A War-Responsive Blended Teaching Modality for Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory Courses: Comparative Analysis of the Students’ Performance

Prompted by the September 2024 war on Lebanon, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Lebanon requested educational institutions to stop in-person teaching and implement a hybrid framework complemented by blended education. Considering the differences between the in-person teaching modality and the blended instruction, there should be considerable variances in students’ performance and scores. This prospective comparative case study in the Lebanese American University (LAU), a secular private American institution accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) and operating in Beirut under a charter from the State of New York, used the records of learner’s grades in two organic chemistry laboratory courses to investigate and compare the students’ scores of the two teaching modalities over two consecutive semesters in 2024. The overall data analysis of the records collected from the in-person teaching modality shortly before the war on Lebanon (January–May 2024) and the analysis of the documents obtained during and after the short-term war (September–December 2024), when responsive blended teaching was implemented, indicates that there is no statistically significant difference between the means of the two variables (p-value is >0.05). Observed slight deviations are likely due to random chance rather than an actual effect, and the shift of the teaching modalities is not the focal point. The main recommendation of our study is to reconfigure educational policies and prioritize blended teaching modality in the curricula of organic chemistry laboratories. This is advised not only to prepare learners for potential crises, emergencies, and uncertainties but to capitalize on flexibility, develop students’ independent learning skills, and prepare them for modern education and the complexities of a rapidly evolving world.