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: Pedagogy
Micropublishing E-books for Higher Education
The usual hype about new e-toys is familiar territory with e-books. Writing in 2008, before Kindle was launched (bK), Mark Nelson was writing in Educause that ‘some experts predict 2007 – 2009 will be the transition years for the higher education e-book market’. Obviously this hasn’t happened here, but HE publishers are gearing up for whenever a changeover does happen, with the likes of Coursesmart – a platform for a consortium of education publishers. While there is no competition with the publishing giants, I think a lot of academics have material that with some amount of work could be presented…
Pre-Lecture Resources Webinar 26 Jan 2011
I’ll be giving a webinar as part of the fantastic Sligo IT webinar series this Wednesday at lunchtime. You can register and find out more here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1135441135. The webinar will cover some of the work I’ve done on my Teaching Fellowship on the area of pre-lecture resources. It’ll be my first webinar – I’m quite nervous about it, but looking forward to the instant interaction of the audience as I give the talk! Abstract: This presentation will outline the use of online pre-lecture resources to supporting in-lecture material. The design rationale is to develop a cyclical approach between online resources and lectures,…
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,…
Using Pre-Lecture Resources in your Teaching
Much of my study on educational research this year has focussed on Pre-Lecture Resources, working with Dr Roisin Donnelly at DIT’s Learning Teaching and Technology Centre and my colleague Dr Claire Mc Donnell. I’ve turned into something of an evangelist for pre-lecture resources, so in order to spread the good word, I have prepared this resource guide for others thinking of using a similar strategy. I’d love to hear from anyone who has considered this approach or is using a similar approach. The guide accompanies a presentation at the 12th Annual Showcase of Learning and Teaching Innovations, DIT, Jan 2011….
Podcasting and screencasting for supporting lectures
Prompted by my visit to Edinburgh next week to the “More Effective Lectures” workshop, I have compiled several blog posts and bits and pieces of other writing into a Resource Pack that I hope might be useful to other practitioners entitled: “Podcasting and screencasting for supporting lectures“. The resource is a PDF file and is available at this link: Podcasting and Screencasting for Supporting Lectures or click on the image below. The resource covers: Introduction to the use of podcasts/screencasts in education Overview of the design of e-resources Tips for preparing podcasts and screencasts Tools of the trade: Audacity, Camtasia and…
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.
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…