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….
Tag: chemical education
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.
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…
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…
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…