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Teaching Fellowship Launch Presentation

The DIT 2010-2011 Teaching Fellowships were launched on 23rd September 2010, and each recipient of a Fellowship gave a presentation on the work they plan to do. It was really nice to see what others plan to do; there was a lot of variety and a lot of overlap at the same time. My presentation – the main thrust of which was summarised in another post – is embedded below. All of the presentations can be viewed from the LTTC website. The video is streamed from the HEAnet server using the Embedded Video plugin (for the information of any WordPress…

Pooling Data in the Chemistry Lab

This article considers the concept of pooling experimental data in the teaching lab. It’s a very simple but effective technique that I have used, both in low-tech and high(er)-tech versions. Some observations from my own experiences as well as some examples from the literature are presented. What is pooling data? Pooling data, in the sense I mean here, is the aggregation of all students lab data on a particular experiment in one lab session. If ten pairs of students are completing an experiment, the pooled data would consist of a table of all individual pairs’ data, together with averaged data….

Class Websites using Google Sites and Podcasting with Audacity

This presentation is a screencast of a presentation to be presented at Chem Ed Ireland 2010. It covers: what uses class websites might have overview of setting up Google Sites Example of a chemistry class website on Google Sites Uses for podcasting in education Overview of Audacity This handout accompanies the presentation. Lots more information on setting up a class website using Google Sites is available at the Becoming an eTeacher Resource. Module 5 of this resource focusses on podcasting using Audacity. Some other links are given below. Links Becoming an eTeacher – Five module resource on setting up and…

Teaching in the Laboratory: 1 – Pedagogy

Overview The post is the first of two parts of a Resource Pack that I am developing to share with practitioners like myself and is designed to provide information on teaching laboratory practicals in undergraduate science courses. In doing so it draws on the substantial amount of literature dedicated to this topic as well as innovative practices used by practising academics. It aims to provide information for readers new to practice or experienced practitioners interested in changing anything from a single practical, a suite of practicals associated with a module, right through to a change in laboratory teaching philosophy of…

Why it’s time for @vonprond to go

Oh dear. I had to wipe up some porridge this morning as I read this week’s article in the Irish Times from DCU’s former president. The “PowerPoint or Not” story has made it to the top, it is his article of the week. The article, which is essentially based on a 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education piece, and a press release for Southern Methodist University, discusses some personal anecdotes and some general hand-waving towards removing PowerPoint in lectures, and just, you know, teaching naked. Yes, I said the Irish Times. I’m sure DCU’s Learning Innovation Unit must be collectively weeping…

PreLecture Resources: Literature Examples

This post provides some short annotations to literature involving prelecture resources/activities – the annotations are a brief summary rather than a commentary: Online Discussion Assignments Improve Students’ Class Preparation, Teaching of Psychology, 2010, 37(2), 204-209: Lecturer used pre-lecture discussion activities to encourage students to read text before attending class. It had no direct influence on examination results but students reported that they felt they understood the material better and that they felt more prepared for exams. Using multimedia modules to better prepare students for introductory physics lecture, Physical Review Special Topics – Physics Education Research, 2010, 6(1), 010108: Authors introduce…

Teaching Fellowship

I’ve been lucky enough to be awarded a DIT Teaching Fellowship for 2010 to 2011. The purpose of this scheme is to support members of staff to develop or evaluate a project that will support the enhancement of learning and/or curriculum development, to paraphrase DIT’s Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre (LTTC) website. In practice, that means they give you some money, funded by SIF2 (down a bit from last year though), and support from the centre. While the money is useful (although I always find it ironic when teaching awards give money to buy out teaching hours) it will be…

Cognitive considerations… in practice

I posted a summary last time of what best practice from cognitive science research preached about designing online resources. Putting it into practice threw up some interesting considerations. I’ve summarised these below in light of developing my first pre-lecture resource, as well as reflections stimulated by conversations about it with my colleague Claire. The first pre-resource is for my first lecture in introductory chemistry which is based around the structure of the atom, the main components (protons, electrons and neutrons) as derived from the Rutherford model, the notion of elements and then progresses onto a discussion of isotopes, introducing the…

Cognitive Considerations in Designing E-Resources

This post aims to consider cognitive load theory and what considerations should be drawn from it in the design of electronic instructional materials. Sweller (2008) discusses several strategies for harnessing the principles of CLT in e-learning design. Several of these strategies are described by Clark and Mayer (2008), so overlap between both are discussed in tandem below. Mayer’s multimedia learning model (Mayer 2005) is used here as the underlying framework for the principles discussed. Before these are discussed, there is a brief explanation of what CLT is, along with the processes involved in learning new information. What is Cognitive Load…