COVID-19: the challenges of transitioning a hands-on and interactive Honors Reproduction course to an online format

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society of Animal Science. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Transl. Anim. Sci. 2020.5:1-3 doi: 10.1093/tas/txaa221 The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly affected education systems through the closure of schools and universities. Like many universities, Texas A&M University also opted to transition to an online format, a task which is challenging for any institution. With the number of courses that were taught online pre-COVID, this varied not only by institution, but also by curriculum. For example, in the Fall 2019 semester pre-COVID, the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University offered approximately 94% of its undergraduate courses and 100% of its graduate courses in the traditional face-to-face format (this is excluding nontraditional courses; i.e., internships, research, etc.). Similar to other Animal Science departments, core curriculum courses include Animal Nutrition, Genetics, and Reproduction. One unique feature of Texas A&M’s Animal Science curriculum is that there is a separate Reproduction in Farm Animals (ANSC 333) course available only to eligible students in the Honors Program. This course is offered in the spring and fall semesters to undergraduate Animal Science Honors students and is designed to cover the physiological principles of reproductive processes in farm species. Traditionally, the classes are given in a face-to-face lecture format, in which twice a week the students are presented with fundamental concepts about the physiology and endocrinology of reproduction in farm animals. In addition, the students participate in a laboratory session once a week where they can review the learned content through practical and hands-on activities. Given that this course was traditionally taught face-to-face, as was the overwhelming majority of the undergraduate Animal Science curriculum, the aim of this paper was to share our experiences in transitioning this interactive Honors course to an online format.