Abstract
How should Biology be taught during a pandemic in Higher Education Institutions? This study explored on the instructional delivery preferences of pre-service science major students in a public higher education in the Philippines, and identified its correlates to gender, year level, and post-secondary strand type, using validated instruments. Salient findings showed that majority of the respondents prefer the delivery instruction delivery of Cell and Molecular Biology course in a partially-online/offline mode throughout the semester, a scheme which they believe when implemented will enable 100% of them to pass the course. If partial scheme is not an option, more respondents prefer the instructional delivery of CeMBio as offline, but ironically, there are more of them who believe they have higher chances of passing the subject if it is delivered online. Among the variables studied for correlates, gender did not appear to influence the delivery preferences of the respondents. Further, a significant difference is reported in terms of year level and strand type, along selected chapter segments of the CeMBio course only, with year level appearing to influence preferences at the first few chapters of the course and strand type in the middle topics of the course. Gender, year level, and strand type did not significantly differ along the last few chapter topics of the CeMBio syllabus content. The delivery of CemBio in a partial-offline-online modality is recommended, not only because of the respondents’ 100%-passing belief, but because this scheme will reduce instructional loads among the teachers, allowing flexibility in instruction, research, extension, and production activities of the faculty. Finally, should the option to decide which topics are offline or online, the researchers recommend that topics without significant differences reported, will be delivered offline while those with reported significance will be delivered online with the hope that the teacher could possibly address during instruction the cause of these differences.
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