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We examine the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on teaching and learning in an Engineering School of a large US research university. We focus on the adjustment of instructors as they converted their courses to distance teaching and learning formats (e.g., virtual sessions, online forums) and on bachelor student experiences with those changes. While both instructors and students experienced liminality, the pandemic affected these groups differently. Instructors attempted to formcommunitaswith their students by prioritizing their teaching responsibilities, increasing the accessibility of course materials, and being more available to students compared to pre‐pandemic times. However, students struggled to adapt to online learning contexts which lacked the sense of togetherness previously offered by in‐person classes, study‐groups, tutorial sessions, and communal study spaces. Unable to interact with their peers and createcommunitas, learning online proved to be an ineffective “solution.” Interacting with classmates and working in study groups are among the practices that can help students adjust to course delivery changes, even if it means those cultural practices go virtual. We argue that higher learning institutions, regardless of type (e.g., R1, R2, liberal arts, community colleges), should strengthen their remote teaching approaches. However, those strategies should incorporate: building strong relationships within and across roles, designing inclusive teaching and learning practices that take the contexts in which students learn into account, increasing spaces for peer‐to‐peer learning, and becoming proficient in the technologies needed to teach virtually.

In this study, we analyzed students’ reasoning and explanations of friction concepts before and after engaging in guided experimentation with visuohaptic (VH) simulations. The VH experimentation included two affordances: visual cues and haptic feedback. Specifically, we analyzed the outcomes of two treatment groups with different sequences of affordance introduction. The first treatment group started with visual cues, with haptic feedback added later, while the second treatment group started with haptic feedback and added the visual cues later. We recruited 48 students who had previously taken at least one physics course. Participants completed a pre‐ and posttest assessment, which included both procedural and conceptual questions about friction before and after the guided experimentation task. The results show that the participants from both treatment groups benefited from using VH simulations. Both treatment groups showed statistically significant pre/post improvements in their understanding of friction. Moreover, both treatment groups showed a statistically significant increase in the conceptual understanding of friction concepts from pretest to posttest with moderate to strong effect sizes. Implications for laboratory instruction are also discussed.