(137b) Lessons Learned during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Literature Synthesis

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a widespread shift in instructional practice as faculty scrambled to shift to remote instruction. One positive consequence is that this shift has inspired many instructors to think carefully about their teaching practice and the ways that technology tools and instructional strategies support their learning goals. Correspondingly, STEM educators have been investigating these needed changes and reporting them. There have also been coordinated efforts within our community to support chemical engineering educators such as five AIChE EdDiv Cirtual Communities of Practice. A corresponding spike in discipline-based education research (DBER) has also occurred. For example, over 250 papers have appeared in three archival journals related to chemical engineering: Advances in Engineering Education, Biomedical Engineering Education, and the Journal of Chemical Education (Chemical Engineering Education will be also publish a special issue in January 2022). Each of these reports focuses on specific contexts, mostly at the course level. In this paper we report a synthesis of the literature to identify how educators responded to the pandemic, and what we can learn from it. Topics analyzed include: course design, content delivery, assessment practices, classroom environment, project and laboratory work, the student experience, and social justice.