When the COVID-19 pandemic forced most university teaching into an online mode in spring 2020, online teaching and, specifically, lecture recording were not implemented by default in physics and biophysics education in German universities. Therefore, the teaching terms of the summer semester (April–July 2020, completely online) and of the winter semester (November 2020–February 2021, “hybrid” until December, then fully online) were of a somewhat experimental nature. However, by evaluating the students' perception of the shift to online learning, some adaptations could be implemented in the winter semester. In this report, we reflect on this shift and the subsequent adaptations. We focus on the courses “Introduction to Biophysics” (covering basic cellular and molecular biophysics) and “Introduction to Physics of Complex Systems” (covering principles of dynamics with many applications from biophysics, although not exclusively), which were taught by two of the authors (SKö and SKl, respectively). Both classes were medium-sized (∼50 students) and are attended by first year master of science students, as well as advanced bachelor of science students. For some of these students, these courses are mandatory or strongly recommended.
On the basis of a survey done in Göttingen and several other European universities after the summer semester (1), the limited capacities for in-classroom teaching in the winter semester were prioritized for tutorials (i.e., interactive problem-solving sessions in small groups lead by a teaching assistant, who is typically an advanced master's or doctoral student), which had turned out to be most challenging in the conversion to online learning.
For the courses Introduction to Biophysics and Introduction to Physics of Complex Systems, this meant that the lectures were taught online, whereas about half of the 4–5 tutorial groups for each lecture were initially taught on campus, with the remaining tutorial groups taking place online. The online option allowed students who could not physically be in Göttingen to participate and students with an increased risk of infection to avoid contacts. Additionally, it was clear that we needed to be prepared in case we had to move back online completely (which eventually happened in mid-December when tighter contact restrictions were reimposed). Therefore, all tutors, including those teaching in the classroom, were prepared for online teaching and equipped with graphic tablets that enabled the live writing of mathematics and the drawing of sketches and diagrams in an online setting. True interactive work with students, however, remains a challenge for online tutorials, because few students have a tablet for handwriting, and even if they do have one, they seem hesitant to use it, and they prefer to dictate math and equations to the tutor. By contrast, plots and Python code could be shared easily with the other students, resulting in a mixed experience for active discussion of the required theoretical concepts.
Some changes were made to the content of the tutorials to encourage more student engagement and more discussion among the students. The focus of the tutorials for both courses was shifted: Less time was used for discussing the homework that the students had already solved, so more time could be allocated to questions raised by the students while tackling the homework problems and to new problems that were discussed and solved live in the tutorials. We also encouraged the tutors to split their group into smaller groups (online breakout rooms), and occasionally we gave them alternative problems, so each smaller group could solve one and present their solution to the other students. The tutors reported that students were more engaged in smaller groups (both if the whole group was small and when the group was split) and more likely to turn on their cameras.
Both lectures were taught as live video conferences, with a combination of slides and blackboard-style handwriting with either a tablet or a document camera. (For Introduction to Physics of Complex Systems, Jupyter notebooks additionally were used for numerical calculations and visualization.) The lectures were recorded, and the videos were provided to the students together with other material (slides, handwritten notes, homework problems, additional reading recommendations, etc). During the lecture video conference, students typically did not use their cameras and microphones, but asked questions by chat. In our experience, the chat has an interesting function; because a question is addressed to an unspecified recipient, it works as an intermediate between asking the lecturer and asking a neighbor in the classroom, and although questions were often taken up by the lecturer, some were also answered directly by other students. We also tried to simulate the small informal discussions that often arise after a class, when students come to the front with more specific questions, by staying in the video conference for some time after the lecture has ended.
In the Introduction to Biophysics lecture, additional sections for active student participation were implemented as follows: Short multiple-choice questions were posed in the beginning of each lecture recapitulating the topics of the lecture before using an online voting system. Moreover, students were asked in breakout rooms to discuss in small groups (3–4 people) and come up with a good “exam question” for the current lecture topic. The participation in these active elements was mixed: About half the students were very enthusiastic about it, and the other half remained passive. Therefore, to promote communication between the lecturer and the students, the instructor not only presented material but also asked questions, used interactive quizzes, and stopped periodically to encourage group discussions; elements that make a good face-to-face lecture as well (2, 3).
Although the courses themselves are mandatory for some students, attendance at either lectures or tutorials is not compulsory. Students are required to complete homework sheets to take the exam. Overall attendance of both courses was similar to previous years, but with differences in live compared with asynchronous attendance between the two courses. For Introduction to Physics of Complex Systems, a majority of students attended the lectures live and a minority chose instead to use videos exclusively. The split was more evenly pronounced for Introduction to Biophysics. After a decrease in attendance shortly after the start of term, attributable to students finalizing their timetables, attendance (measured as the number of participants in the live video conference) during the live lectures remained constant. We take this as an encouraging result, because recent research comparing students that attended either synchronous or asynchronous lectures has shown that those who did not attend the synchronous sessions found the course more difficult and in fact achieved poorer test scores on a conceptual survey (4). Likewise, the fraction of students completing the homework and attending the tutorials remained remarkably stable after tutorials were moved online. We conclude that, overall, students adapted quite well to the form of online learning, despite the significant disruptions caused by the COVID-19–induced campus closure.
Communication with students outside the courses was rather limited and mostly took place by e-mail. Our online learning management system (Stud.IP) has an unstructured chat function as well as a more structured forum for online discussions, but in our experience, neither is popular among students, and attempts to encourage students to use them for discussions or questions about the course content were rather fruitless. This result is consistent with our experience from the previous semester, where asynchronous forms of online teaching such as providing video recordings plus discussion on an online forum also failed to engage students. Possibly a venue where such discussion could be anonymous might be received better, but this is uncertain and has the potential to present additional challenges (5). Moreover, asynchronous discussion is also hampered because many biophysical concepts require either math or illustrations and diagrams, neither of which are ideally suited for a standard forum discussion.
In summary, we see two important lessons of our experience with different online teaching formats. First, the need for active exchange and discussion even for the quantitative or mathematical aspects of biophysics should not be underestimated; replacing the discussion at a blackboard or over a piece of paper poses a technical as well as didactic challenge to online teaching that biophysics shares with physics in general and likely with other fields that extensively use drawings, diagrams, and symbolic languages, such as mathematics and chemistry. In this regard, the decision to focus the limited in-person teaching on the interactive elements of the course seems to be perceived as successful by both students and lecturers. Second, despite their wish for lecture recordings (which may remain postpandemic), students still value live lectures (as measured by attendance), even under conditions of online teaching.