During the Spring Semester of 2020, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and the illnesses it caused (COVID-19) led to widespread cancelling of on-campus instruction at colleges and universities in the United States and other countries around the world. Response to the pandemic in university settings included a rapid and unexpected shift to online learning for faculty and students. The transition to teaching and learning online posed many challenges, and the experiences of students during this crisis may inform future planning for distance learning experiences during the ongoing pandemic and beyond. Herein, we discuss the experiences of first- and second- year university students enrolled in a biology seminar course as their classes migrated to online environments. Drawing on reported student experiences and prior research and resources, we discuss the ways we will adjust our own teaching for future iterations of the course while offering recommendations for instructors tasked with teaching in online environments.

We collected student responses under an IRB- approved protocol (#17-249).  Responses were completed as a particpation assignment. These assignments were modified to allow the author to capture the experiences of students newly engaged with distance learning, the perceptions of students own learning, and their interactions with faculty during the pandemic. Students responded to reflection questions two different times during the remote class: the first week of their quarantine at home and then three weeks into their remote learning experience. Questions and student responses were completed through Blackboard, and 14 of the 15 students responded to the questions within the allotted times.