Category Archives: Pedagogy

Lack of literature on flipped lecture rooms

Compiling literature on flipped/inverted classrooms for higher education isn’t easy. A lot of returns are of the “I couldn’t believe my ears!” type blog, which is fine for what it is, but not an academic study. Yet more literature, typically of the Chronicle or Educause type, tends to say flipped classrooms are great, and they lead on to MOOCs (as in the case of this recent C&EN piece), with a subsequent discussion on MOOCs, or tie in flipped classrooms with Peer Instruction, with a discussion on peer instruction. In these cases, and especially so for PI, this is the intention of the writer, so it is not a criticism. But it makes it hard to say what value flipped lectures have in their own right.

I want to think well of flipped lectures, and have piloted some myself, the concept being an extension of pre-lecture activities work that I have spent a lot of time on. While looking for methodologies to rob for a future study of my own, I had a look in the literature. The study most people seem to refer to is an article published in 2000 in the Journal of Economics Education which described the implementation of the inverted lecture. The paper is a nice one in that it describes the implementation well, with the views of students and instructors represented. But there is not much after surveying students in terms of considering effectiveness. I come from the school of thought that says if you throw oranges at students in a lecture and survey them, they will say it helped their learning, so I’m surprised that this study is referred to by evangelists in the flipped lecture area. The course site is still available, and while it looks a little dated, it does seem to align nicely with what the Ed Techs would consider good instructional design (resources, support, social area, etc).

A more recent study is that in Physics Reviews Special Topics: Physics Education Research. While it appears this is more of the pre-lecture type of activity rather than flipped lecture (ie there is still some lectures involved), the lecture room seems quite active. This study found that students who completed the pre-lecture work did better in exams than those that didn’t.

Not much else in my initial trawl. I’ll keep looking, as of course people might have done this and not called it flipped or inverting the lecture. Of course part of this is that education research takes time, and perhaps in the next few years, we will see lots of flipped lecture room literature.

 

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If scientists designed the history curriculum…

We’ve been here before. Such was the fever to promote science at the expense of everything else in the mid nineteenth century that Thomas Wyse told an audience at the Waterford Literary and Scientific Society in 1833 to ‘banish all modem politics and controversial theology from their arenas’ and look to ‘Priestley, Brougham, and Watt as the true Promethei of our present race – the true architects of our civilisation’.

So it is again, with Ruairí Quinn taking up Wyse’s role, plotting to squeeze together history and geography at school to make room for science. To paraphrase Gerard Collins begging Albert on national TV: please Ruairí, for the good of science, don’t do it, don’t bust the curriculum. I can’t imagine Ruairí thinks this is a good idea, but he probably thinks it will impress our global neighbours, showing that We Take Science Seriously.

What skills does history bring to the curriculum? Spending most of my spare time pretending I am an historian, I have found that history requires me to research, evaluate, interpret evidence, cross reference, criticise, etc etc. These are some pretty good learning outcome verbs that can translate into any discipline – especially science, In fact, one might argue that it is these skills gained in history which develop research and problem-solving skills more than in science. What’s more, history offers the curriculum something science sorely lacks: the requirement to form a written argument.

And can you imagine if we gave the masochists who designed the science curriculum at school—and I reserve special rage for those Satanic ritualists who designed the Leaving Cert chemistry curriculum—even more time? Lots more rules to learn off, lots more model answers to practice. Requiring more time to teach science is like making new laws to add on to existing ones. Resources are required, not more lack of resources. A rookie journalist hoping to make a break would do well to go investigate the NCCA, the people ultimately charged with what defines our “knowledge economy”. These few people know what they are talking about, have some great ideas, based on solid research, but are held hostage by a lack of resources and an elite mafia who don’t want to let go of “their” curriculum.

To illustrate this, an interesting drinking game this Good Friday would be imagine how the masters of our current science curriculum might design a history curriculum. We like to build up on the basics in science, so obviously you’d start in the neolithic era, moving each year until reaching the entire early modern to modern era in 6th year. Bonus shots go for squeezing together more than one topic in a lesson plan—the Lockout and the Nazis perhaps—or requiring completely irrelevant recall of facts, why not learn off the Annals? They’d have a field day. Jokes aside, you can’t give these people more time on the curriculum.

If anything good for history is coming out of this, it is that there is a well-known academic coming out in support of his discipline at school. Well done Diarmaid Ferriter, you are now forgiven for The Tenements. In science, our big-wig academics are too busy telling the media, the grant agencies, and probably themselves how amazing their research is and how it should receive more money. I wish they would take a look school-wards occasionally so that the students who will eventually come to complete their research have the curriculum they deserve.

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The Application of Technology to Enhance Chemistry Education

Call for Papers

Contributions are invited for a themed, peer-reviewed issue of CERP on The Application of Technology to Enhance Chemistry Education which is scheduled for publication Autumn 2013. Guest Editors: Michael K Seery and Claire McDonnell.

Topics for contribution may include but are not limited to:

  •  Blended learning to support ‘traditional’ instruction (e.g. online resources, wikis, blogs, e-portfolios)
  • In-class technology (e.g. clickers, iPads or equivalent)
  • Online learning (e.g. distance learning initiatives, online collaborative learning, active and interactive eLearning, computer simulations of practical work, modelling software for online learning)
  • Cognitive considerations for online learning (e.g. designing online resources)
  • E-assessment (e.g. formative assessment strategies, automated feedback)
  • Reviews and Perspectives (‘State of play’ of current trends, historical perspective)

Contributions should align with the principles and criteria specified in the recent CERP editorial (Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2012, 13, 4-7). To summarise, there is a requirement that papers provide an argument for some new knowledge supported by careful analysis of evidence; either by reviewing the existing literature, analysing carefully collected research data or rigorously evaluating innovative practice.

Submission of Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted in the format required by the journal using the ScholarOne online manuscript submission platform available through the journal homepage http://www.rsc.org/CERP/. Enquiries concerning the suitability of possible contributions should be sent directly by email to: Michael Seery michael.seery@dit.ie and/or Claire McDonnell: claire.mcdonnell@dit.ie.

Important Dates

Manuscripts should be submitted by 4th January 2013 to be eligible for consideration in the theme issue, subject to authors being able to address revisions without too much delay. Manuscripts received after the deadline can still be considered for the theme issue, but the usual peer review process will not be compromised to reach decisions on publication, and if such articles are accepted for publication too late to be included in the theme issue then they would be included instead in a subsequent issue.

As with other CERP contributions, articles intended for the theme issue will be published as advanced articles on line as soon as they have been set and proofs have been checked, ahead of publication in the theme issue itself.

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Variety in Chemistry Education Meeting, 2012

Variety in Chemistry Education is one of my favourite conferences which I attend annually (2010 and 2011 reports here). This year’s meeting was held along with the Physics Higher Education Conference, providing the catchy Twitter hashtag #vicephec. The meeting was opened with a keynote by Prof Martyn Poliakoff, inorganic chemist from Nottingham, but better known to 102,403 YouTube subscribers as the star of the Periodic Table of Videos series, which have been viewed over 25,243,185 times. Prof Poliakoff received the 2011 RSC Nyholm Prize—awarded every other year for Education. He spoke about the development of the videos, working with video journalist Brady Haran to create 120 videos with over 4 hours film time in a little over a month. The urgency was caused by the pending end of a financial year! After completing the periodic table, they continued to work on videos (everything from concrete to Viagra). What struck me most though from this presentation was the sense of collaboration—a world-renowned scientist sharing his knowledge with that of a skilled video journalist. Hopefully it is a collaboration that might inspire others. Prof Poliakoff’s talk—which was personal and beautifully delivered—ended with a special tribute video to Ronald Nyholm (one of the two men behind VSEPR theory), which I suspect had even the quantum physicists choking back a tear.

With the onset of presentations (15 mins) and bytes (5 mins), it became clear that the organisers had carefully thought about the programme, with clear themes emerging. The first of those is the increasing use of technology in education. These included several talks on supporting in-class learning using multi-media resources. Simon Lancaster (UEA) spoke of a trial regarding flipping the lecture, and on a similar concept, David McGarvey and Katherine Haxton (Keele) spoke about pre-lecture activities they developed for their students (See September 2012 Education in Chemistry for a full article on pre-lecture activities). Dylan Williams talked about using multi-media clips for supporting lectures, and David Read on some fantastic worked answer videos for allowing students to engage in self-assessed work (during the summer, which they liked!). Technology continued into workshops on screencasting, wikis and online practicals.

The keynote from David McGarvey (Keele), the 2011 RSC Higher Education Teaching Award winner, stayed with the technology theme. He has used a wide range of technologies to support innovations in laboratory practicals, presentation skills and most impressively, audio feedback. His work on feedback—especially interim feedback—is inspiring. We were spoiled with a preview of this talk at the Irish Variety in Chemistry meeting earlier this year, which I wrote about here. I always come away from his talks with  lots of great ideas, so well thought out, and a concern that he can’t be sleeping much if he is working on so many great innovations at once.

Another theme that arose was that of student support in terms of college experience. Transition from school to college, international students, and distance learning students all have specific issues. An example was the talk by Gita Sedghi (Liverpool) spoke about supporting international students so that they integrated and interacted fully in their new environment, with a suite of supports such as pre-arrival planning, peer mentoring and student monitoring (interviews).

Context and problem based learning continues to be popular, and the recent focus by the RSC and the HE-STEM programme has generated several new resources available to use. These included an excellent package on costing and developing a fireworks display developed by Gan Schermer (Bath), a scenario on the theme of energy by Dylan Williams (Leicester) and talk on the process of redesigning a traditional hardness of water practical to give a multi-week C/PBL scenario for first years (Karen Moss, NTU). Two workshops on this theme were on designing ill-conceived problems and on developing commercial skills for chemists.

The third keynote was given by Paul van Kampen (DCU). This excellent talk outlined his personal journey in becoming a science education researcher as well as being a scientist. It was interesting as he highlighted what aspects of being a scientist could translate into education research, as well as illustrating what was different in the two research fields—for example the inability to “control” the sample in a science education “experiment”.  Many in the audience are actively at the boundary of scientist/science educationalist and the talk was a useful marker in the considerations around designing, implementing and validating educational materials. His talk also highlighted the great advantage of co-hosting the meeting with physicists; as even though we are based in the same city, we as chemist and physicist had never previously met. The closing forum agreed the experiment of co-hosting was successful, and if #vicephec13 is half as successful as this busy, informative, and entertaining meeting, it is a must-see on next year’s calendar.

Some highlights

  • There is a kid in us all: “We made chlorine gas!” Over-excited delegate after the Microscale Chemistry workshop (delivered by Bob Worley, CLEAPSS/Brunel)
  • Useful tip: Use personal whiteboards as a low-tech version of interactive teaching (Simon Lancaster, UEA)
  • Talk that changed my mind: A trio of talks on Peerwise, including Kyle Galloway (Nottingham) whereby students developed quiz questions to help each other study. Students liked having questions specific to their course, and enjoyed writing questions.
  • Simplest idea is the best: Katherine Haxton (Keele) on getting students to do a screencast instead of an oral presentation. It is self, peer, and tutor assessed. Some excellent meta-cognitive concepts included in this well designed innovation.
  • Time saver: Stephen Ashworth (UEA) on using Excel to generate a large number of questions for online VLEs with specific feedback. CONCATENATE is my new favourite Excel function. Absolute genius.
  • Change to teaching: More interim feedback, David McGarvey’s work on using interim audio feedback illustrates what can be achieved.

The entire meeting’s tweets have been added to Storify, which includes many links and references to resources and websites mentioned. I plan to compile a list of these and add them here.

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Showing Worked Examples in Blackboard Quizzes

I’ve been thinking of ways to include worked examples and hints in Blackboard VLE quizzes. Cognitive Load theory has something called the Worked Example effect, whereby learners who receive direct instruction in the form of worked examples perform better than those who don’t. The reason is attributed to providing novice learners with an approach to solving a problem that they can replicate, thus alleviating the working memory load while solving a problem. There’s some more on worked examples here.

The question then was how to provide a worked example (or a hint, a slightly less informative way to guide students) in Blackboard quizzes. I want to have them at the point where students can click on them as they need them, rather than having to leave the quiz and go off somewhere else to get help. I did this in this trial with Javascript buttons. The video below goes through how it looks and the mechanics of it.

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8th Variety in Irish Chemistry Teaching Meeting – DIT 10th May

The Chemistry Education Research Team wish to invite you to the 8th Variety in Irish Chemistry Teaching Meeting which will be held in DIT Kevin St on Thursday 10th May 2012. The meeting is sponsored by the RSC Education Division Ireland.

Programme and Call for Abstracts

The aim of the meeting is to allow those teaching chemistry at third level to share “what works” – useful ideas and effective practice from their own teaching.

The keynote speaker is Dr David McGarvey, University of Keele, who was the 2011 RSC Higher Education Teaching Award winner.

A call for abstracts is now open for short oral presentations (10 – 15 minutes) on any topic related to teaching and learning chemistry. The deadline for abstracts (150 words maximum) is April 5th 2012.

Attendance is free, but registration is required. Registration forms for those intending to attend/present can be downloaded here and should be submitted by April 5th 2012 by email to michael.seery@dit.ie

Workshop

An optional workshop will be held on Thursday morning (10.30 – 12.30 pm) on the topic “Using Technology in Chemistry Teaching and Learning” and will cover the following topics: “Podcasting and Screencasting”, “Using Wikis in Chemistry Education”, and “E-assessment”. The cost of the workshop is €10.

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Podcasting in Chemistry Education

My article on podcasting for chemistry has hit the shelves and has made the cover of Education in Chemistry. They have put it online too for free so, click on the image to go to the article!

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5stage

My experiences of teaching online: A case study

My paper on taking a module that was taught in class and moved online has been published in CERP (free to access). The paper aims to share my own experiences in teaching a module online so that others considering this approach might find some information of use.

The paper is set against a background of what I consider to be a general disaffection for online teaching among staff and students. This is apparent from surveys by the DRHEA—which reports that the main use of VLEs is as content repositories; the UK HEA (pdf)—where students ranked “e-learning” as the least enjoyable and least effective method of teaching; and large scale US study which reports a disappointing level of criticality in considering the effectiveness of online engagement.

The rationale for moving the module online is presented. It was found from practice that the online version of the module opened up new possibilities, especially in the domain of transferable skills. A table of learning outcomes, and how they are aligned with assessment is given. Implementation of the module online followed Gilly Salmon’s Five-Stage model, which was useful in this case because the online delivery was supported primarily by discussion boards. Notes and reflections from my experience of implementation are incorporated.

Finally, evaluation aims to capture what went well and what could be improved—both from my own perspective and that of students. One of the great benefits was observing a growing sense of independence among the students, and their ability to move beyond structured problems to being able to tackle unfamiliar ones. Some suggestions about encouraging engagement from all students are presented.

If you read it, I hope you enjoy the paper. It has certainly been an interesting module to deliver over the last number of years. The fifth version of the online delivery begins in a few weeks!

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Class Sizes and Student Learning

A recent discussion on an ALT email circulation raised the interesting question of whether there was a threshold for class sizes, above which student learning experience diminished. Unfortunately, what followed was lots of “in my experience” Higginbotham-esque replies (with the exception of details of an interesting internal survey at NUIG), despite the original query specifically requesting evidence-based information.

You up there—in the blue and white jumper—what do you think the answer is?

A clackety-clack into Google Scholar throws up some interesting results on this topic. Unsurprisingly, the general trend is that increasing class size diminishes students’ educational experience, although the extent to which this happens seems to be luke-warm. There are two issues to consider: what is being measured to reflect something like “educational experience”; and what is the discipline.

What students think

In this regard, an interesting paper that caught my eye was one that considered the effect of class sizes in various disciplines (Cheng, 2011). This work dismisses student grades in favour of three evaluation scores derived from students: student learning, instructor recommendations, and course recommendations. Student learning was scored based on a student response to a 5-point Likert scale question “I learned a great deal from this course”. (Many of you, including myself, may be tempted to run screaming for the hills at this point. What would students know?! Cheng does make the point that she is not saying that this measure is superior to student outcomes, just a different measure. She refers to Pike’s (1996) interesting paper on student self-reporting for a discussion on this. Also, Hamermesh’s paper (2005) is worth a read for the title alone—in short, good looking lecturers get better ratings.)

Overall Data

Anyway, Cheng has amassed an impressive data set. “In total, the data span 24 departments, 2110 courses, 1914 instructors, and 10,357 observations from Fall 2004 to Spring 2009.” Before considering subject, on an overall level, Cheng found that for each of her three ratings, ratings fell as class sizes increased (although the smallest class sizes received both lowest and highest marks). Cheng has further used her data to generate a model to predict how student “learning” (**measured as outlined above**), instructor and course recommendations would change, so that for an increase of 50 in class size, these ratings would decrease by 1.4%, 1.3%, and 1.1% respectively. Of course, some disciplines will have smaller class sizes or may require more class-tutor interaction, so Cheng has drilled down into each discipline and determined if it is negatively or positively affected, or indeterminately effected (i.e. mixed results)

Subject Specific

In the sciences, chemistry, biology, physics and maths were unaffected by increasing class size in this model, as were history, philosophy, and visual arts. Almost half of the disciplines surveyed were inconclusive, some showed negative effects: some engineering disciplines, political science, social science. No discipline benefits from increasing enrollment.

Chemistry

Cheng considers that theoretical subjects such as the sciences may have a low correlation with class size, but rather depends on other factors, such as quality of instructor or student effort. While I think there are flaws, or at best limitations to this study (as Cheng acknowledges), it does open up interesting questions. The one I am interested in is the culture of teaching chemistry, which is fiercely traditional. That this data suggests that an increasing class size would have little effect on ratings measured here in a chemistry class would in turn suggest that its teaching is still very much based on a teacher-centred philosophy. Clickers, anyone?

References

  • Cheng, D. A. Effects of class size on alternative educational outcomes across disciplines, Economics of Education Review, 2011, 30, 980–990.
  • Hamermesh, D., & Parker, A. Beauty in the classroom: Instructors’ pulchritude and putative pedagogical productivity. Economics of Education Review, 2005, 24, 369–376.
  • Pike, G. R. Limitations of using students’ self-reports of academic development as proxies for traditional achievement measures, 1996, Research in Higher Education, 37, 89-114.

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Online Pre-Labs: Literature (1)

Here’s a nice paper on the use of online pre-lab activites to encourage “cognitive focus” in the lab – in other words to help students consider the underlying theory while doing the practical rather than just following the instructions. I’ve tried to summarise it using the graphic below. In doing so I have had to oversimplifiy some aspects, so if you are interested in it, I recommend you follow up the paper!

The reason I like this paper is that it considers several aspects of pre-labs in a single study:

  • cognitive load theory and the development of schemata;
  • the use of simulations in reducing intrinsic cognitive load
  • the above have been considered before in many studies, but this paper adds in student attitudes to learning to the mix and
  • considers a measure of how prelab work allows students to spend more mental effort on the theory underlying the experiment.
  • It also refers to the key literature in these topics, so if you are lazy like me, this is a handy reference!

Students’ Cognitive Focus During a Chemistry Laboratory Exercise: Effect of a Computer-Simulated Prelab, TM Winberg, CAR Berg, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2007, 44, 1108.

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Implementation of Research Based Teaching Strategies

The traditional, almost-folkloric, based approach to teaching science is a stark contrast to the evidence-based research approach scientists consider in their everyday research. The quote by Joel Michael* highlights the contrast:

As scientists, we would never think of writing a grant proposal without a thorough knowledge of the relevant literature, nor would we go into the laboratory to actually do an experiment without knowing about the most current methodologies being employed in the field. Yet, all too often, when we go into the classroom to teach, we assume that nothing more than our expert knowledge of the discipline and our accumulated experiences as students and teachers are required to be a competent teacher. But this makes no more sense in the classroom than it would in the laboratory!

In discussing the implementation of innovative teaching techniques, this post is drawing on the work of Charles Henderson who spoke at a conference earlier this year on his analysis of the impact of physics education research on the physics community in US. I think there are lessons for chemists from this work. (The underlying assumption here is that moving from traditional methods of teaching based on information transmission to student-centred or active teaching improves student learning. This position is I think consolidated by a significant body of research.)

Change Mechanisms

The decision to use what Anderson called Research Based Instructional Strategies (RBIS) by a lecturer follows five stages, described by Rogers: (1) knowledge or awareness about the innovation; (2) persuasion about its effectiveness;  (3) deciding to use the innovation; (4) implementing the innovation; and (5) confirmation to continue its use.

Awareness of RBIS obviously underlies this process. A 2008 survey by Henderson and Dancy of 722 physics faculty showed that 87% were familiar with at least 1 of 24 identified RBIS applicable to introductory physics, and 48% reporting that they use at least one in their teaching. Time was reported as the most common reason why faculty did not implement more RBIS in their teaching.

A subsequent study by Henderson examined the individual stages of the implementation process in more detail and found that:

  • 12% of faculty had no awareness
  • 16% had knowledge but did not implement (Stage 1-2, above)
  • 23% discontinued after trying (Stage 3-4)
  • 26% continued use at a low level (Stage, 5, 1 – 2 RBIS)
  • 23% continued a a high level (Stage, 5, >3 RBIS)

Innovation Bottleneck

Henderson uses his data to demonstrate that on the whole, the physics education community does a good job of dissemination of RBIS to the community of educators. Just 12% of faculty had no awareness, and 1/6 of those who did, made no attempt to implement any. Therefore it can be argued that the fall-off in innovation is at a later stage in the change process. Hence efforts to encourage innovation should aim to address the one third of those with awareness who discontinue after a trial and those with a low level of continuance to build on their success. These groups may be a more suitable focus for consideration, in terms of percentage, as well as the fact that they were willing to give an innovation a go, when compared to those who had knowledge but did not try any innovation.

Teasing this out appears to be difficult. The decision to continue seems to come down to personal characteristics, such as desire to find out more, and gender (female twice as likely to continue than male, but the paper does dispel some traditional conceptions about who is innovative and who isn’t!).

However, in terms of practical measures that can be made the following are listed:

  • Practice literature can present an overly rosy picture of implementation. Therefore, when someone trys it and hits an unexpected hurdle (student resistance and complaints, concerns over breadth of content, outcomes not as expected), there is a sense that it isn’t working, and the innovation is discontinued. Therefore it is important that practice literature gives a full and honest account of implementation.
  • Implementation can be modified to the person’s own circumstances, and in modification, the effectiveness of the innovation is lost. Therefore, pitfalls and important issues in the dissemination stage (workshops, talks, etc) should be highlighted.
  • There is evidence that if an innovation is supported by the designer during the implementation phase, the innovation is more successfully implemented.

Now, who wants to do this analysis for UK/Ireland chemistry?!

References

Charles Henderson, Melissa H. Dancy, Magdalena Niewiadomska-Bugaj (2010) Variables that Correlate with Faculty Use of Research-Based Instructional Strategies, 169-172. In Proceedings of the 2010 Physics Education Research Conference.

Charles Henderson & Dancy, M. (2009) The Impact of Physics Education Research on the Teaching of Introductory Quantitative Physics in the United States, Physical Review Special Topics: Physics Education Research, 5 (2), 020107.

*Thanks to my colleague Claire Mc Donnell for giving me this quote: Joel Michael, Advances in Physiology Education, (2006) 30, 159-167.

Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations (4th ed.). New York: Free Press.

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