Julie Trachman, Associate Professor, Natural Sciences Department, Hostos Community College
Learning Modalities
NL-141
A writing intensive (WI) course in microbiology provides Health Science and STEM students opportunities to improve their
communication and critical thinking skills in addition to learning course content. As a result of instructional modality
changes due to the pandemic, the course needed re‐structuring with respect to instructional material as well as some
assignments so as to deal with several issues including knowledge / skill gaps and to allow students to work around some
of life complexities which could impact their overall performance. In this presentation, some of the course changes will be
discussed including increased use of discussion boards and development of what is essentially an OER lab manual. The
rationale for these changes will be discussed. The overall intention is to adopt where possible the best of what was used in
both online or in person modalities to benefit student instruction and increase student success.