Students’ perceptions of online education: A session at the FAOBMB–IUBMB–CBSL virtual education symposium 2021

The Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (FAOBMB) and the College of Biochemists of Sri Lanka (CBSL) organized a virtual education symposium in 2021 funded by the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB). The parallel session named “Students’ Perception” was attended by 188 participants from 11 countries. The main objectives of this session were to aggregate participants’ viewpoints on aspects of virtual education, including innovative strategies to enhance motivation and engagement of students, improving teacher–student and student–student interactions, managing stress, and virtual learning platforms. Data were collected via rapporteurs from multiple segments of the session including a mini-introductory talk, poll, role play, and discussions about outstanding student experiences, types of virtual platforms, innovative methods of teaching, student motivation and stress management. The importance of student perception and issues like technological difficulties and the reluctance of students to engage were discussed. In addition to well-established strategies such as using polls, chat box features, and discussions in breakout rooms, participants also proposed exciting learning methods to engage students such as quizzes, competitions and challenges, engagement of multiple sensory modalities, story-based learning, and so forth. This report provides anecdotal evidence on pedagogies described in textbooks and also introduces new ideas based on this existing foundation. Future research should aim to harmonize virtual education with traditional classroom methods and explore innovative virtual tools like avatar-based universities, virtual labs, and user-friendly online assessment platforms. The results apply to all disciplines, and not exclusively to biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB).