The shift to online instruction was a contingency plan to secure the continuation of the courses offered by the University and enable students to continue with their studies. Students also faced the challenge to quickly adapt to the “new normal” in higher education setting. The sudden shift to full online instruction led faculty members to adjust their teaching plans, teaching styles and assessment methods. Due to the projected continuous increase of cases, it was also later decided by the University that online classes will be implemented until the first semester of AY 2020–2021 (August to December 2020). This led to all courses being advised to shift online until the end of the second term. The second term of the academic year (AY) 2019–2020, which is from January to May 2020, at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) was indefinitely suspended at around March due to the steadily increasing COVID-19 cases in Metro Manila, risks and local transmission concerns of COVID-19. The Analytical Chemistry course includes topics in chemical equilibrium, classical quantitative analysis, and instrumental methods analysis. The Physical Chemistry 1 curriculum for Chemical Engineering undergraduate students includes topics in properties of gases, laws of thermodynamics, and phase equilibria. Undergraduate Chemical Engineering students are required to take Analytical Chemistry and Physical Chemistry 1 courses during their first and second year of studies at universities in the Philippines. Since the pandemic started and presently shows little signs of declining, worries whether internet connection would not suffice to support online education persist as a challenge. This sudden change to online instruction raised concern among many teachers and students because a large segment of the population have unstable internet access and limited electronic devices ( Pastor, 2020 Mirandilla-Santos, 2016). The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has dramatically changed the higher education system in the Philippines with a distinctive shift in online instruction as an effort to limit further transmission of the virus. Overall, the findings and insights in this study will add valuable resources for further hybrid instruction in the post-COVID-19 time in higher education. Hence, this strategy is considered a manageable and effective alternative that can be adapted to full online instruction to other undergraduate Chemistry lecture courses. The survey also indicated that most of the students are satisfied with the DLCPA strategy. Instructors must also find means to improve their interaction with students and maintain student interest and engagement during online classes. The identified challenges were stability of internet connection and instructor’s familiarity with readily available internet-based teaching tools, such as video conferencing software. The analysis of the teaching and learning experience based on three indicators (i) student’s learning experience, (ii) student’s academic performance and (iii) instructor observations showed that DLPCA had a positive impact on students and instructors. The DLPCA strategy was presented and discussed to the students prior to its implementation. The synchronous part of the teaching was conducted using video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom or Google Meet. In DLPCA, the asynchronous part of the teaching was achieved through broadcast of pre-recorded lecture videos on YouTube to allow students to study and progress with learning at their own pace. This is a five-component blended learning strategy referred to as Discover, Learn, Practice, Collaborate and Assess (DLPCA). Here, we present an online strategy that facilitated the transition from traditional face-to-face learning to full online instruction. To face these difficulties in teaching undergraduate Chemistry courses at the University of Santo Tomas, a blended learning strategy in the context of teaching and learning of Physical Chemistry 1 and Analytical Chemistry for Chemical Engineering students were employed. The shift to distance teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a real challenge for both instructors and students.
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