STEM courses continue to adapt and provide opportunities for student success

Faculty and staff at Yakima Valley College have continued to adapt during the ongoing pandemic to provide the best learning opportunities for students.

Two sections of YVC’s organic chemistry lab (CHEM 251) have met weekly for hands-on learning with safety protocols in place during winter quarter. Led by instructors Natalia Dunn and Shawn Teng, the course is designed for STEM majors.

“We felt that it was critical for these major students to get some lab experience,” stated Dunn.

In addition, the college’s biology and chemistry programs continue to create take-home lab kits to offer students a hands-on learning option while studying remotely. Starting in summer 2020, lab technicians Adriana Magallanes and Kayla Johnson worked with biology and chemistry faculty to compile kits and schedule socially distanced pickup dates for students.

“With everything moving online, I feel it is important that students are getting a hands-on experience in biology,” stated Biology Instructor Amanda Gall. “The lab kits provide a great resource to give these students a feeling of being in the biology lab at home. We picked a couple of the labs and converted the protocols so that we could package them up and send them home with students. Students enjoyed being able to become a scientist for a day as they performed their labs and then had to answer questions related to those labs!”

Gall and fellow faculty and staff were even able to make arrangements to get kits to students living outside the immediate area or unable to pick up the kits on campus.

Materials for a take-home pH lab kit for students.

Topics explored in the at-home lab kits include determining pH, osmosis, DNA extraction, propagation of plants and more.

"Having a hands-on experience with the lab kits really pushed myself to process. increase my knowledge on the topic we were studying," Walker said. “The kits were very organized and came with step-by-step instructions to help those at home have a successful experiment.”

Student Ashlee Walker found the hands-on experiential learning pushed her to better understand the concepts. She received two different kits for her Biology 160 course in the fall, one for DNA extraction and one for determining pH.

The lab kits include all the instruments and tools needed to complete experiments at home.

A take-home lab kit exploring DNA extraction in process.

“After experiencing at-home labs I fnd that it is important to have them in the curriculum as it provides a way for students to be more involved. Some of my classmates are having a hard time adapting to online learning and staying motivated in a home environment. This can cause some students to feel less successful, depressed, and only doing the work for a grade instead of actually learning. By doing the at-home lab kits it provides a hands-on learning experience that is similar to one that we would be having in the lab,” Walker continued.

Walker also noted how helpful the kits are to students like herself living outside of the Yakima Valley, providing the fexibility of online learning and the benefts of hands-on learning at the same time.

“For me personally I was outside of Washington State during this course and always looked forward to the lab being shipped to my house. Overall, they provided a way to feel like we were actually involved in the lab and not missing out on the unique experiences that we would be having in person,” Walker said.