I attended the UK Variety in Chemistry Education 2010 meeting in September at Loughborough University. Variety is always a great meeting, with lots of talks from practitioners about ideas they have had and how they got on after implementing them. This is my fifth Variety, and every year I come away with useful ideas. I’ve sketched out some notes below. I think the talks presented will be available on the Physical Sciences Centre website at some stage. Keynotes Two keynote speakers gave talks at Variety. The first was my own colleague, Dr Claire Mc Donnell, who won the RSC Higher…
Author: Michael Seery
Book Review: Study Skills for Science Technology and Engineering Students
This review was written for the HEA Physical Sciences Centre Reviews publication, Vol 20, No. 1. The entire issue can be downloaded from their website, and my review is posted below. This book presents the topic of study skills to both students and tutors in science and engineering topics. Students are encouraged to interact with the material by considering their own personal development, which is a nice approach. There are lots of start and end of chapter activities encouraging students to think about their current approach, but future editions might benefit from a format encouraging periodic review of these questions…
500 Years of Science Infographic
This is a great way of representing the contributions to science over the course of 500 years. The chemistry line (tan coloured) begins with origins in alchemy and starts as chemistry proper with Robert Boyle, followed by Black, Cavendish, Lavoisier and Priestley. The station intersections show where one scientist had an impact on two or more disciplines – needless to say Newton is a central hub! Click on the image to access a version of the map which allows each scientist’s name to be followed through to their Wikipedia entry. To ensure you always have the latest version of the…
Interview with John Biggs
Found these on iTunesU from La Trobe University (Australia) – interviews with John Biggs (constructive alignment and problem based learning); Vaughan Prain (teaching science); Chris Scanlan (New media for journalism students); Lorraine Ling (future of education). Nice, listenable, relatively short podcast interviews. Link to Biggs interview is here – this will open iTunes and the others are there [would like a nice iTunes embedder…?] Image Credit
BCCE Day 1
Some thoughts from BCCE Day 1 – including environmental pbl study, lab assessment methods, part 2; research awareness following innovations in lab teaching; cognition studies, using videos of students and developing models if students’ conceptions of acid strength; part 3 – students problems with molarity in chemistry. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3:
Three useful things to know about E-portfolios
At the DRHEA E-learning summer school this week, we had a useful session on E-portfolios. The conversation very quickly diverted to discussion about lots of complicated things that I had never considered or worried about. E-portfolios are simple! I decided to repay the DRHEA sponsored headset costs by making this short video explaining why:
Ode to the academic staff developer
I can’t imagine a more difficult job than being an academic staff developer. Lion tamers, steeplejacks and even, can you believe it, primary school teachers, must step back in awe of this profession. At academic developer (or academic development officer if you prefer) school, there must be psychological tests to weed out all but the most committed, the shrewdest and the most patient, so that those who graduate and go on to assist the likes of Prof Higginbotham* and his colleagues, including me, in the academy can learn to deal with the most powerful weapon in Higginbotham’s armoury: the three simple…
Supporting Virtual Communities: Reflection on Module
As we complete the Supporting Virtual Communities module, we are asked to reflect on our learning during the module, by replying to some of a range of prompts given. Two prompts are considered in this report: “The Muddiest Point” and “To the Future”. While they draw on different aspects of the module activities and my own learning, they focus on my main interest in e-learning – namely the facilitation of discussion boards. References marked with an asterisk are ones that are new to me and I have included them in my annotated bibliography. The Muddiest Point “Why do we interact…
Supporting Discussion Boards – Some Literature
The following is an annotated bibliography for the Reflection on Learning post for the module Supporting Virtual Communities. Links to references are available at: http://www.delicious.com/mkseery/SVC DeVries, J. and Lim, G. (2003) Significance of Online Teaching vs. Face-to-Face: Similarities and Difference, E-LEARN 2003, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, November 7-11, 2003. [PDF at http://bit.ly/d3OpyK] This conference paper compares face-to-face teaching with online teaching and notes many similarities. Some strategies for encouraging learner-learner interactions, which the authors discuss as a very important interaction in online learning, are outlined – including pairing/grouping new learners to seed discussions and build on these to generate discussions to…
E-moderating: Reflection
In the third week of the supporting virtual communities module, we were given a range of scenarios, and asked to outline what our response to the scenario would be. It was a very interesting and engaging activity, and through posting my own thoughts, reading others and reading replies to mine, a lot of issues got teased out during the week. The Lurker The first scenario asked us to compose a brief message that we would send to a student who had not yet made a contribution to the discussion board. My response is posted below. Some points I tried to…