Thermo in the Time of COVID-19: Using Improvisation to Foster Discussion and Translating the Experience to Online Learning.

This paper covers teaching a graduate thermodynamics class as a seminar and using improvisational activities to foster community and discussion. The paper includes the experience of piloting improvisational activities online to help foster community for an entirely virtual version of the thermodynamics seminar class. Improvisational activities were found to help foster discussion in a thermodynamics seminar class, and some of these improvisational activities can be translated online in ways that may help to foster connection and community across the curriculum including online.