Students’ Perceptions of an Online Learning: The Key Elements to Encompass Instructors for Designation of Online Course During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 is an unexpected educational disruptor that accelerated the pace of innovation in online teaching and learning during this time. Especially in terms of teaching science laboratories, instructors have to change to organize online classes based on circumstances and resources that are favorable to both teachers and students. Science teachers at both secondary and higher education face the challenges of teaching laboratories online for many reasons such as lacking the knowledge to design online teaching. In this chapter, the online laboratory learning unit on the topic of Planck’sconstant in physics was developed for 349 undergraduate students during the pandemic. The tools for evaluating the effectiveness of the learning unit in terms of students’ achievement and students’ perception of the learning unit are presented. The results from a laboratory report and a comprehensive quiz indicate that the majority of students passed analysing simple data and reporting with appropriate significant figures topics. However, some students have difficulties in analysing, evaluating and presenting data, analysing uncertainties, and interpreting the accuracy and precision of the final result, which require a deeper analytical thinking. The results from the perception survey show that the two main factors that help reinforcing the success of the online class are the teachers and the online teaching tool such as Kahoot. This could provide empirical information for teachers to design online laboratory courses during or even in the post-pandemic.