Teaching Lab Sciences Online

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Published on April 28, 2020

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on all of us here at HCC and the rest of the world. We are finding substitutes for education every day and are finding more and more answers to help people get through these troubling times. One change is the lab sciences here at HCC. How will students use labs to get a hands-on learning experience? Well, Rachel Cain has the answer for you. Videos.

Rachel Cain, a professor for biology here at HCC, talks about what steps she has taken to make sure the students acquire the information she wants them to learn. “Truth is, Lab Sciences, such as Biology are truly hands-on experiences at their finest. Traditionally, what a student does in the lab setting reinforces the concepts they learn in lecture,” Cain said.

“During these past few weeks of distance learning, it has not been easy to substitute face-to-face lab experiences with online ones. So how are we doing it? One word. Videos. Many of my colleagues and I rely on video clips from the Internet to show students what they would’ve done in the lab. Although there are many videos out there, much of them have major discrepancies. That means it takes time to sift through them in order to find the perfect film clip: brief, accurate, recent and from a trustworthy source,” she added.

This substitution is the best option instead of regular lab sessions. It won’t have the same impact, but it still introduces the labs to the students so the information can be attained.