Resumen de Overcoming Physical Separation During COVID-19 Using Virtual Reality in Organic Chemistry Laboratories
Cathi L. Dunnagan, Maria T. Gallardo Williams
As a result of the COVID-19 disruption experienced in Spring 2020 many institutions had to close their doors and move their courses online. Our team used an existing set of virtual reality (VR) organic chemistry laboratory experiences developed for students with accessibility challenges as an online replacement for the face-to-face Organic Chemistry I laboratory. Although the materials used had been tried with a limited number of distance education students prior to their wide release, some technical challenges were experienced due to the large scale of the class, such as the inability to provide VR viewers for all the students enrolled, and lack of student access to reliable wifi for streaming videos after moving off-campus. In addition to technical difficulties, students experienced attitude challenges due to the global pandemic conditions and a very fast change from face-to-face instruction to online delivery of materials. This paper describes how these circumstances were overcome in order to finish the course, and how the VR experiences were shared with other institutions in an open access model.
