Moving large introductory science classes with laboratories online and maintaining or improving student-student and student-instructor interactions may seem like a challenge.  This semester, Dr. Breinig is the instructor for Physics 221, an introductory physics course with laboratories.  Approximately 450 students are enrolled, 275 in asynchronous online sections with online laboratories and 175 in hybrid sections with in-person studio sessions. In this session, Dr. Breinig will show that providing the online students with teaching materials that ask them to engage with each other, and restructuring a discussion forum into an online communications forum monitored by a team of co-instructors, has led to significantly more student-student and student-instructor interactions than in traditional in-person introductory physics classes.  Exploratory components added to the online laboratories also foster more communications between students and laboratory instructors, and requiring students to reflect on their laboratory experiences moves students away from treating the laboratories as “cookbook” exercises.
Physics 221 is not static, and several techniques presented in previous Brown Bag  Workshop now are part of the course.