Teaching physics during COVID-19 pandemic: implementation and report of teaching strategies to support student learning

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic presented several challenges to both teachers and students. The rapid shift to an online learning environment demanded the development of effective teaching strategies to support student learning. This work describes teaching strategies developed to teach physics during the COVID-19 period. The strategies included posting recorded lectures and live demonstrations, providing timely resources and feedback on student graded items, enhancing communication, providing additional interactive opportunities, offering extra help sessions and extra credit opportunities to students. Other factors that played a significant role for student success were faculty empathy, flexibility, and willingness to adjust teaching strategies. All students who completed the courses (without withdrawing) earned grades of C or better. Over a total of 12 physics class sections, grade distributions in Fall 2020 were better than those of Fall 2019. Only a handful of students received incomplete grades because they were directly or indirectly affected by the COVID virus. Even though student withdrawal rates were higher during the COVID pandemic, the teaching strategies adopted helped improve student grades across all sections.