We are now coming up to half way for the webinar series I launched this year. Webinars run monthly, thereabouts, and are on the theme of chemistry education research. I’ve never hosted webinars before so it has been interesting, and when the technology decides not to work, heart-stopping. Useful responses to a post (plea) requesting ideas/guidance are listed here. I think I have incorporated most of the suggestions.
Some thoughts on format
What’s been a real pleasure has been the opportunity to hear speakers I love give a talk. This year, because I was testing the water, I chose speakers who I have heard and who I know will do a good job, and somewhat selfishly that I want to hear again. This led to a list of 42 names scrawled on my office noticeboard, and picking just a few of these was really tough.
Alison Flynn set us off to a stellar talk with a talk that ran the spectrum from methods of doing the research right through to implementation in teaching. This was really popular and meant that it addressed the difficulty of the breadth of audience types. Keith Taber made us think more about methodologies… are experimental approaches appropriate, and what are their limitations? Nathaniel Grove picked up on the format set by Alison, again looking at methods and then looking at implications, and this seems to be a formula that works. In both cases, this meant that a natural break in proceedings was a chance to have a mid-presentation set of questions. And that echoes something I have learned from MICER: people love to discuss. Opportunities for discussion compete with wanting to squeeze as much out of the speakers as possible, and the balance is fine tuned. For an hour slot, thought, 45/15 seems to work out. Nathan’s talk included the guest chair Niki Kaiser; this was really useful as it meant I could focus on technical matters, Niki asked questions, and it also means the whole thing is less “my” webinar series, but one of the community.
How to choose speakers?
As well as the criterion (this time around) of having seen all the speakers present, there was the difficulty of choosing just a few from my list of favourites. Donald Wink is the next speaker in the series. He gave a talk at Gordon CERP last year, which was stellar, probably the best talk I heard in a year of many conferences. It was one of those talks where you stop taking notes and just listen to try to absorb as much as possible. His clarity on discussing case studies is one that I think deserves a very wide audience. Then, we have Nicole Graulich, who won best poster at Gordon CERP, meaning she got to give a short talk at the end of the conference. I was left wanting to hear much more. Ginger is doing some amazing work around students writing, and Vicente… well we all want to hear Vicente. Both of these are again Gordon speakers. I thought that this range of speakers represented some well established figures, some newer to a wider audience, different aspects of chemistry, and a balance of gender. But I’m sure I can choose another set that will fulfill those criteria.
On and on?
Chemistry education research, as a young discipline in the UK, has two difficulties as I see it. One: there is no money. And two: as there is no money, people do a lot of this work in their spare time or squeezed into a very busy day job. That means that things like this tend to get squeezed, and it becomes difficult for people to attend. The purpose of these webinars was to act as a proxy for the academic seminars our colleagues will be used to in chemistry departments, except focussed on education. I have to say I thought that attendance (because of point 2) would be very low, but it has been way above expectations, with lots of discussion in the chat area.
I’d be interested in hearing from people as to whether we should continue with a new series in the Autumn, and proposed ideas for format/speakers. In the mean time, do register for Prof Donald Wink’s seminar, 21st Feb. You won’t be disappointed.