This post aims to summarise some literature on the use of worked examples in the teaching of problem solving in chemistry. Crippen, drawing from the work of Sweller and others has summarised worked examples as follows (taken from Crippen, 2010, below): Worked examples are sample problems which have already been solved and provide the learner with a model representation about how to think though complex items (Mwangi & Sweller, 1998). They are intentionally similar in content and structure to the quiz items under consideration for the current study. Worked examples are not scripted, but provide the learner with a knowledge…
Category: Chemistry
What’s wrong with Leaving Cert chemistry?
A nasty physicist once remarked that all of chemistry can be summarised as acids reacting with bases. I laughed it off at the time, but that casual remark made me think long and hard about my subject. Could it be that chemistry could be reduced to this? Could all of those reactions be distilled down to a simple subset of the larger branch of physics, the subject which truly aims to understand what is going on? And there are a lot of reactions in chemistry; sub-divided into the various branches of synthetic chemistry – organic chemistry with its myriad of…
Study and Communication Skills for the Chemical Sciences
A few months ago I reviewed a book Study Skills for Science, Technology and Engineering Students. While I couldn’t fault the authors on the content or their good intentions to pass on useful information gleaned from years of experience of giving students advice, it reminded me of a book I once used as a student myself (long ago). For me, both of these books fell into two traps; they had a lot of densely packed pages full of text with endless tips and strategies that despite good intentions left the reader (if it was read at all) confused and secondly,…
YouTube: Acquiring a UV/visible spectrum; choosing cells and solvents
This video shows how to acquire a UV/vis spectrum and demonstrates the different types of cells and solvents that can be used – showing the absorbance ranges for each. Funding from DIT and the NDLR gratefully acknowledged.
Iodine Clock – Pre-Lab Activity
This is an Articulate interaction which incorporates video demonstrations the various aspects of the iodine clock experiment and then has a quiz towards the end. This could be used as a pre-lab activity, where students could print out their response to the quiz and bring it to the lab, or alternatively link the quiz to the VLE by SCORM. Click on the image to access the resource: Funding from NDLR and DIT gratefully acknowledged.
Demonstration of the iodine clock experiment
This experiment demonstrates the iodine clock reaction between iodide and persulfate ions, using thiosulfate as the ‘clock’. After some introduction details, three experiments are performed: studying the effect of concentration to determine the orders of reactants (3:01), studying the effect of temperature to determine the activation energy (7:47) and studying the effect of solvent polarity (9:42). Funding from NDLR and DIT gratefully acknowledged.
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…
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…