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The global COVID-19 pandemic required science educators to rapidly redesign their courses to instruct, support, and motivate students in a new remote learning environment. This adjustment was particularly challenging for courses with a laboratory component, where beakers and pipettes were exchanged for computer screens and keyboards. We present our experiences with developing and teaching remote laboratory activities for a nonmajors chemistry course with an emphasis on biological molecules. Our strategies for engaging student connection and interest during remote instruction focused on both the scientific content and instructional design of the laboratory exercises. After transforming four in-person experiments into remote exercises, we developed two new virus-themed activities that were directly relevant to students' experiences with the global pandemic. Instructional methods for teaching remote laboratories sustained students' participation in a collaborative learning community during a time of educational disruption and personal separation. Evidence regarding student learning is provided by an anonymous end-of-semester survey, which reveals that students particularly valued the laboratory activities that connected their learning to COVID-19.

As has been widely discussed, the National Research Council's (NRC) current policy in United States education advocates supporting students toward acquiring skills to engage in scientific practices. NRC policy also suggests that supporting students in the practices of science may require different approaches than what is required for supporting student engagement with scientific content. Further, acquiring skills in scientific practices is not limited to gaining proficiency in utilizing tools that support scientific inquiry: students must also understand how to interpret information generated from such tools. These tools of scientific practices are embedded within scientific culture, which from Sewell's perspective, is comprised of both practice and semiotic code (symbols and meanings). To become scientifically literate students must learn to utilize this code in practice. Author Germà Garcia-Belmonte identified one example of learning to utilize the semiotic code in scientific practice and considers challenges faced by undergraduate physics and engineering students within that context. Garcia-Belmonte observes students struggle to interpret symbols and meaning (the visual display generated) while engaging in practice (utilizing an oscilloscope) and posits that two, culturally bound, competing, linguistic metaphors of time may be the cause. Ultimately, however, the author does not explore beyond hypotheses. Although his theory may be correct, the paper serves as a reminder of the responsibility we have to students. As educators, it is useful and beneficial to make observations and develop theories surrounding why our students struggle. However, in addition to theorizing on why, for example, a particular scientific norm might present challenges for our students, we must remain mindful that challenges may not be uniform and may vary considerably according to students' culture(s). Engaging with students and soliciting specific information regarding the challenges they face allows us, as educators, to both examine whether students' reported challenges align or conflict with our own perceptions of those challenges, and subsequently devise and test methods toward supporting students in overcoming their challenges.