![]() ![]() My classes regularly contain at least ten nationalities. ![]() AUC is an international liberal arts and sciences college, all classes are English taught ( De Vries et al., 2019). I have been teaching a theoretical course of Molecular Cell Biology to two groups of 25 students for the past 5 years at Amsterdam University College (AUC), 4 h a week per group. In this paper, I will describe the choices I have made when it became apparent in August 2020 that all teaching had to go online for the entire first term, from September until December 2020. Surveys on teacher preparedness confirm the low level of preparedness at the beginning of the pandemic ( Scherer et al., 2021). Although online teaching has been among us since the start of internet during the early 1990's and its success has been reviewed ( Martin et al., 2020), the above figures on the sudden implementation indicate that the world-wide teacher community had to implement online methods at short notice. The two colleges that reported to go fully online on the 6th of March 2020 were followed by all remaining colleges within the same month ( Marsicano et al., 2020). How immense and sudden this transition has been, is illustrated in a recent survey among 1,400 American colleges. The COVID-19 pandemic has tremendously affected the way of teaching as it suddenly switched from an in-person to an online format. They may teach us on their experience with an online environment. ![]() The new era requires lenience from teachers and an openness to learn from the younger generation. It has been a search on what works best, and how to adapt to the new style of teaching compared to in-class teaching. Here, I describe my own quest in online teaching in a course of Molecular Cell Biology for undergraduates. It is important to think about how to create the common ground of a classroom that enables open dialogue, that encourages students and that creates a safe learning environment. Because of its suddenness, little framework or guidelines existed for online teaching. ![]() The COVID-19 pandemic has forced an immediate worldwide transition from frontal teaching in classrooms and lecture theaters to online-teaching on various video conference platforms. ![]()
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