Science Labs Turned Reality TV

Keri Colabroy is a Professor of Chemistry and Co-Director of the Biochemistry Program. She was an early pioneer of online learning at Muhlenberg and is well known for her work in Kitchen Chemistry. To hear more from Keri on humanizing “chemistry for all” check out her Golf Cart Pedagogy episode from Fall 2019.

I’m still surprised everyday, how much longer teaching and learning seems to take when we are separated like this. During the semester, I’ve really tried to rethink how I use my synchronous time. I didn’t want to use it as a digital version of what I would do in a face-to-face environment. Rather, I wanted to use it as an opportunity to co-create with my class. When we sign on together on Zoom, I want there to be dialogue between myself and students, and between students.  I want us to build something that we can reflect on after our synchronous time is over, in a way that deepens our understanding and furthers our learning and our relationships. In practice, this has manifested itself as breakout room problem solving with synchronous Google docs that record our process, or as collaborative drafting of an outline, and then a paper. 

Finally, in my wildest and craziest incarnation of collaborative co-creation, I staged a “reality show” version of my lab in which remote students tuned in weekly, in teams, to document what was happening, while collaboratively generating a record of the lab and interpreting the data. This “reality show” lab was an unprecedented merger of my individual research with my teaching, and it turned out to be incredibly fun and surprisingly satisfying. I only did it for 7 weeks, but the students were so sad when it was over.