Teaching labs during a pandemic: Lessons from Spring 2020 and an outlook for the future
Michael F. J. Fox, Alexandra Werth, Jessica R. Hoehn, H. J. Lewandowski
TTeaching labs during a pandemic:Lessons from Spring 2020 and an outlook for the future
Michael F. J. Fox, Alexandra Werth, Jessica R. Hoehn, and H. J. Lewandowski
Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USAJILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
July 2020
Abstract
We report results from a survey of lab instructors on how they adapted their courses in the transitionto emergency remote teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this report is to share theexperiences of instructors in order to prepare for future remote teaching of labs. We include summaries ofresponses to help illustrate the types of lab activities that were done, learning goals for the remote labs,motivations for instructors’ choices, challenges instructors faced, and ways in which instructors and studentscommunicated. This is a first step in a larger project as part of an NSF RAPID grant to understand whathappened during the switch to remote labs and how it impacted teaching methods and student learning. a r X i v : . [ phy s i c s . e d - ph ] J u l ontents Introduction
In the spring of 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities across the world rapidlytransitioned classes and activities to be conducted remotely. This transition presented particular challenges forlaboratory courses. This report forms part of a larger project studying the impact of public health restrictions onteaching methods and student learning in physics laboratory courses at the undergraduate level. The motivationfor this report is to provide feedback, resources, and ideas to the community of physics instructors, detailingwhat instructors did and what worked well, before Fall 2020 classes begin. This report is distinct from otheronline recommendations developed for teaching remote labs, such as PhysPort [1] or ALPhA [2], in that theideas come from the experiences of a large range of instructors and students. The nature of this report is apresentation and organization of collected data, rather than an analysis of a research question. A full analysisfor a peer-reviewed publication will occur later.We define remote labs to encompass any continued instruction of a course that was considered a lab courseprior to the rapid transition to remote work, in which the instructor and all students were no longer presentat the same location. The data in this report primarily come from: (1) a survey sent out to lab instructors(the instructor survey) on April 30 th .1 Survey sample The instructor survey was completed for 129 courses by 106 unique instructors. A majority of the respondentscame from 4-year colleges (55%). Approximately 8% of the responses were from classes at 2-year colleges,5% from Master’s granting institutions, and 32% from PhD granting institutions. 61% of courses were firstyear (introductory) labs and 39% were beyond first year labs. Approximately 30% of the labs were taught toprimarily non- physics or engineering majors, 60% were taught to primarily physics and engineering majors,and 10% mixture of majors. Most respondents switched to remote teaching part way through the term, though17% of respondents were remote for the entire term (typically from quarter/trimester systems).
In order to facilitate the extraction of relevant and useful information from this report, we have labeled eachexample with at least 3 tags. These tags identify the context of an example and are intended to help the readerassess whether such an activity or approach would have similar effectiveness in their own situation. The pagelocations of each tag are provided in the Index.The first label describes whether the course is at the introductory level (
Intro ), or is beyond the first year(
BFY ). The second label describes the majority of students who enroll in the course, based on their major:Physics and Engineering majors (
PhysEng ); STEM majors (
STEM ) i.e., including physics and engineering; notPhysics nor Engineering majors (
NotPhysEng ); non-Science majors (
Non-science ); mainly Physics (
Phys ); mainlyMath (
Math ); and other/non-classified (
Other ). The third label describes the size of the class. Classes with lessthan 25 students are labeled (
Small ); classes with between 25 and 100 students inclusive are labeled (
Medium );classes with over 100 students are labeled (
Large ).In addition to this labeling, we have included an index at the end of the report, so that the reader may quicklynavigate to specific examples of interest. Quotes with information relevant to various physics subject matterare additionally labeled, and indexed as such. These content labels are: [
Mechanics , E&M , Waves , Electronics , Optics , Quantum , Astro ]. Figure 1:
Instructors were asked to “Rank how much you agree with the following statements.” We show themean response from 121 survey responses and the error, which represents one standard error of the mean. Wecalculated the mean by assigning a response of “Strongly disagree” = 0, “Disagree” = 1, and “Neutral” = 2,“Agree = 3”, and “Strongly agree = 4”.We begin by examining the motivations for, and challenges of, transitioning to remote lab instruction asexpressed by the instructors who completed the instructor survey. We found that, although the motivationsvaried across the group of instructors, most people were driven by meeting the course learning goals and covering4he same content as before the transition to remote instruction (see Figure 1). While grading and havingdepartmental consensus often represented constraints for instructors, these were not the primary motivatorswhen designing the remote version of the course. Another motivation that was not represented in the closedresponse questions, but that we saw multiple times in the open responses was ensuring the remote course wasequitable—i.e., all students in the class had access to the resources they needed to learn and thrive. For example,one instructor explained they “had to find things that worked that students could do without buying stuff.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Large ] For another, their main motivation was to ensure the well-being of their students: “I prioritizedmental health by holding mental health check ins at the beginning of every class period. This really helped theclass to create a community and also re-enforced with the students that I valued them as people first. I havefound that students will work harder and learn more if you care for them as a whole person.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small ] Figure 2:
Instructors were asked to “Rank how much you agree with the following statements.” We show themean response from 111 survey responses and the error which represents one standard error of the mean. Wecalculated the mean by assigning a response of “Strongly disagree” = 0, “Disagree” = 1, and “Neutral” = 2,“Agree = 3”, and “Strongly agree = 4”.Additionally, we asked instructors to rank each challenge they faced during this transition on a Likert scale.The most common reported challenge instructors faced was making the remote class as similar to the in-personversion as possible. Instructors also cited time and technology constraints as major challenges. Grading did notseem to be a problem for too many people, perhaps because a large number of institutions switched to pass/failgrading schemes, or because many instructors were encouraged to be more lenient with their grading in theremote situation. Responses to the statements on class attendance/participation and budget were somewhatpolarized (which is not represented by the mean shown in Figure 2). Other challenges that were seen in theopen-responses were personal factors for the instructor (e.g., family responsibilities), student engagement, groupwork, and equity for the students. For example, one instructor said, “I could imagine a class where experimentsare done by the students at home, but given the different life circumstances of students, the class would likelynot be an equitable experience.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small , Quantum ] Another had challenges using simulations thatused Java instead of HTML5 and expressed that the biggest challenge they faced was “choosing simulationsall students can use on different hardware.” [ Intro , Other , Medium ] Challenges with group work were not onlyexpressed by the instructors, but it was also one of the biggest challenges expressed by the students.In addition to the instructor survey, we administered supplemental questions with the E-CLASS [3]. Themost common major challenge that students reported was not being able to do experiments with physicalmaterials (Figure 3). The second most common challenge (on average) was not “having a partner/group to helpconduct experiments”. While the majority (75.6%) of students reported not facing a challenge associated withaccess to technology, 545 students reported access to technology as a minor challenge and 104 students reportedit to be a major challenge. Additionally, the survey was administered via the internet so these numbers are5 igure 3:
Students were asked to “Rank how challenging the following aspects of your course were during theremote lab instruction.” Students could choose either “No challenge”, “Minor challenge”, or “Major Challenge”.We show the mean response from 2260 students and the error bars represent the standard error of the mean.We calculated the mean by assigning a response of “No challenge” = 0, “Minor challenge” = 1, and “Majorchallenge” = 2.likely underestimating the more severe cases of lack of access to technology. In order to ensure that lab (and all)classes are equitable, we recommend recognizing and addressing students’ challenges and access to technologyin current and future remote/hybrid course design.Despite these myriad challenges, physics lab instructors rose to the occasion and employed a variety ofcreative approaches and strategies in order to provide opportunities for students to access “lab-like” learningonline. As part of this report, we hope to provide examples and recommendations of ways to create productiveremote lab experiences and collaborations. We will focus on the two primary motivating factors—meetingcourse learning goals and covering the same physics concepts—while acknowledging and incorporating potentialsolutions that will be equitable and as easy as possible to implement. Of course, we note that many of thesesolutions and outcomes are highly dependent on specific contexts (class size, student population, individualstudent and/or instructor circumstances, etc.) and hope to provide instructors with a wide variety of optionsthat they may consider in the context of their own situation.
While there exists a wide range of different implicit and explicit learning goals for labs that vary depending oninstitute and course, the physics education research literature generally categorizes these goals into two groups:either developing experimental skills or reinforcing physics concepts [4, 5].After the transition, the courses were approximately evenly distributed across learning goals that focusedprimarily on concepts, primarily on skills, and both concepts and skills equally. Many instructors shiftedtheir learning goals to be focused primarily on reinforcing concepts during the remote version of the course;this shift came principally from people who originally had learning goals focused on both concepts and skills(Figure 4). This aligns with the literature, which finds that many proponents of online labs value learningphysics concepts (i.e., content and theory) where proponents of hands-on labs often value design skills andcollaborative skills [6, 7, 8, 9].We believe pivoting learning goals of a lab course to focus more on concepts, given the extenuating circum-stances, may have been a reasonable, productive, and effective solution. However, as we see from the instructorsurvey, the majority of courses with primary learning goals associated with skills maintained those learninggoals after the transition, with many people finding creative ways to focus on laboratory skills in the remoteclasses. One survey respondent said, “We took this as an opportunity to completely redefine the goals of thecourse and try some ideas that likely would not have been seriously considered during a normal quarter.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Medium ] Whether trying to just survive the transition to remote instruction or using it as an oppor-6 igure 4:
The Sankey plot shows the change in learning goals of the instructors who completed the instructorsurvey from before (left side of plot to after (right side of plot) remote instruction. The lines represent thedirection of change from before to after and the width of the line is proportional to the number of instructorswho reported that type of transition.tunity to transform the course, instructors employed a variety of strategies to address their learning goals. Inthe following sections, we provide a few examples of ways to conduct remote labs focusing on lab-skill learninggoals and some examples of ways to conduct remote labs focusing on concept learning goals.
The ability to maintain a focus on experimental skills during remote instruction depends on the resourcesavailable to students, as well as on what skills are considered important. In this section, we describe somecommon approaches to maintaining the development of skills as a learning goal in remote lab courses.
Hands-on learning from home.
The obvious challenge faced by remote instruction is the potentialabsence of hands-on interaction with measurement devices and experimental apparatus. This was more of aconcern for advanced labs than intro-level labs, where more sophisticated and expensive equipment is usuallyused. For intro-labs, there were two common approaches: (1) to send equipment home to students— “The lastthree weeks were done with lab kits that I mailed to them in advance made almost entirely from materials that Ialready had in lab.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small ], and (2) to get students to use resources they had at home, withmany instructors taking advantage of the prevalence of smart phone ownership among their students (whilebeing aware that not all students would necessarily have access to these tools)— “I was able to incorporatea measurement that was consistent with the learning goals of the last two labs. Luckily they were optics... Ihad them measure the focal length of their cell phone camera lens based on the recent paper [10]. Worked well!” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium , Optics ] In Section 4.4, we discuss the range and types of hands-on activities studentsengaged in at home. Of course, these solutions may also be applicable to advanced-level lab courses dependingon their specific aims. For example, open-ended project work may be more flexible with the types of equipmentthat students are expected to use, provided that appropriate methods of measurement and analysis are appliedto answer the research questions posed.
Simulations.
Some lab courses switched to using simulations as sources of data collection and measurement: “Given the original design of the lab activities, a combination of Fritzing and Multisim Live allowed studentsto practice many of the skills I had already planned to address.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small , Electronics ] While simplesimulations may not be able to replicate the troubleshooting aspect of performing experiments in real life, theexample above of using Fritzing may emulate more what working on circuit design is like for professionals, asit allows for the design and testing of circuit boards with the production of plans that could be sent to bemanufactured. More on using simulations will be discussed in Section 4.2.
Provide the data.
A common learning goal for labs includes skills associated with data and uncertaintyanalysis. The development of these skills does not necessarily require students to collect their own data, thoughan understanding of how the data was measured and how it should be interpreted may be diminished. Therefore,7any instructors sent data that they had collected, generated, or uncovered from previous students’ work, whichwe discuss in Section 4.1. Alternatively, instructors asked students to review data from scientific publicationsor publicly available data sets.A number of courses included a proposal writing or experimental design aspect (even before transition);see Section 4.7 for more details about writing in the remote-lab environment. Having students propose ordesign experiments can continue in the remote context, even if students do not have access to the necessarylab equipment to actually carry out the experiment. In one case, an instructor of an advanced lab took thefollowing approach: “Student groups developed data collection plans to use with equipment they were alreadyfamiliar with. Instructors then collected data according to student plans.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Medium ] This is anexample of how some instructors tried to replicate the in-lab experience of student ownership of data [11, 12].This recurring theme of student agency is discussed in Section 5.
Science communication as a skill.
Courses where broader skills-based learning goals were dominantwere less affected by the transition to remote instruction. For example, courses focusing on the developmentof communication skills (see Section 6) could still get students to produce written work and provide feedbackto them. As, in most situations, students had gathered some data already, this led to an opportunity tohighlight the value associated with making good lab notes [13]: “Even though no lab work occurred after remoteinstruction began, students had to rely on their notebooks and previous data collection to complete required oralpresentations and written reports, both considered part of ‘lab skills.’ (i.e., experimental physics skills)” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ]. For more discussion on how students used data they had previously gathered see Section 4.5.Some instructors also mentioned that, today, online collaboration is a realistic scientific practice, and thus theywanted their students to be able to develop that skill during the remote lab course.
Investigative science learning environment (ISLE).
One instructor, who was teaching an intro classwith combined lecture and lab components, found that remote ISLE-like activities [14, 15, 16] were more effectivethan recorded video lectures. They noted: “My lectures which had been productive during the term were largelyineffective in the new setting... I ascribe this to the more passive nature of viewing video... I mention this becauseit has made me rely much more on ISLE like activities.”
Students had the opportunity to interact with demosusing household materials such as investigating “static electricity with sticky tape” , through live demonstrationsby the instructor, and activities where students “guided [the] instructor...during live video conference in theconduct of the experiment and used data collected then together with video analysis of the experiment clips madeduring the session.”
A class taking an ISLE approach may not only help with “Zoom fatigue” by creating amore interactive class, but also provide students with the many other benefits that ISLEs enables, such asconstructing physics knowledge by engaging in inquiry cycles that replicate the approach used by physicists toconstruct knowledge [16].
Labs have often been used as a way for students to see in action the physical phenomena they have been studyingin lecture/theory courses. It may be argued that the learning goal of reinforcing students’ understanding ofphysics concepts does not need to rely as much on hands-on experience, as do goals associated with developingskills. In this section, we describe some common or interesting approaches taken by instructors in our samplewho were teaching courses with learning goals associated with developing student understanding of physicsconcepts.
Video demonstrations.
The exposure to the act of performing measurements through videos, both videosmade by the instructor or publicly available (e.g., YouTube), was found to be valuable for teaching concepts.One instructor explained, “The lab videos showing the data being taken went very well, and students reportedthat they understood the concepts better by seeing what the apparatus looked like and what kind of measurementscould actually be done.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium , Optics ] More on instructor made videos will be discussedin Section 4.3.
Simulations.
As documented in previous research [17, 18, 19], simulations were found to be very usefulfor reinforcing physics concepts: “Since the goal was primarily to explore physics concepts, I think the use ofsimulations helped us to still meet that goal.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium ] This is particularly true as somesimulations have been developed to address specific and common student difficulties [20]. More on simulationswill be discussed in Section 4.2. 8
Lab activities
There were a variety of approaches taken when transitioning to remote labs, with the most common being:providing students with data to analyze; conducting lab activities via simulations; having students watch videosof the instructor or TA conducting the lab; and completing experiments at home with household equipment orequipment sent by the instructor. In this section, we discuss all 7 of the main types of activities used in order ofthe most frequently reported on the instructor survey. We end the section with a discussion of how instructorsused writing as an important element of remote lab classes.
In place of students collecting their own data, many instructors provided data to students. These data sets weresourced in a variety of different ways, where the instructor:1. completed the experiment and sent a data set to students;2. sent students copies of the lab notebooks of students from previous years;3. provided data from a published paper for students to (re-)analyze;4. provided access to open-source data (e.g., COVID-19 data).The efficacy of providing data to students instead of students collecting the data themselves depends on whatthe learning goals of the course are. The interested reader may find some more discussion of this in Priemer etal.
Instructor provides data they collected from an experiment.
An interesting example where aninstructor provided data to students to analyze is where the instructor “tried to provide more videos (and insome cases data) than necessary to...give students the opportunity to choose which pieces they would use.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium ] This choice was deliberate in order to encourage students to “make their own judgmentcalls” similar to the decision making process students would face in in-person labs. One thing to keep in mindwhen implementing such an activity is to communicate the expectations of what to do with the data so thatstudents are not “overwhelmed because they [think] that they needed to use it all.”
Analysis of open-source data.
Another option is to provide students with big data and/or data from anactive research experiment. NASA [22], CERN [23], and LIGO [24] all have open source data available to thepublic and there are plenty of publicly available data sources (e.g., meteorological, air pollution, and astronomydata). For example, one instructor “did a data analysis/modeling lab where students used publicly availableCOVID-19 data to make plots and develop their own growth models. This was well received and helped studentsfeel like they were doing something relevant and meaningful.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Medium ] However, this type ofdata often requires some experience, expertise, and time to access it and prepare it to be suitable for studentsto handle. CERN and LIGO provide some tutorials and software on their websites to get started. Alternatively,instructors could use data from their own or a colleagues research. Working with local experimental data notonly provides students with an authentic, research-like experience, but could potentially be beneficial for theresearch as well if taught as a course-based research experience (CURE) [25, 26].
Simulations allow students to interact with models of physical phenomena via their computers or smartphones.The complexity of these models corresponds more or less with how well they are able to emulate hands-on labs.For some purposes, simpler simulations that highlight only the phenomenon of interest can be more effective atachieving certain learning objectives. Conversely, more complicated simulations, with larger parameter spacesto explore, could engage students with decision making and troubleshooting learning goals of some lab courses.Many instructors turned to readily available simulations to conduct their labs when transitioning to remotesetting. The simulations that were most useful were those that:1. allowed students to gather data: “students acquired data by changing an independent variable in the PhETsimulations” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium ];2. had structured materials around the simulations, such as lab guides.Some instructors mentioned that the simulation labs were so successful that they plan to continue using simula-tions when back in person, as pre-lab or supplemental activities: “I might use them as part of a class even within-person learning.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ]. The most commonly reported set of simulations used were thoseproduced by PhET, though many other providers of simulations were also reported, such as those associatedwith textbooks (Matter & Interactions, and Six Ideas That Shaped Physics). Due to the quick turn around9eeded in the transitions to remote labs, many instructors took advantage of commercial simulations with pack-aged teaching resources: “I found the KET simulations and curriculum to be useful as an emergency solution,” [ Intro , STEM , Medium ]. A full list of reported simulation resources can be found in Table A1.Many electronics labs found simulations particularly useful because they were able to use software likeSPICE, MATLAB’s Simulink and Simscape, Fritzing or Multisim Live to build and model ‘real’ circuits. Thefact that these tools are used in industry also meant that students could still have an authentic lab experience.A number of instructors used the commercial web application Pivot Interactives: “The two labs that I setup on Pivot Interactives worked really well.” [
Intro , NotPhysEng , Small ] The application is a hybrid of simulationand video analysis, where real experiments have been filmed with a variety of different parameter selections. Itallows the student to explore the real-world parameter space and, using overlaid measurement tools, performmeasurements from the videos. Additionally, each simulation has associated online questions and resources.
Many instructors said that they utilized videos of themselves, or teaching assistants (TAs), conducting the lab.These videos could be shown synchronously or asynchronously and had a number of different purposes, such as:1. an introduction to the lab;2. context for data to be analyzed;3. a means for students to record measurements;4. and an opportunity for students to direct the instructor in doing the experiment.The results of the instructor survey expressed a variety of different approaches to these videos, as well as avariety of degrees of success. For example, one instructor felt that “abstract concepts like diffraction from a singleslit did not make sense until they saw the video and worked with the numbers.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium , Optics ] Another was impressed with their students’ trouble-shooting skills when “no guidance for accountingfor [camera parallax] was provided, and yet all groups accounted for it or scaled their video in a way that itwould not affect the data.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Small , E&M ]. These anecdotal findings correspond with some of theliterature, for example Kestin et al. (2020) [27] found that video demonstrations are more effective learningtools than live demonstrations and that students reported the same level of enjoyment from both.In contrast, a class “used a combination of PhET simulations and analysis of canned data after watching avideo of the data collection” and found that the PhET simulations were “much [more] effective and useful tothe students than the [videos].” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium ] Although seemingly straightforward, creating anedited and professional looking video can take a surprisingly long time: “more than 1 hour for a 7 minute video” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small , Quantum ] and this often constrained instructors’ use of recorded videos. Additionally, onehas to be aware of how videos may not be suitable for students with cognitive or physical disabilities: “Manyother faculty are using recorded videos of experiments–I choose not to because I do not think these videos are...accessible” [ Intro , PhysEng , Small ].One concern among instructors was whether students were watching asynchronous videos (see Section 6.2.2).A number of ways of addressing this concern were reported: one was to have students complete a set of questionsafter having watched the video on its content. Another used PlayPosit software to embed questions into thevideo as part of the pre-lab [28].
Maintaining a hands-on experience was commonly reported as a major motivation for choices made whenmoving to remote classes. Some instructors canceled the remainder of their classes because this was not feasible(due to time, budget, institutional, personal, or other constraints). Other instructors, who did not manage toincorporate a hands-on element in their lab course during the rapid transition to remote learning reported thatthey plan on including some aspects in the following semester. There were two main approaches to studentscollecting their own data at home: (1) to use household equipment; and (2) for the instructor to send equipmentto students.
Using household equipment.
Using household equipment can be a fast, easy, and effective way forstudents to have a hands-on experience while being remote. However, it is important to recognize the issueof student equity. For example, most college students will have access to a smart phone and a computer, butthere are still many who do not—especially when they leave campus (see discussion of challenges in Section 2).We recommend surveying the students before choosing this approach and having regular check-ins throughout10he semester. One instructor said “I wish I had an inventory of technology that students had at home so Icould have been better prepared to help troubleshoot or find alternate programs for data analysis and maybe feltless restricted in terms of not doing an experimental project.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ] Even access to simplermaterials, like tape and magnets, proved to be an issue for some students. When implementing lab activities inwhich students are expected to use household equipment, we recommend ensuring as much flexibility as possiblein terms of the kinds of materials students will be expected to use.Below, we provide a few examples of remote labs that used equipment students already had access to:1. “Students used their own computers/cellphones to acquire video data that they later analyzed using PASCO’sCapstone software, so there was a requirement that they have access to a computer.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small ]2. Students used “the magnetic field sensors on their phones.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Medium , E&M ]3. “We used audacity on their laptop computers to analyze sounds.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small , Waves ]4. Building a pin-hole camera to observe the Sun.
Sending equipment to students.
There was a general sense from instructors (and a desire from students,Figure 3) that finding some way to give students a hands-on experience was an essential part of the laboratoryexperience. Many instructors found success in mailing lab kits and equipment to students. However, this maybe challenging for classes that have a large number of students, budgetary constraints, or do not want to increasefees for students. This is especially an important consideration for international students; one instructor pointedout, “Some students, due [to] international shipping constraints, cannot receive a kit. They will be sourcing thebasic material themselves.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Large ] Another consideration is the availability of supplies —with many courses across the country turning to remote lab instruction, “off-the-shelf” lab kits such as theiOLab or eScience boxes may be in limited supply.A number of instructors chose to send Arduino micro-controller boards and basic electronics equipment tostudents. Some of these were choices made in the moment of transition, while others were part of “Maker Lab”courses that already used Arduinos in the classroom [29]. Simpler, and often cheaper, equipment may alsoprovide the same experience. However, one must consider the health and safety (and liability and insurance)implications when sending equipment to students’ homes. This is one possible advantage of commercial lab kits.In Table A2, we list the resources instructors reported using to send equipment to students. Below weenumerate some specific examples and comments on equipment that was mailed to students:1. “I mailed them printed off metersticks that could be mailed compactly and play-doh for the lens holders tobe placed somewhat precisely along a meterstick.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small , Optics ]2. “Digital electronics seemed to be a pretty good platform for at-home experiments since the hardware ispretty robust and very inexpensive.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small , Electronics ]3. “We use E-science instruction lab boxes sent to students. Boxes consist [of ] very basic elementary objectsto do simple labs. At first I was very skeptical, but it works very well.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small ]4. “We mailed each student 2 lenses and a diffraction grating and made the final 2 labs based on manipulatingthese components to study geometrical optics and diffraction. Students had to figure out how to mountcomponents, how to use their phone as a light source, how to align and get images” [ Intro , PhysEng , Medium , Optics ]5. “The students completed one lab to make a DC motor from a battery, paperclips, magnet, and wire.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small , Electronics , E&M ]6. Some instructors suggested that they would have found “a hands-on device like IOLabs” [ Intro , PhysEng , Large ] helpful. See Table A2 for more details of iOLabs and the recent paper by Leblond et al. (2020) [30].
Similar to other lab activities (Section 4.1) adopted in the remote setting, some courses shifted the focus todata analysis, but in this scenario using students’ own data. “Instead of two projects, students extended theirwork on the first project, including many having to figure out issues with data collection without contact withapparatus.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ] This is an interesting activity in itself, as it indirectly teaches students thevalue of making good lab notes. In comparison to providing students with new data to analyze, this approachmay address some aspects of student affect as the students have ownership over their data.Often, this choice of activity coincided with extending the written aspect of the course (see Section 4.7): “I had students analyze and report on previous measurements and focused on giving individual feedback on his written work.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Medium ] Some instructors took this as an opportunity to go further indeveloping skills associated with being a researcher: “For remote operation students wrote a PRL style articleon an experiment they did in a previous quarter and engaged in a peer review exercise.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ] A number of survey respondents spoke of their desire to allow students to control lab equipment remotely.We provide a list of remotely-controlled labs in Table A2. Remotely-controlled labs could be located at theinstructor’s own university or anywhere in the world. The short time available during the transition to remotelabs meant that, in most cases, setting up remote access to in-house equipment was not feasible. However, someinstructors did manage to do this: “This was an advanced quantum optics lab. The equipment was housed in a lab at the university. Studentslogged into a PC via remote desktop. The optical arrangement was set up by the instructor. The computercontrolled via USB various optical mounts (rotational and translational), plus piezo-electric. The computer alsoconnected to Arduino-based circuits/relays via USB to turn on/off equipment (lasers, detectors, beam blocker,LEDs) and FPGA circuits to process and record digital signals. Students observed the lab via webcams andconnected with each other to do the lab via zoom. They had a span of a week to do the lab at any time theywanted. With coordination, the instructor was available for questions.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small , Quantum ]We have included this full quote in order to illustrate the amount of work needed to set up such equipment.Nevertheless, the motivation to do this work comes from wanting to provide students with the ability to performtheir own measurements and to see the physics in action. This instructor found that “The student response[to the remote-controlled lab] was very positive.”
Other instructors who were able to set up in-house remote-controlled equipment commented on the benefits of that experience for students (e.g., working with LabView),but also noted that the process of setting up and maintaining the remote-controlled apparatus was frustratingand clumsy at times [
BFY , PhysEng , Medium ].In lieu of the experience and time required to do such a task, there exist a number of remote-controlledlabs that are available online and were used by some instructors. These included the Princeton Plasma PhysicsLaboratory’s remote glow discharge experiment, as well as the Universit¨at der Bundeswehr M¨unchen’s RemotelyControlled Labs. In all of these remotely-controlled labs, the number of parameters available for students tovary is finite by construction, which makes the experience (in terms of the limited parameter space one canexplore) similar to using simulations (see Section 4.2).A couple of instructors made use of the IBM Quantum Experience, which allows access to run quantumalgorithms (and experiments) on their superconducting-qubit quantum computers. The website provides tu-torials and a variety of interfaces to construct quantum algorithms. While this had a steep learning curve forboth instructors and students, it was generally found to be successful in terms of learning outcomes: “I thinkthe majority of students learned a significant amount of theory about quantum computing and acquired adequateskill in running remote quantum circuits on real quantum computers.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small , Quantum ] Communication skills, including scientific documentation and writing, are often included as learning goals forphysics lab classes [31]. Instructors may have a variety of goals for incorporating writing in lab classes—fromhelping students develop content mastery to having students engage in realistic scientific practices such asargumentation or peer review [32]. Compared to developing technical or hands-on skills, writing is one of theimportant aspects of lab classes that can more easily be maintained remotely. Survey respondents reportedutilizing most of the same writing assignments in the remote version of their course as compared to in person,with a decrease in the number of people using lab notebooks and an increase in the number of people havingstudents read scientific papers and write a literature review.In the transition to remote teaching, some instructors took the opportunity to place a heavier emphasis onwriting. For example, one instructor included a project proposal where students had “to do research on sometype of user facility or instrument and come up with an experimental proposal; this involves doing a literaturereview and working with [the instructor] to refine experimental designs and parameters.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ]Though not ideal as a complete replacement for hands on experimentation, this is one way that writing can beused to address some of the key elements of a lab class, particularly for student-designed projects in advancedlabs, and it worked well as an immediate solution to the challenge of creating a remote lab class. Other12nstructors maintained the same writing assignments, but chose to emphasize them through a modified gradingscheme.Other instructors had students write about prior experiments they had conducted or data they had collectedin-person before the transition to remote teaching. In one example, “students wrote a PRL style article on anexperiment they did in a previous quarter and engaged in a peer review exercise.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ] Anotherinstructor used writing to address goals of the class because “Even though no lab work occurred after remoteinstruction began, students had to rely on their notebooks and previous data collection to complete required oralpresentations and written reports, both considered part of ‘lab skills.’ ” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ] This is in line withrecommendations from Stanley and Lewandowski [13] for using notebooks in upper-division lab classes in a waythat promotes authentic documentation by requiring students to rely on their own (or others’) notebooks.Though some instructors stopped using lab notebooks after the transition to remote teaching, others switchedfrom hard copy to electronic lab notebooks (ELNs), utilizing tools like LabArchives or Google Docs. In oneexample of an intro class, the instructor reported that students were more engaged with the LabArchives ELNscompared to the in person paper notebooks: some students tended to write more during the lab activities andthey appreciated being able to easily include graphs/diagrams as well as having access to the ELN at any time.The instructor said that because “the students gave positive feedback on that...I’m considering switching toe-notebooks next year.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Small ] Other instructors appreciated the grading ease of ELNs, saying “I had resisted electronic lab notebooks for years. Now, I was forced to try it out. It seemed to go just fine, andit was easier to grade (as opposed to lugging around a pile of notebooks).” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium ] These,and other, benefits of ELNs have been previously documented in the literature [33].Some instructors replaced written lab reports with other media like video presentations. For example, oneinstructor said that students would “turn in their last lab as a video recording of them describing their procedure,data and analysis, and results/conclusions. The video will show their data, graphs, and written work, recordedalong with narration on their cell phone.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium ] In other cases, instructors supplementedtraditional forms of writing (e.g., reports, notebooks) with other types of writing assignments. In one advancedlab class, student-designed final projects culminated in both a lab report and a blog post, in which the studentshad to describe their experiment in more informal or colloquial terms. The blog post assignment replaced thetypical oral presentations as something that could easily be done asynchronously. The goal of the blog postassignment was to have students practice writing about experimental physics for different audiences; studentsfound it to be a fun and useful exercise. [
BFY , PhysEng , Small ] One benefit of remote classes is that they can provide more opportunities for student agency. For example,many students felt that remote labs were better at enabling them to work at their own pace and to control theirown learning (Figure 5).When it came to designing their own procedures, agency in tool/material choices, and learning conceptsand skills, a majority of the students felt that the remote classes were the same or worse than in-person labs.Similarly, many instructors expressed challenges with maintaining student agency and engagement in the remotesetting:1. “The other big problem was student engagement. Without setting up structures from the get-go, it was tooeasy for students to just drift.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small , Electronics ]2. Another challenge was “having students think about the online experience with the same intensity theyconsidered in-person labs.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Small ]3. “As soon as pass/fail grading was announced, some groups stopped turning in lab reports.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Medium , Quantum ]However, a few instructors who had open-ended labs found much success: “The labs that worked best werethe more open-ended when students used a PhET simulation to answer a question of their own choosing.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Small , E&M , Optics ] Some instructors took this a step further and transformed the remote course towork on open-ended “research like projects” compared to “cookbook” labs before the remote transition. Oneinstructor commented, “The level of student engagement was much higher in the remote format. Students weremuch more engaged in problem solving and making meaningful decisions about what to do and how to do it.”[
BFY , PhysEng , Medium ] igure 5: Students were asked, “Compared to in-person labs, remote labs were better at...” and then respondedto the following statements with their level of agreement. We show the mean response from approximately 2200students. The error bars represent the standard error of the mean. We calculated the mean by assigning aresponse of “Strongly disagree” = 0, “Disagree” = 1, and “Neutral” = 2, “Agree = 3”, and “Strongly agree =4”.
After the switch to remote instruction, most classes moved to individual work and incorporated less group work(Figure 6). We also see in Figures 3 and 5 that many students felt that they did not have as productive norenjoyable collaborations after they switched to remote labs and expressed that having a partner/group to helpconduct experiments was one of the greatest challenges.
Figure 6:
The Sankey plot shows the change in the nature of interaction students took part in — individual,group work, or a combination — from before (left side of the plot) and to after (right side of the plot) thetransition to remote instruction for the courses represented in the instructor survey. The lines show the propor-tion of courses that either stayed the same or changed from one mode of student interaction to another duringthe transition. The width of each line is proportional to the number of instructors who reported that type oftransition.It was easiest in the rapid transition (and, in some cases, most equitable) to have students work primarilyindividually, especially when students were spread across different time zones. However, given that socialinteractions and collaboration are paramount to learning and doing science, we have a few recommendations14nd successful examples of how to get students to engage in group work:1. Use Zoom breakout rooms feature: “[In Zoom we had] individual breakout rooms to preserve small grouplearning environment where students develop the lab and challenge each others’ ideas. This also preservedthe ability of the TA to give meaningful as needed scaffolding to the students as they would in the regularclassroom.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Small ]2. Keep groups small: “It was actually less of a problem for them to collaborate than I expected, as long as Ikept the groups to three students.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Medium ]3. Students don’t necessarily have to have a good internet speed/connection to engage in a group discussions.Discussion boards on collaborative software such as your school’s learning management systems can beused to foster (synchronous and asynchronous) discussions. Slack, or other similar tools, can essentiallyact as a chat room for your entire class. It has workspaces that allow you to organize communications bychannels for group discussions and allows for private messages to share information, files, and more all inone place.4. Google Colab, Jupyter Notebook, and GitHub (see Table A3) have features that allow for collaborativecoding and making notes.
We include a section on benefits and challenges of asynchronous versus synchronous class activities in this reportfor two reasons: (1) Lab courses rely heavily on group work and collaboration; therefore, considerations of equity(family situations/schedules, access to stable internet, time zones, etc.) and building/maintaining communityis an even more challenging balance than for most traditional lecture courses; (2) Approximately 50% of theinstructors we surveyed responded that if they were to teach this course remotely again, they would “structurecourse time differently (e.g., synchronous vs. asynchronous)”.Finding the right balance between asynchronous and synchronous class sessions will be context dependent(e.g., in a very small class, you can check in on the situation of individual students and even ask them what theyprefer, but in a large class, it is not recommended to employ exclusively synchronous activities) and based oninstitutional requirements. Many instructors cited trying to get the best of both worlds by recording synchronouslectures for students who could not participate. This may be an easy and quick solution; however, it brings upother equity issues of having two different experiences within the same class. Below, we provide some examplesof how instructors implemented synchronous and asynchronous labs.
While there are challenges around how to conduct group discussions in a synchronous online format, one-on-one meetings to discuss lab projects have generally been successful: “I really like that when I talk to studentsindividually we get to have the types of conversations we would in an in-person class.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ]A number of instructors did live labs via videoconferencing, where the students watched the instructor takedata, which they then analyzed. Some instructors took this a step further by having students guide them asthey conducted the lab.Common issues with synchronous labs were low attendance, equity issues, and video quality. However, oneinstructor pointed out that “going synchronous makes life much more easy for the teacher than providing highquality videos.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Medium ]Some benefits of synchronous labs were that they allowed for group work (especially if the groups were small,which can be facilitated through breakout rooms) and promoted community and accountability. Not only cansynchronous labs be an opportunity for students to work collaboratively, but also for students to engage witha teaching assistant: “Students were invited to attend their usual lab time on Zoom to discuss together and/orwith their TA.” [ Intro , PhysEng , Large ] However, another instructor warned that they really needed to “trainour TAs to handle the labs in that way [remotely].” [ Intro , PhysEng , Medium ]Lastly, synchronous meetings can be a way to “check-in” and connect with students beyond the class,especially during the the pandemic. One instructor expressed that they used Zoom to “maintain the weeklyupdates... [which] not only allowed me to get a status report on projects also monitor mental health of students.” [ BFY , PhysEng , Small ] 15 .2.2 Asynchronous
Asynchronous instruction has a number of advantages:1. Acknowledges and caters to a variety of personal situations (for students and instructors);2. Potentially good for student agency, as it allows students to do work at their own pace and on their ownschedule (see Figure 5);3. Works well when one does not need to have interaction with students (i.e., lecture or lab introduction).Personal factors might be the most motivating reason to use asynchronous teaching methods. For example,one instructors said “many of my students had to take on additional responsibilities at home, so I had to makesure that the labs could be done individually so that students could do them asynchronously.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small ] The success of delivering asynchronous course material required a level of planning and consideration onbehalf of some instructors: “Students needed time to adjust to the quick transition, by going asynchronous andhaving very detailed, step by step instructions, students could make this transition at their own pace.” [ Intro , STEM , Medium ]Not only were considerations of student situations being made, but instructors had to account for their ownhome lives too. This motivated one instructor “to [do] things asynchronously because I was home with twosmall children.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small ] Nevertheless, effective lab courses can still be achieved with highquality videos like those from Pivot Interactive: “Their collection of videos is really good.” [ Intro , NotPhysEng , Small ] Or if they are paired with additional student activities that increase student agency, such as conductingauthentic research (Section 4.1), sending students equipment (Section 4.4), or having students design their ownprocedures (Section 4.7).
As we look toward the Fall 2020 term, many universities plan to have hybrid models that consist of bothremote and in-person portions of the courses. However, most universities are allowing students to opt-in toa completely remote experience at any point and additionally, have warned instructors to prepare to rapidlyswitch to completely remote if the school needs to close down again. The hybrid model opens many differentopportunities for lab courses that were not described in this report. Some faculty plan to front load themore technical labs in the beginning of the semester and have modeling/computation based labs toward theend; others have suggested they will rotate the students who attend the lab in-person each week. We againencourage thinking about equity when designing these hybrid courses such that students who choose to take theclass remotely (or need to for health, family, or other reasons) have an experience that is equally considered asthe in-person component.We hope to continue collecting data on student and instructor experiences teaching in the Fall 2020 term.We encourage instructors interested in evaluating the effectiveness of their lab and the remote experience tosurvey their students at the beginning and end of the semester. Our research group has developed The ColoradoLearning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS), a broadly applicable assessmenttool for undergraduate physics lab courses that assesses students views about their strategies, habits of mind, andattitudes when doing experiments in lab classes. E-CLASS has been adapted to include supplemental questionsabout remote/hybrid lab experiences to help instructors reflect on their own strategies and help inform thelarger community about remote experiences that students found most successful. Instructors can sign-up toadminister E-CLASS to their students by filling out the form on the E-CLASS website (linked above).
Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges many faced last term, physics lab instructors rose to the occa-sion and employed a variety of creative approaches and strategies in order to provide opportunities for studentsto access “lab-like” learning online. For some instructors, the move to remote/hybrid teaching may be a uniqueopportunity to transform the lab course—rethinking learning goals, implementing course-based undergraduateresearch experiences (CUREs), having at-home maker spaces or labs that focus heavily on experimental de-sign and modeling to increase student agency, or completely restructuring both the lectures and labs to haveinvestigative science learning environments (ISLEs).We encourage the reader to consider some of the larger themes that emerged while compiling these data:16. Be prepared to deal with technical issues, from internet connection problems to access to resources,especially if planning for students to conduct labs at home.2. The flexibility provided by open-ended projects, if managed successfully, work well in the remote environ-ment.3. Synchronous, short meetings with small groups via videoconferencing anecdotally worked better thanlonger meetings with larger groups.4. Do not assume that all students have access to internet and household materials.5. When deciding which materials or technological tools to utilize in a remote class, consider the accessibilityfor students with cognitive or physical disabilities.6. Recordings of synchronous meetings can be made available to students to ensure access to course material.7. Both preparation time for instructors and coursework time for students can be dramatically increased whendoing the course remotely. Keep this in mind when planning a remote lab course to avoid overwhelmingstudents (and instructors) with work.8. This was, and still is, a new situation for everyone, so things will go wrong—that is okay.As we conclude this report, we reiterate that there are many metrics of success that one might apply toa remote lab class during this time of transition and uncertainty. Ensuring that all students have access tolearning opportunities, making it through without a disaster, and achieving specific learning outcomes are allreason to celebrate and feel proud of responding to the challenge of teaching lab classes remotely. Additionally,access to technology, having a quite space to work, family responsibilities, and both mental and physical healthare not only challenges for our students, but also for instructors. Whether trying to simply making it throughthe upcoming term as painlessly as possible or using it as an opportunity to transform the course, we hope thisreport has provided some inspiration for curricular and pedagogical strategies that will enable instructors tomeet their learning goals and engage their students in physics laboratory learning an equitable way.Lastly, we, as well as many instructors, believe that remote teaching of labs should be temporary, and, whenhealth and safety conditions allow, should be moved back to in-person instruction. Although instructors havegone to great lengths to give students the best possible learning experiences under severe constraints, manycritical learning goals are hard, if not impossible, to meet in a fully remote class. We look forward to welcomingour students back to in-person classes where they can have the opportunity to participate in the full process ofexperimental physics.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Benjamin Pollard, Mary-Ellen Philips, and Joe Wilson for their contributions to thiswork, and all the instructors and students who shared their experiences with us. This work is supported byNSF RAPID Grant (DUE-2027582). 17 eferences
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Class sizeLarge, 5, 11, 15Medium, 5–13, 15, 16Small, 5, 7–13, 15, 16ContentElectromagnetism, 10, 11, 13Electronics, 7, 11, 13Optics, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13Quantum, 5, 10, 12, 13Waves, 11MajorsNot Physics nor Engineering, 5, 7–11, 13, 15, 16Other, 5Physics or Engineering, 5–13, 15STEM, 10, 16YearBFY, 5–13, 15Intro, 5, 7–11, 13, 15, 16 20
Technological Resources
The variety of different technological resources that are available can be overwhelming. In this Appendix, wetabulate the resources that instructors reported using in their courses. We also include other resources that theauthors are aware of, noting that these are not exhaustive lists. We do not comment here on whether a specifictechnology was effective at the job it was designed for, as the efficacy of any technology depends on the coursegoals, content, instructor experience, and institutional requirements among numerous other factors.21 able A1:
Simulation tools that were mentioned by instructors in our survey (in alphabetical order). SeeSection 4.2 for a discussion and examples of the use of some of these simulations.
Simulation
Model Description
Bridge designer 2016 Free Students apply engineering design skills and physicsknowledge to design a bridge; simulation of forces andloads on the bridge structure.Fritzing Free An open-source CAD design tool for electronic circuitboards. Has the ability to manufacture printed circuitboards.KET Paid Virtual physics labs including teaching materials.Matter & Interactions Free Interactive demos on Mechanics and Electric & Magneticinteractions written in VPython and runs through a webbrowser.Multisim Live Free Online circuit simulatorPhyslets Free “Interactive illustrations, explorations, and problems forintroductory physics”Open Source Physics Free Compilation of Java simulations, student coding resources,and tracking software for video analysis.OpenStax Free Open source textbook on physics (with embedded PhETsimulations).oPhysics Free Interactive simulations of phenomena includingkinematics, forces, conservation, waves, light, E&M,rotation, fluids, and modern physics. Uses the Geogebrasoftware, which has its own compilation of simulations.PhET Free Physics, Math, and other science simulations in HTML5,Flash, and Java. Resources and advice for using as remoteteaching tools available on their website.Pivot Interactives Paid Videos of real lab experiments overlaid with virtualmeasurement devices allowing students to performmeasurements themselves. Videos for a large variety ofdifferent parameters allow students to explore theexperiment. Includes worksheets.Quantum InteractiveLearning Tutorials(QuILT) Free Packaged material for teaching quantum mechanicsincluding Java, PhET, and Open Source Physicssimulations.Simscape Paid Model and simulate multi-domain physical systems in theMathWorks Simulink environment based on MATLAB.Six Ideas That ShapedPhysics Free Simulation resources to coincide with chapters from thetextbook.SPICE Free Open-source analog circuit simulator (some proprietaryversions exist - PSPICE and HSPICE).The Physics Aviary Free A set of physics simulations and associated resources.22 able A2:
Resources for students to perform measurements outside of the laboratory.
Resource Model Description
Smartphone apps
Section 4.4Phyphox Free Collects (and processes) data from smartphone sensorsdepending on the device (accelerometers, rotation, lightintensity, magnetic field, GPS location, audio, pressure).Allows for connecting to a computer using a web browserto run experiments and transfer data.Google Science Journal Free Collects data from smartphone sensors (similar toPhyphox). Includes integration with Google Drive andwebsite includes some activities for teachers.
Sending equipment
Section 4.4Arduino Paid A variety of microcontrollers and kits that can be used fordigital and analog programming and sensing. A lot ofresources are available around Maker labs [29].Raspberry Pi Paid Similar to Arduinos, runs linux and can control and runsensors. Requires extra interfaces to handle analog inputs.eScience lab boxes Paid Commercial provider of lab kits for remote courses.Digikey Paid The “Bill of Materials” manager was used by oneinstructor “to drop-ship items out to studentsinexpensively and quickly.”iOLab Paid Numerous sensors (force, acceleration, velocity,displacement, magnetic field, rotation, light, sound,temperature, pressure, and voltages down to a few µ V)combined into a single device that can be sent to students.Data is transferred and analyzed using computer software.For using iOLab with remote teaching see the recentpaper by Leblond & Hicks [30].
Remote control of labequipment
Section 4.6OpenSTEM Labs Paid Remotely-controlled labs run by the Open University fortheir own students.IBM QuantumExperience Free Access IBM’s quantum computers to run quantumalgorithms. Includes tutorials and documentation.PPPL remote glowdischarge experiment Free Remote access to the Princeton Plasma Physics Labexperiment designed for students to learn about plasma.Remotely ControlledLabs Free Access to labs provided by the Universit¨at derBundeswehr M¨unchen. Labs on electron diffraction,Millikan’s experiment, optical computed tomography,speed of light, world pendulum, oscilloscope, photoelectriceffect, semiconductor characteristics, wind tunnel, opticalFourier transformation, and diffraction and interference.23 able A3:
Resources for working in teams remotely.
Resource Model Description
Coding collaboratively
Google Colabs Free Online collaborative code site using Python with freeremote processing.Jupyter notebooks Free/Paid Open-source online and local code notebooks in Python,C++, Julia, R, and Ruby. If wish to host a Jupyterhub torun student codes (so that they do not have to rely ontheir own hardware) a paid hosting option exists.GitHub Free/Paid Web-based graphical interface for a Git repository thatprovides access control and several collaboration features,such as a wikis and basic task management tools forcoding project.