Todd Pearson, Ph. D., Norton’s Biology Content Development Specialist, reflects on creating instructor resources slides that biology instructors can use when discussing COVID-19 in their classes.
Several weeks back, as news reports broke about the novel coronavirus outbreak that originated near Wuhan, China, our Biology team at Norton realized we were in a unique position to provide just-in-time updates to both microbiology students and students in the non-majors biology course.
We created two sets of level-appropriate slides—one on evaluating claims in the media for non-majors students, and one on the virology of COVID-19 for microbiology students—in order to help instructors discuss the pandemic with their students. Because this is such an important topic, we made these slides open to all instructors to use in their courses.
Recently, one of our textbook adopters told us, unsolicited, how he had just finished using these PowerPoint slides in his class earlier that same day. He was very grateful because he knew that his students would be interested to learn more about the outbreak, but he didn’t have time to prepare lecture materials on his own.
Even though I haven’t been in front of students in the classroom for a number of years, I still think of myself, first and foremost, as an educator. So for me, this was a tangible example of what I find important in my work: Norton’s commitment to supporting instructors and students with up to date, high quality content.
