November 23, 2020
Laboratory Courses during a Pandemic in Sweden
As the University is switching to distance mode again, courses are being taught more and more over Zoom. This is different to what we are used to and may be not preferred, but not so difficult after all. However, my study programme (Experimental and Medical Bioscience) involves also a lot of laboratory courses.
Some of you might be wondering how laboratory courses can be and are conducted during a pandemic in Sweden. To illustrate that I am going to tell you about the two courses I am taking at the moment: Advanced Immunology and Laboratory Animal Science.
Advanced Immunology
For the first course we should have worked with ELISA and Luminex to determine the allergy status of a patient. In simple terms are those immunological methods using antibodies to identify the presence of small proteins which are excreted during an allergic reaction. To keep lecturers and students safe, this lab was switched to digital learning.
As preparation we had to do some calculations for standard curves and all necessary solutions. Here, the tutors were very helpful and we finally got the correct results. The actual experiment was then performed by our tutor and recorded on video for us to watch later on. The analysis of raw data was then performed the same way we usually do.
I have to admit, that this way of doing labs is nothing close to performing the experiments yourself, but under these circumstances it is probably the best way and I really appreciate it that Linköping University tries to keep it as relevant/ real as possible.
Laboratory Animal Science
For my second course we are learning on how to handle laboratory mice. As you can imagine, watching videos is just not sufficient in this case. Mice are so tiny and active animals, that it is very hard to actually draw blood or do other kinds of physical examinations on them. Therefore, our professor decided to split us into small groups of 5 to 6 people, with two of them sharing one instructor.
At the entrance we each got a mouth-nose mask and gloves and kept a distance of about 1.5 m at all times. We still got the chance to work with laboratory mice, while staying safe at the same time.
Here, the circumstances made it much more difficult to find a proper solution, but I am so happy by how it has been handled! Now mice and me are safely back in their home, after being equally stressed out by our first ever interaction.
