of Donna Haraway, "stay with the trouble," giving children space to grieve, explore, and make sense of a new reality. In this paper I interrogate what it means to stay with trouble and specifically call…

In response to concerns about the children of first responders needing a safe, supervised place to learn in the midst of COVID-19 school closures, the City of North Las Vegas funded education nonprofit Nevada Action to set up a microschool. Students left the school district to learn at the microschool, which received from the city facilities,…

This paper focuses on the experience, reflections, and best practices related to training adult education researchers in an adult learning and leadership doctoral program at a Research I institution in the United States. We discuss embedding technology into the curriculum, fostering connections, and supporting the development of self-directedness…

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic brought about several challenges in both learning and instructive styles. Chief among these was engagement in classrooms that were remote, in-person or switched between the two due to quarantine periods. In a content centric biomaterials core course, here we describe an 'inclusive engagement toolkit' that combines…

Shifting school schedules, small class sizes, and unpredictable instrumentation resulting from the global pandemic necessitated a creative approach to teaching ensemble music classes this year. In response to that challenge, I constructed a curriculum for developing independent musicianship through chamber music. Part independence,…

The recent lockdown of laboratories in the COVID-19 era has negatively impacted many lab-based courses for undergraduate students; however, research project classes have been hardest hit. Unlike the lab-based lecture courses, where many of the lab instructors have resorted to virtual experiments and videos to substitute for actual lab experiments,…

In mid-March 2020, due to the novel coronavirus, my 300-level Environmental Sampling Methods lecture/laboratory course transitioned to distance learning. After this move, the primary focus of the course became the laboratory. To do this, I revised my three remaining laboratory exercises (i.e., water quality, soil quality, environmental microbes)…

This reflective essay discusses my experience over one year during the COVID-19 global pandemic. I analyze my experiences teaching and my observations of students, concluding that the affordances of blended learning can be useful for engaging multilingual students, and that such engagement allows for more time for formative feedback for students.…

Research into the consequences of and planned responses to COVID-19 across education sectors globally indicates that the considerable disruption that has occurred has significantly exacerbated existing inequalities. Although many believe that substantial investment in educational technology is the essential strategy, very few of the 200 or so…

Teaching labs at the undergraduate level poses unique challenges to a school system forced online by COVID-19. We adapted physiology laboratories typically taught in-person to an online-only format, allowing students to measure personal health data alone. Students used available technology and low-cost devices for measuring respiratory and…

Online teaching and learning as an electronically supported approach relies mainly on the Internet as the medium for knowledge transmission. The utmost efforts are being made so that learning will be possible, even during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, while also maintaining academic integrity. In this paper, we discuss the major steps taken…