Webinar: Going Virtual while Sheltering-in-place: Developing Tools & Strategies

Going Virtual while Sheltering-in-place: Developing Tools & Strategies  (Zoom Meeting)

With the onset of the current pandemic, when the shelter-in-place order was first put into effect, it took a long moment to take it all in.  Our campuses were closing, our interns were being told they could no longer work in the lab. Rather than canceling everything and ending the semester abruptly, we were being encouraged to continue however possible, somehow developing engaging and comparable online versions of all our coursework and program-related activities. 

This presented serious challenges for us. City College of San Francisco’s Biotech program prominently features the following:

• Hands-on technical training through lab-based coursework;
• Work-based learning through internships at local research labs and companies;
• Networking events that bring people together to share their interest in doing scientific work;
• And we rely heavily on in-person outreach and recruitment activities to help sustain the program.

So, we are currently working to develop new online tools and strategies for preparing and engaging our students, continuing as best we can with the work-based learning and lab-based technical training that defines our program, as well as outreach and recruitment that we need to keep our classes running, by means of virtual platforms. Ideally, we end up enhancing the way that we work with our students, providing them with additional resources and means of communicating for learning and working more effectively.