As a pedagogical form of active learning, topics developed in molecular biology class were related to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic that is currently advancing in almost the entire planet. Having an efficient method of diagnosing infection during the onset of this acute respiratory infection is important in detecting both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. For this reason, seventh semester students from marine and environmental biology courses studying molecular biology at the University of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano were challenged to design a diagnostic method for the COVID-19 virus based on RT PCR and qPCR. The objective of this academic exercise was to encourage students to propose an effective method to detect the COVID-19 virus using the knowledge acquired during the course. A review of the previous literature was carried out to identify the existing methods for the detection of the virus and, with the help of bioinformatic tools, the analysis of the sequences of the genomes of COVID-19, human SARS and bat SARS available at GenBank was carried out.