A tour around Johnstone’s Triangle

In a small laboratory off the M25, is a man named Bob. And Bob is a genius at designing and completing reactions on a very small scale. Bob is greatly helped by Dr Kay Stephenson, Mary Owen and Emma Warwick. I was invited to go down to CLEAPPS to see Bob in action, and try out for myself some of the microscale chemistry he has been developing. I was interested to see it because of a general interest in laboratory expriments and how we can expand our repertoire. But I found out a lot more than just smaller versions of laboratory…

How difficult are Gas Law questions?

At last – a way to quantify if you are asking a nasty question or not! Problem solving imposes a cognitive load on novice learners. Even if the problem is simple (often called exercises, if they involve routine algorithmic tasks), the learner will need to recall how to approach each stage of the exercise in order to solve the entire problem. Thus the question arises: if a problem involves several tasks, does each one add to the cognitive load? Which ones do learners find difficult. This question was addressed for Gas Laws in an interesting paper in Journal of Chemical…

Do you use lecture handouts, and when?

The aim of the “Journal Club” is to present a summary of a journal article and discuss it in the comments below or on social meeja. The emphasis is not on discussing the paper itself (e.g. methodology etc) but more what the observations or outcomes reported can tell us about our own practice. Get involved! It’s friendly. Be nice. And if you wish to submit your own summary of an article you like, please do. (Paper on author’s website). 4. EJ Marsh and HE Sink, Access to Handouts of Presentation Slides During Lecture: Consequences for Learning, 2010, Applied Cognitive Psychology,…