Merced College (3600 M St, Merced, CA, 95348) will be hosting the 2nd Annual Active Learning Conference on January 9th 2019.  This one-day conference will feature a keynote address by Dr. Nika Hogan, an English professor from Pasadena City College and the National Coordinator for the Reading Apprenticeship Project through WestEd and over 10 breakout sessions to choose from.  Dr. Hogan's keynote address is: The Other E-Learning: The Empathy Gap and its Relationship to the Equity Gap In this session, I will invite participants to explore the relationship between equity gaps in higher education and empathy gaps in our culture more broadly. In recent years, empathy has emerged as an important topic of study. Brain research has revolutionized and legitimized the scientific study of how we feel, and in higher education we have become acclimated to the affective revolution, from Paul Tough’s drawing upon attachment theory to help us understand grit to Brene Brown’s assertion that empathy is the antidote to shame, and thus the great enabler of learning and innovation. It is clear that empathy is a critical discipline, a Habit of Mind, and without empathy there can be no equity. But how do you DO empathy? I will propose that the answer is simpler than we think, and perfectly within our reach as college educators. Workshops for this conference include breakouts on active learning in STEM and non-STEM classes, writing good multiple choice questions, best practices with clickers, and others!  Click on the conference webpage below for more information on the conference program, registration form and fees, and breakout session schedule and topics.  This conference includes both breakfast and a (hot) catered lunch.  Registration for this conference closes mid-December.  If you have any questions on the conference or on making travel arrangements, please send me an email at brandon.tenn (at) mccd.edu.  Hope you can make it! http://www.mccd.edu/faculty-staff/alc/index.html ... View more

               It was a Thursday evening as I was relaxing post-workshop and gearing up for summer research when I received a text from my colleague asking if I wanted to teach the summer intro-chem course. I immediately jumped on the opportunity since I have always wanted to get my hands on a chemistry for non-science majors course... the only drawback? The class started that following Tuesday and I have never taught intro chem before! Despite that little set back, I was eager to start planning my learning outcomes, lessons, demonstrations and labs; and was feeling energized after a week long workshop that focused on active learning. To set the scene for you: the course was only 6 weeks long, met every day for an hour and a half for ‘lecture’ and twice a week for lab. The text we used was the ACS Chemistry in Context (9 th Edition, text and lab manual) where we covered Chapters 1 through 5, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 14.  The students ranged from rising sophomores to graduating seniors who majored in disciplines ranging from education, business, math, and philosophy.              At the start, I worked 2-3 hours each night to prepare carefully crafted powerpoint lectures with active learning break outs (more emphasis on the powerpoint lecture).. I believe I found myself relying on more traditional teaching methods because of my lack of confidence in teaching this material. But I quickly noticed the students were having a hard time paying attention and were drifting off.. who can blame them? Who wants to be ‘talked to’ for nearly 2 hours a day every day. After their first exam where grades ranged from low F’s to high A’s with an average of 68%.. I decided I needed to change things up and decided to shut my mouth and flip the course immediately. (This was actually inspired by a book I was reading at the time titled “Teaching with your Mouth Shut” by Donald Finkel.. read it, its great!) I didn’t make lecture videos, I stopped wasting time making power points, and instead allowed the text book to lecture for me by assigning readings associated with each class meeting. I then could spend most of my planning time and efforts in researching and choosing in-class activities that we spent 100% of the time on in class with students working in small and diverse groups. On exam two, the class average was a full letter grade higher than the first exam (76%), which was maintained in exam III and the final.          Students worked in small groups on various in-class activities described below. Because I found it so challenging to find and research the resources I used, I wanted to take a moment to share with you the materials I found helpful and also ask and see if you have an activity, book, demonstration or other resources that you find especially helpful for an intro chem course (Comment below!) Introduction Chemistry: A guided Inquiry (POGIL, 1 st Edition) by Michael Garoutte and Ashley Mahoney published by Wiley. I really wish I had this book from the very start! I requested the exam copy right when I found out I was teaching the course and it took a couple weeks to get to my desk but I was so happy when it arrived! While it wasn’t an all-inclusive resource, it was really valuable and we used a number of activities from the book in class such as the Acid/Base, Molecular Shapes, and Rates and Energies of Reactions activities. The only drawback to this text? It wasn’t put into a real-world context which was the emphasis of the ACS text book and the class. But I did hear lots of “Ah hah!”s  throughout the class meetings. For our nutrition and cooking with chemistry unit, we made pop rocks, rock candy and dipping dots in order to discuss phase changes, recrystalization and how the rate of freezing effects the creaminess of ice cream. Solving Real Problems with Chemistry (2 nd edition) by John Goodwin, David Hanson and Troy Wolfskill; published by Pacific Crest. This is another POGIL-like workbook that incorporates guided reflection on the actual learning process (which unfortunately the students would skip unless somehow incentivized). What I loved about this book (in addition to the reflective process) was the incorporation on intro chem/gen chem concepts into a real-world context. On days that we worked on these activities (such as “Time of Death – When did it Happen” (integrated rate laws) and “Keeping Warm with Carbon-Based Fuels” (enthalpy and heats for reations) I overheard a number of side conversations that related the chemistry to their daily lives in terms of retail, public policy, and CSI! Again, it was a great resource, but didn’t 100% line up with the text/material I was covering so wasn’t an all-inclusive resource. In our forensics unit, students got to test money for trace amounts of drugs and isolated unknown compounds for TLC analysis in order to link a suspect with a murder case. Calculations in Chemistry (2 nd edition) by Donald J. Dahm and Eric A. Nelson, published by W. W. Norton. This was an absolute fantastic resource for my class as the major determining factor for success in my course turned out to be the ability to solve mathematical word problems. I utilized this book as a supplemental tool and aligned sections from this book with the ACS text book for students to use as additional practice. I felt it was well written with lots of guidance and the cost is very effective! I think in future courses I will make this a required resource for the course and wish I had started utilizing it earlier. The students could have really benefited from me spending a day or two at the start of class learning and practicing basic word problem analysis and dimensional analysis without necessarily going straight into chemical concepts. Other various online resources I pilfered several other various resources from the web such as the new ACS Reactions Video Series (this is a great tool for engaging and contextualizing chemistry for folks with no science background and I am constantly sharing these videos through social media), the Legacy High School Chemistry POGIL activities, and for our forensics unit the Mixed Reception Activity by the ChemCollective. We also used the PhET simulations in class as well to demonstrate balancing reactions and phase changes. Student feedback on the course: " I feel much more prepared and really learned a lot" " The class was enjoyable and related to our daily life so we felt we would actually use this information... I found the worksheets helpful" "She created an environment that was comfortable to ask questions and dig deep into certain areas that were not understood well or people were interested in" "Class structure of handing out worksheets and learning in groups how to do them on top of her guidance was probably the best way for me to learn" "Less lecture, more practice seemed to work well in this class" Again, by no means is this meant to be an exhaustive list of useful tools for intro chem and I would love to hear your own preferences and ideas. But after writing this post... I am left with one question: Wouldn’t it be nice if we had one all-inclusive resource that was flexible and incorporated context-based active learning for our students? By no means can I require my students to purchase 1 text book, 1 lab manual, and 3 work books for a 6-week course. What say you? I’d love to hear your feedback, comment below: ... View more

The digital divide between the digital have’s and have-not’s is essentially non existent. In a typical class, less than 5% of the students in my classes at Merced College do not have access to, or own either a smart device or laptop. In fact most of my students purchased smart phones before I did (last fall). Using a student response system in-class has increased student participation in discussions and problem solving sessions. In order to provide all students with the ability to participate, I applied for and received funding from the Merced College Foundation to purchase three iPad-mini’s for use in my classroom by students who do not have a device to use. Since flipping my classes, I’ve used three polling programs for in-class assessment: Polleverywhere.com, Socrative, and REEF Polling. Listed below are the pro’s and con’s of each response system. Response System Pro's Con's Polleverywhere.com FREE Can be incorporated directly into PowerPoint Students text answers via any type of phone Variety of output formats Great for formative assessments Great way to get feedback from large groups during meetings, classes, etc. (with paid acct) Anonymous Must be setup prior to use Cannot be used to assign points Students cannot change their answers after submission Students must be present in order to participate. Higher-ed limit of 40 responses per poll (free account) Socrative FREE Can program questions directly into program or provide students means to answer Multiple choice, T/F or Short Answer questions Variety of activities (single question, quiz, space race) Responses anonymous No option for numeric answers Assigning points from Socrative must be done manually Students cannot change their answer after submission Quick answer questions are not sent to student’s phones, so student must be in class to receive question. REEF Polling Very easy setup Students can change answers until instructor stops poll Multiple Choice, Short Answer, Numeric, Target question types Records individual student scores Screenshot of each question saved to student’s account (along with student’s answer and the correct answer) Built in attendance feature (optional use of GPS to verify student location) Editable online attendance sheet and gradebook. Can participate when not physically in class Quiz feature requires a printed problem set. Paid subscription for students I currently am using REEF Polling in all of my classes. Students last Spring had the opportunity to try both Socrative and REEF Polling. In a poll, 87% of that class preferred REEF Polling over Socrative so I’ve required REEF Polling in my classes since Fall 2017.  Last semester I had a student with an extreme anxiety disorder. REEF Polling allowed that student to participate in the daily problem sets from home, and the student did very well in the class. The use of student polling programs in my class have made my students more willing to participate in problem solving, fostered discussion between students, and has enriched the student's in-class experience. ... View more

Keeping students actively engaged during class has been shown over and over again to increase student learning (http://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8410.abstract).  Active learning studies have often focused on the activities students do while in the classroom but not on the methodology used to deliver content. Often PowerPoint slides play an integral role in how information is transferred between the instructor and students, but because PowerPoint slides are often pre-programmed, they seem very impersonal, inflexible and rigid. If someone were to ask me what is the biggest difference between a traditional and flipped classroom, I would say flexibility. In the traditional class, we feel pressured to get through the material, before the session is complete and stress levels rise, on both sides of the podium, when time becomes short. In classes where instructors use PowerPoint, the right arrow key becomes the driving force for the in-class experience. Solutions to problems, if present, are already typed into the slides. Animations, sounds, and other effects may help the slide show seem more interactive, but slideshows still tend to feel rigid. One way to get around the seeming rigidity of PowerPoint slides, is to use a drawing tablet, to annotate the slides via the PowerPoint pointer, pen, and highlighter tools located on the lower left hand corner of the slide (after starting the slideshow). In this way, the PowerPoint slides can be treated as an extension of the classroom whiteboard. Not all of the facts need to be typed into the slides. Bulleted lists, problem solutions, concept explanations, etc. can all be added onto the slides, in yourhandwriting, while running the slideshow. After the class, the annotations can be kept (and saved) or discarded. If kept, all annotations on one slide become a single image – which can then be easily deleted later if necessary.  Not only do in-class annotions allow instructors to modify explanations, but it turns the rigid, often dry PowerPoint slides into something that is both flexible, personal, and interactive.  For information on other in-class annotation tools, see a post Kevin Revell wrote on Tools for In-Class Annotation. ... View more

Another semester has come and gone, and I am still continuing to recount my flipping journey with my flipped biochemistry course at Birmingham-Southern College. While I primarily write these blog posts for my own process of reflection, I hope my flipping readers will gain some insight from these posts as well. If you need to catch up, check out the series in this order:  Flippn' Biochemistry In Defense of the Flip Flippn' Biochemistry, Part II In Defense of the Flip, Part II After reflection from the Fall 2015 semester in terms of the CAT test, student evaluations, and the SALG survey, I had decided to test out some new ideas on the mechanics of the course in the Fall of 2016 such as: Model the in-class activities for the first week of class within a larger group, or start out with an activity that utilizes content most students are already comfortable with. Make a more concerted effort to connect the lecture videos with the in-class activities and remind students that the videos are simply there to help deliver the content they need to apply in the face to face activities. This was achieved by adding a brief 30 second introduction of each video lecture that explicitly summarized the purpose of the video, and aligned that face to face activities learning objectives with the content of the proceeding video. Substitute the muddiest points discussion board for the embedded lecture quiz videos. This component evolved mainly from consistent student feedback that they wanted more "muddiest point lectures" at the start of class, but still were not posting questions for me to address in these lectures the night before. So this term, students were required to post 1 question about the material from the video lecture or from the chapter materials and attempt to answer 1 other student's question prior to our face to face meetings. This alleviated two challenges I had faced: (a) I know consistently had relevant material to address in the first 10 minutes of class that typically always fed well into the activity and (b) served as a means to ensure students attempted to watch the videos or read the material prior to class. In previous years, I had attempted to ensure students prepare by embedding simple content based questions into the videos directly, or by requiring weekly online homework assignments. But both relied on lower Bloom's level questions which seemed misaligned with the exams and were confusing to the students and students found ways to cheat the system without actually having to put in the work. By requiring them to come up with original questions and reading through other student's questions, they found it more challenging to simply skim the material and were better prepared for classes. Technology Survey: As in past years, students were given a mid-semester survey asking them to rate the various tools from the course on their ability to help promote critical thinking a scale of 1 (not helpful or distracting) to 10 (very beneficial). As seen in the figure below, we continued to improve the appreciation for most of the course tools from 2014 (light blue), 2015 (gray) and 2016 (dark blue). As seen above, I believe that the increased appreciation for the POGIL activities and video lectures from 2015 to 2016 is a reflection of better connecting the course learning objectives with the in-class activities. Throughout the term I consciously repeated and aligned the course and specific unit learning objectives in the introduction of each video and at the start of each class. One potential alternative to the significant increase in the POGIL appreciation could be the that students had access to the 2015 in-class exams that were much more reflective of the POGIL of which the 2015 students did not have. By seeing ahead of time that the exams and the activities are very similar, I think the students are more engaged and appreciative of the practice.  Another significant change from 2015 to 2016 was the utilization of the course TA, as reflected in the "Recitation" category. In 2015 I recognized that having a TA for the course would be incredibly helpful for both me and my students, and during that term, the TA would facilitate the in-class activities with me. In 2016, however, I decided to instead allow the TA to hold weekly recitation meetings with students that allowed time for additional exercises, followup with the in-class activities and time to go over previous exams outside of class. These sessions were held in the evenings and were voluntary. As seen in the survey, the students greatly appreciated these meetings and it seemed to be a much better use of the TA's time. (In previous years, the recitation was scored as the "Facebook group" which provided students an opportunity to post questions or share material outside of class). But again, as we have seen in previous years, the students favorite tool for promoting critical thinking is still the course management page (moodle), and it continues to grow in appreciation. But I am happy to see that the POGIL activities and previous year's exams are closing in.  Student Evaluations: In comparing my student evaluations from 2014 to 2016, I have found significant improvements in student perceptions of the course design and my effectiveness as an instructor. Specifically, I have found significant improvements in students' perceptions in the following: The course was intellectually stimulating The course improved my ability to think critically and reason effectively The instructor promoted understanding of general concepts not just knowledge of specific facts. The instructor's overall teaching effectiveness. One of the key challenges in flipped teaching is that getting everything working well takes time, and often during that time, our evaluations from students can take a major hit. For the non-tenured, early career faculty, this can be a major concern as student evaluations are often taken into consideration during the promotion and tenure process. However, I am happy to say that after performing standard T-tests with my overall Fall 2016 scores to that of the entire BSC faculty, I have found no significant differences between my evaluations and those of my peers even while flipping. Student Comments: Even the comments from the students seemed more optimistic: "By clearly giving us the objectives" "She has provided us with good lecture material in the form of videos, powerpoints, etc. I also enjoyed the group work:" "Making me appreciate biochem and critical thinking between multiple disciplines. Particularly between biology, chemistry and physics." "This has been one of the best classes I've taken at BSC. It was interesting, I felt like all of my questions were answered, and I had fun." "Honestly this may be the best class I've ever taken here at BSC and even in high school. She did the best at making the information interesting, and was very organized." "Connected the class to real world topics - this made the class much more interesting." "She made this course interesting to where I wanted to learn more and ask questions. It helped me understand the major concepts associated with the biochemical pathways, and I know this will help me in the future." That's not to say all of the feedback was glowing: "STEM classes shouldn't be flipped because they are based on understanding of concepts, not opinion formulation like humanities classes. This material is too complex for us to learn on our own, which is why we pay $17,000 for tuition at this school." "The class cannot be taught this way. POGIL can be used for humanities and intro bio/chem classes but not for advanced classes. I needed to teach everything to myself and mostly just remembering POGIL activities." That being said, those were the only two vehemently against the flipped model comments I ran across in the student comments this year. Most of the other feedback was actually constructive such as "Give more time in class" , "Please provide more supplemental material", "Update some of the later term videos", and "have recitation times that all students can attend".  Changes for next year: Based on the feedback from both my students and my colleagues at BSC, I am making three changes for the course next year: 1. I am extending the face to face class time by moving the class from a M/W/F lecture at 1 hour each meeting to a M/W lecture at 1 hour and 20 minutes each meeting. While this does reduce my overall face to face time by 3.3 hours total over the course of the term, it allows us to not feel rushed through the muddiest points lecture and the in-class activities, and provides 10 minutes at the end of class to review the activity as a group, providing immediate feedback and closure.  2. I have recently received funds from BSC to construct a lightboard studio in which I can make more live-action lecture and supplemental videos where students can now physically see me lecturing and modeling problem solving strategies versus my voice over power-point videos. It is my hope that if they physically see me lecturing instead of simply hearing me, that they will be more engaged with the videos and the concept of "self-teaching" is minimized while the perception of learning is maximized.  3. By moving the class from M/W/F to M/W, I now know that all students will have that same time slot on Friday's open for the recitation (or supplemental instruction), alleviating scheduling conflicts between the students and the TA. I am also hoping to pick up two TAs next year, one that can focus on the recitations (the Friday time and then maybe a second evening time slot earlier in the week for convenience), and one TA who can work with me during the classes to facilitate the activities.  Here's to another great year, another great learning opportunity, and on to the next! Happy flippn' journey to you all! ... View more

In lab, I’ve constantly found myself trying to come up with a good way to explain how students should do a measurement and take a reading.  This is a challenge both in my General Chemistry I labs and in my Analytical Chemistry course.  Our goal is to teach the students how to (literally) look at the experiment the same way as an expert would, and I have been convinced for some time that technique videos are a great fit for flipped chemistry approaches:  By moving the lecture out of the lab, we leave more lab time to actually do the experiment in-class, focusing more time for feedback on the nuance of their technique.  Further, with technique videos, students can revisit the techniques (finesse included) as they think through their post-lab assignments. I have tried to make technique videos in past semesters, but these have had a number of shortcomings that undercut my goals.  Few humans I’ve met have more than 2 hands, myself included.  Using one to hold a camera left me with a clumsy and artificial technique, which is a tremendous challenge in demonstrating analytical-quality lab technique.  The focal point of my camera slid in and out of focus, making it hard to see a meniscus or glassware markings.  The shifting field of view made it challenging to tell what I’m actually looking at.  And, worse still, the viewer could only see where my eyes OR my hands were working, but not both simultaneously.  A tripod-mounted camera addressed some of these issues and allowed the viewer to see more of the gross movements of a technique, but cost us all the close-up details that are so critical. Recently, I decided to blend these two approaches in conjunction with David Jaeger, the Director of Web, E-Learning, and Publication Services here at Florida Gulf Coast University.  Dave had approached me about comparing the efficacy of learning from first person vs. third person views of laboratory techniques.  In order to make Dave’s videos, we worked together to list each discrete action or reading that I took when making a laboratory measurement.  We planned to make videos for the use of an analytical balance, a volumetric pipette, and a buret; I use our list of ‘actions’ to guide me, and Dave monitored what else he observed me doing.  This dual approach captured the complete sequence of events that took place while doing a measurement, and ensured that my own experienced technique did not create ‘blind-spots’ where I forgot that a student was missing a skill or instinct.  Dave plans to run experiments with student subjects to determine when the first- vs. third-person view is more useful. My focus was different, but collinear with his goals: I wanted to develop videos that would teach the students how to best use the glassware with analytical-quality lab technique.  My thinking was that since the first- and third-person views have complementary strengths and weaknesses, I might be able to address the weaknesses of each by combining them.  I decided that I wanted to develop a split-screen video.  One portion of the screen would be my direct point-of-view recording (1 st person, which I dubbed the ‘expert eye’ view) while the other was a tripod-mounted over-the-shoulder recording (the ‘wide view’, aka 3 rd person over-the-shoulder).  In practice, we had two wide-view cameras, and I retained them both in the final test video. I will be trying this approach in Spring 2015 with my Analytical Chemistry students, and will be making these videos available to this semester’s General Chemistry I teaching team.  An example video can be found at the link below, and I welcome feedback! Video Link : 1826   Helpful advice in making similar videos: For the first-person view, we used a pair of video-recording sunglasses with clear lenses swapped in to make them look more like safety glasses in the video. (These glasses are often worn by action/adventure sports participants to record videos.)  The camera is in the nosepiece.  It was challenging to keep the hardware in-frame, since the camera and your eyes may not be pointed quite the same. After some trial and error, we found that it was best to calibrate the glasses before recording.  We accomplished this by making a crosshair on one lens with dry-erase marker, then recording for a few seconds to see it the videos was correctly centered, then moving the crosshairs and repeating the process until the video was satisfactorily centered.  Particularly if this crosshair is on the eye away from the camera, this is invisible in the final video – and is hard to notice even when the other camera can see the eyewear. A backdrop is advisable, since the cameras will be recording at different angles and unrelated and distracting background material can easily enter the frame. Even with a heavy cloth backdrop (borrowed from the Campus-related PBS TV station) and the blinds drawn, you can still see light seeping through the backdrop.  We set the curtain up in a u-shape around the bench to best mask the surroundings. In order to sync the two camera recordings later, I clapped my hands a single time – this provided a sound cue that we could easily spot in Camtasia in the audio track, and provided a time=0 point. I did my best to not talk during recording, unless I did so while keeping my mouth as still as possible (ventriloquist style). In test runs, we both found it deeply distracting to see me in the video talking out-of-sync with the new narration, and found that the original soundtrack recording was usually too noisy to understand due to hoods in the background and such. ... View more

[originally posted January 2015]   Heath Giesbrecht teaches intro, general, and organic chemistry at Houston Community College-Southeast College.  He came across my radar because of his terrific library of teaching videos on YouTube.  He has some of the best whiteboard presentations I've seen, and covering a wide array of topics.  I'll be adding some of these to the Tools and Resources section over the coming weeks.   I had an opportunity to talk with Heath recently, and am happy to share the conversation here:   Heath, your video library is fantastic.  How did you get started with this?    Thanks, Kevin! As a chemistry educator myself, I really appreciate what you are doing on flippedchemistry.com, so the compliment means a lot coming from you. I want to start off by saying that more than anything I am happy to have been able to produce a library of videos that so many people, students and instructors alike, have expressed to me they found useful. The response from everyone has been wonderful.   In Spring 2010, while I was teaching chemistry at a different institution, I was assigned to develop and teach an online Introductory Chemistry class. While working on this project, I felt the project necessitated me to record videos of the live lectures from my face-to-face class for the online version, both for consistency and impartiality. These lectures lasted about 1-1 ½ hours and consisted of my voice over the PowerPoint slides. Honestly, the student response in the online class to these long videos was poor to say the least. This led me to start thinking of and pursuing alternative ways to engage the students online.   I started to experiment with recording short videos, either as a mini-lecture, a laboratory demonstration, or a solved problem format, with the camera recording me at the whiteboard in front of my class. The students found these to be more appealing and attention-grabbing than the monotonous voice-over lectures, and were enthusiastic to get me to record videos in this style during class and office hours. Students from my other courses found out that I was making these videos for the Intro class and many of them requested that I record videos for their classes (ie. General Chemistry I/II, Organic I/II). I was excited to do so, particularly because of their overall enthusiasm. Unfortunately, two years down the road, I was informed by the DE & IT Director that the sheer number of videos was beginning to overload the college’s server and they would have to be deleted. After losing several hundred of them, I was compelled to move the whole of the collection to YouTube without thinking much about the external impact of the decision.   After two months from the time I posted them, I had more views on my videos using the YouTube channel, than I had for two years while they were on the institution’s server and their popularity continues to grow three years later. When I first established my YouTube channel there were very few channels or videos that had been created by professionals; most of the channels I found around that time were created by amateurs and had many mistakes and inconsistencies. When I started receiving questions and thank you comments from chemistry students all over the world I knew I had to continue not only because I loved teaching chemistry, but because of the free help that the channel was noticeably providing. 2.  How many videos have you produced?   Whenever my students want me to record one for them I’ll do it, as a result I’m regularly adding videos to the library. I know for sure the channel has more than 1100 videos. 3.  How long does it take you to produce each one?   What the viewer gets with my videos is essentially the raw class recordings of a single lecture topic or example problem, hopefully containing a few student responses and maybe a few questions at the end from the students who prompted the recording.   Since I am not very technologically savvy, save for cropping the end of a few of my videos, I refrain from editing them, thus saving me a significant amount of time. In other words, when a student wants me to record a video, I just walk up to the camera, push the record button, work through a problem during class or office hours, and finally upload the video to the YouTube channel. Overall, from initially pressing record to having the completed video uploaded takes about ten minutes for the average five minute video, if I am only doing one. Usually though, I record several videos on the same day, so before I leave work, I begin uploading and they will be on the channel when I return the next morning. So, really the recording time is the longest portion of the process. 4.  How do you use these with your classes?   For my classes, the YouTube content is used in specific course-dependent ways.   In my hybrid courses, my students do not come to class for a lecture section at all, so the videos are used as the exclusive lecture material. I have complete sets of videos for Introductory Chemistry, General Chemistry I and II, and Organic I, so I can and do teach all of these courses in the hybrid format.   In my face-to-face classes, I use the videos strictly as supplementary material. In saying that, I allow my students the ability to choose individually several format options while attending the class. The way I structure my 3 hour lecture period is as follows, 1-1 ½ hours of lecture then problem solving sessions for the rest of the period. Accordingly, if a student prefers the traditional lecture style, they will come for the beginning of class. If they prefer the flipped style where we go over things like extra problem sets, homework, and practice exams, the student has the option to skip the lecture portion and only come when we are working on the worksheet material. This is the time I often find my students wanting me to record videos. Finally, if a student prefers the hybrid format and has signed up for the face-to-face class, I allow them to watch the lecture videos and only come in for the labs, quizzes, and exams. Conversely, if the student prefers the face-to-face format and has signed up for a hybrid class, they are able to sit in on another section if they so choose. 5.  Which of your classes do you flip? Introductory Chemistry, General Chemistry I and II, and Organic I can all be flipped solely with the video content I have created. I am also working on completing the set of Organic II videos and I envision that I will be able to flip it within the next couple of semesters. ... View more

[Originally published on September 23, 2015] This semester, I'm working on pre-lab videos for our organic 1 sequence. I've done a couple of short "how-to" videos in lab using just my phone. I like using Camtasia for video editing, but it accepts a limited number of file types, and I can't embed the quicktime video from my phone directly into Camtasia. I assume others have encountered this challenge as well, and I wanted to share two solutions - one a bit cleaner, and one a bit quicker: The Right Way: A File Conversion Tool Our local AV guru recommends Wondershare Video Converter Pro. For high-quality videos, this is definitely the way to go. The Quick Way: Use Embed the Video Using Office Mix Office Mix is a very powerful add-on that is available for Powerpoint. Using this tool, you can record clips from any video file - Youtube, Vimeo, or wherever, and import it into your Powerpoint presentation. I also use the Camtasia add-in for Powerpoint, so this is a nice trick for incorporating video without doing a file conversion. For example, this week the students are using a rotovap for the first time. In last week's lab, I had a student quickly film me setting up the rotovap. I emailed myself the video. I was able to then "clip" the part of the video I wanted directly into the powerpoint presentation. The whole thing took only a couple minutes. Here's a segment from the completed video:  Video Link : 1827 With a little more time, I'd love to slow down, script it out, plan my motions, and have everything a little more polished. But at this point in the semester, I have to be content with a "good enough" production - and this seems like a nice, quick way to get there. ... View more

[originally posted spring 2015] This spring, I’m teaching one of my favorite courses: Intro Chem. It’s an evening class, two nights a week, 144 students. The class is a requirement for a number of applied science majors. Many students are nervous about taking chemistry, and some have put it off until their senior year. This year, I’ve had some time to reflect on what has (and hasn’t) worked in the past, I’ve gathered ideas from many of you. I’m re-designing the course, with several innovations. Over the next couple of weeks, I’m planning to write in more detail about some of these. For new, here’s a broad overview of a couple of them: Beta-testing the REEF clicker system I’ve never used a clicker system before, but the evidence suggests it makes a big difference, especially for large classes. The REEF polling system is the next-generation of I>clicker, and is set to premiere for real in the fall. It’s an app-based, bring-your-own-device system. I’m looking forward to seeing how this works – if any of your clicker veterans have suggestions, I’d love to hear them! Using my own book I’m in the process of writing my own textbook, with the first 10 chapters (of 13) in the review stage. This semester, I’m making the chapters available to the students in PDF form. This will give me a chance to see how it works in-class, and polish the organization a little bit. Rethinking the out-of-class content The organization of the new text is a little different than what I used last year. As a result, I’m having to re-do and re-think some of the video content. One of the things I’m doing is giving students the option of reading OR watching the video – I think this appeals to different learning styles. For example, here’s my Canvas page for Wednesday: With the video content, I’ve decided to focus primarily on big-picture topics, giving an overview of why the topic is important, then including the key ideas. Practice problems will be handled in class. For example, here’s a new video I prepared on units, precision, accuracy, and significant digits. It sets the stage for the in-class materials, such as calculations involving sig figs. https://vimeo.com/album/4086381/video/86152564 I’m going to have to come to grips with my perfectionist streak. The video above took way too long to produce. Moving forward, I’m going to have to be content with simpler formats, and non-scripted, tablet annotations rather than extensive PowerPoint annotations. I love producing these, but I don’t know if they’re feasible for the whole semester. ... View more

[Originally published on August 13, 2015] Most chemistry classes, including mine, rely heavily on in-class annotations. To do this, instructors need an annotation tool that integrates smoothly with the flow of class. Here is a brief review of several tools I've tried: 1. Drawboard PDF.  This is my new favorite tool, and the one I'm planning to use this fall. It features a small pallet that minimizes when not in use (the pallet is the small hexagon in the image below). When you first open this app, it will ask you if you are using your finger or a stylus. It differentiates touch and stylus better than anything else I've seen. I can rest my palm on the screen without any stray marks, but still easily swipe to scroll to the next slide. The drawing is crisp - great for organic. Cost: $10 2. Journal Note Writer.  I have several colleagues who build their slide decks in JNW, and use it exclusively. The color pallet is easy to access, and the writing is smooth - with the occasional stray mark from the hand on the screen. A couple drawbacks I've encountered: I like doing my slides in PowerPoint, which means I'm transferring my files to .jnt format before class, then to .pdf if I want to make them available to my students afterward. Also, sometimes pictures/shading don't transfer well when printing to a .jnt file. ChemDraw used to be very problematic, although it seems less so now. If Drawboard doesn't work out, I'll go back to JNW. 3. PDF Annotator.  This program works pretty well, and I used it for several years. It prints from Powerpoint more cleanly than Journal Note Writer, and has an unobtrusive pallet that can be hidden to one side. The drawback is the price: In an era of free or inexpensive apps, this one costs $59.95. 4. PowerPoint.  Especially with the addition of Office Mix, PowerPoint has become much more versatile in the last couple of years. It's annotation used to be really clunky - it's smoother now, but I still inadvertently advance slides while trying to annotate about 20 times every class. I used PowerPoint last semester with my Intro Chem class, because the animation capabilities outweighted the hassle of the annotation features. 5. Bamboo Paper.  I've taken a liking to this paper notebook app - It doesn't use PDF, but you can import images one at a time. The interface is pretty simple, it writes smoothly, and I believe it was free (or under $5). ... View more

[Originally published by John Osterhout on August 17, 2015]   I polled the students in my flipped General Chemistry II class to see what they found useful for their studies. At the beginning of the Spring 2015 semester, we made a list of things they could do to help themselves learn chemistry. At the end of the semester I asked them to rate the things that we discussed. Here are some of the results. This post is a follow up to my earlier post The Flipped Classroom: To Video or Not to Video. My Flipped Class After a class, I post a handout on Blackboard that contains the reading assignments and the learning objectives for the next class. The handout also contains a brief introduction (which few student read) and a list of vocabulary words. When I can find appropriate content, I provide links to videos. The videos that I have used include ChemTours (Norton), ThinkWell videos (Cengage) and Khan Academy videos (more about the videos later). Online homework covering the material in the reading assignment is due the night before each class. I assign on average about six problems, although the number varies depending upon the material. In class, the first exercise is a quiz that has five questions about the assigned material, two questions over the previous day's material and a bonus question that is extra credit. The students have been told that the first quiz question covers the first learning objective and so on down the list. The quizzes consist of the simplest possible questions that relate to the day's learning objectives. The role of the quiz is mostly to see if the students made any effort to internalize the learning objectives. The students work in groups of four for the quizzes and I observe that this engenders some lively discussions. After the quiz, I give the students a worksheet that contains more complicated problems. The worksheet is also done in groups of four. I spend the class time walking around the classroom helping the groups as requested. I post the answers to the quiz and worksheet questions on Blackboard. These became available a few minutes after the end of class. The next homework assignment contains problems from the previous class's material and from the new material for the next class. All of the sections of General Chemistry take group exams so the students are tested over the material on the same day using the same exam. The Poll Since there were no lectures or required video lectures, the emphasis was on the learning objectives. I tried to make it clear to the students in the beginning that it was up to them to figure out how to learn. At the beginning of the class, we listed off a set of resources that the student had at their disposal. The poll concerns which of these that the students used and which were useful. The question on the poll was: What did you do to help yourself? I asked them to rate each of the resources that we had discussed. There were five possible answers for each resource: A = Did not use, score = 0, B = Not useful, score = 1, C = A little useful, score = 2, D = Moderately useful, score = 3, and E = Most useful, score = 4. The average score = (0*A+1*B+2*C+3*D+4*E)/100. Forty-one students from my two sections of General Chemistry II took the poll. Not all of the students who were registered in the two classes took the poll. The Answers Rank Resources Score Use by Students(%) 1 Worksheets & keys 3.8 100 2 Daily quizzes 3.3 100 3 Study with other students 2.8 90 4 Internet 2.8 98 5 Online homework 2.7 100 6 Hard copy textbook 2.3 88 7 Chem tours 2.0 80 8 ACS Study Guide 1.8 59 9 Kahn Academy videos 1.8 71 10 Evening tutorial sessions 1.8 63 11 Self-identified videos 1.4 56 12 Office hours 1.4 49 13 Training Center 1.2 44 14 UC Davis Wiki 1.2 49 15 Thinkwell Videos 1.1 46 16 Online textbook 1.0 49 17 Office appointments 0.9 34 Notes on the resources: “Internet” was not further defined – it was meant as a catch-all for things internet but presumably not the tools named directly, such as Khan Academy Videos. The online homework was delivered the SmartWorks system from Norton. The textbook was Chemistry: The Science in Context, 4th Edition, Gilbert, Kirss, Foster, Daves, W. W. Norton & Compan, New York/London. The online textbook was delivered though the SmartWorks login. ChemTours were short (less than 10 minutes usually) animated tutorials on chemical topics assessed through the SmartWorks system. ThinkWell videos are longer, lecture-like videos from Cengage. Khan Academy videos were either assigned or found by the students. I gave two tutorial sessions per week for one hour from 5 pm to 6 pm on Monday and Wednesday and had four scheduled office hours 1-2 pm (before the chem labs) on Monday through Thursday. Office appointments were tutoring outside my regular office hours scheduled in advance by the students. The UC Davis ChemWiki was listed in the beginning as a resource. The Tutoring Center is run by Angelo State University, and usually has a chemistry tutor present. The Fate of Videos In my previous post, I asked “Do the students need to have knowledge spoken to them in order to learn?” During the Spring semester the students could use four different types of videos: ThinkWell, ChemTours, Khan Academy and other, self-identified videos. The videos were far down in the rankings: ChemTours (7th), Khan academy (9th), Self-identified (11th), and ThinkWell (15th). There seems to be a correlation here with length: the ChemTours were the shortest, the Khan Academy generally longer and the ThinkWell videos were forty-five minutes plus, covered big chunks of content, and were made to replace classroom lectures, which they strongly resembled. In talking with colleagues, I find that they echo this result: students won't willingly watch long videos outside class. In the beginning of my flipping experiments, my students complained bitterly that I didn't lecture. When provided with lecture-like videos, they won't use them.   The Most Useful – The Top Six Worksheets and Keys. I posted the keys to the daily worksheets immediately after the class ended. The keys provided examples of five or six worked out problems per day for the students. Many students made notebooks of the keys, some simply corrected their own worksheets. Daily quizzes. The keys for these were posted along with those for the worksheets. These also provided sources of problems to study. Study with other students. I meant this to mean “out of class” study with other students but many may have construed this as “group work in class” as well. Next time I'll make the choices more explicit. Internet. Where would we be without the internet? I know from talking with the students that they used the internet to search for solutions for their online homework, for explanations of the learning objectives, and for clarification of the textbook. Online homework. Talking to the students, you would think that the online homework was the work of the devil. Then it winds up in the top five—go figure. I use the homework to trap the students into engaging the material before they have the quizzes and worksheets in class. If nothing else, they must do some kind of preparation in order to be able to do the homework problems. The hard-copy textbook. Most of the students bought a hard-copy book. They all had access to the ebook through their online homework system. I was pleased to see that the textbook scored as highly as it did. As time stumbles on, I feel that the students are becoming less capable of or at least less willing to use books as learning tool.   The Least Useful – The Bottom Five The tutoring center. I was surprised that the utilization of the tutoring center (44%) was as high as it was, but a utilization of 44% had the effect of lowering the score, since "did not use" = 0 score. The UC Davis Chem Wiki. The students had a hard time navigating the wiki. They couldn't find the appropriate information by searching the wiki and when they did, the answers were too involved or the nomenclature was too different from the textbook to be useful. ThinkWell videos. As a professor, I think these are great. The students, not so much. The knock on these videos is that they are too long (45 minutes plus). Why forgo lectures in a flipped classroom if you just have to sit through them outside class? Online textbook. About four students brought laptops to class and used the online textbook in class. The rest brought or shared a hard copy book. There were a few students who tried to use their cell phones to access their textbooks, which proved difficult since the screen is so small and since I outlaw cell phone use in class. The big loser, office appointments. Two students used office appointments regularly because my regular office hours conflicted with their classes. The others would mainly drift in before the exams for a quick tune-up. Note on office hours in general: only one male came to my office hours during the entire semester. This has been my experience over a number of years and seems to the be the experience of others as well. The ratio of women to men in my evening tutorials was about 6:1.   Moving Forward I can correlate these data with the grades and with scores on the American Chemical Society final exams. I am sorting through the data now. I can tell you this: there is not a simple correlation between the number of resources used and the final grade. I will look at what the A and B students found useful and compare that to the student will lower grades. I'll let you know how it turns out. ... View more

[originally posted spring 2015] We introduce nuclear magnetic resonance topics in the second semester of organic chemistry lab. During the first two weeks of lab, we spend time lecturing on proton and carbon NMR theory and spectral interpretation with some built-in time for students to work on practice problems, learn NMR processing software (ACD/Labs NMR Processor), and become familiar with our NMR instrument. In the past, I lectured for a little over an hour using PowerPoint, then had students work on several problem sets. This approach was less than ideal. Students got very restless over the lecture portion of the lab period and would later tell me that it felt like too much information coming too fast. Further, because I spent so much time lecturing, students didn’t have enough time to work through the problems and ask questions during the lab period. I began to look for a way to make the lab less overwhelming to students, more interactive and engaging, and incorporate more time for problem solving. I have been producing video lectures and flipping some topics in lecture for over five years now, with some success. Flipping a laboratory topic such as NMR seemed more and more appealing, so I decided to try it out this year. I recorded my usual PowerPoint presentation, but instead of one hour-long video for students to watch, I broke up the lecture into five shorter videos (approximately 10-12 minutes each) focusing on NMR theory, chemical shifts, electronic shielding, integration, and spin-spin splitting. Students were given a week before the lab period to watch the videos and be ready to work problems. They were able to print the PowerPoint slides and bring them to lab to refer to them while working on the assignments. Students, while working in small groups, were given a graded multiple choice assessment to complete by the end of the period. This assessment was used to test the basic knowledge covered in the videos. Students were also given take-home assignments of spectral interpretation problems to be turned in the following week. One major difference I noticed was that students needed much more time to complete the multiple choice assessment than in the past, when I conducted the lecture at the beginning of lab. This could be a consequence of students not watching the videos (though nearly all students claimed to have watched them) or not having the information “fresh” on their minds. So next semester I plan to use this multiple choice assessment as a pre-lab activity instead. Overall, flipping NMR worked out well for me because of the extra time I was able to spend with each small group of students, answering questions and discussing common errors/pitfalls. It was particularly nice in lab where the total number of students is much smaller than in a lecture class. The added benefit to students was that they were able to start and progress further through the take-home assignments during lab than in the past. As a result, students scored higher on the take home assignments, presumably because they were able to ask more questions and get extra help from me and from each other. The flipped approach seems to have helped me achieve my goals of making NMR more engaging and approachable to students. It was also enormously more fun than the traditional “lecture – then problems” approach used in the past. One additional consideration in favor of flipping NMR is that the recorded videos can be made available to any lab instructor for use in their lab sections. This can benefit those lab instructors who are comfortable guiding students through problem-solving activities, but who might not be as experienced or comfortable with lecturing on the material. Moreover, flipping NMR (or other laboratory topics for that matter) could be very useful for coordination of content across the multiple lab sections. ... View more

[Originally Posted Fall 2014] Over the years that my children were making their way through elementary school, I became the go to science volunteer. Times were tough for the teachers as they were adapting to new science achievement testing. Many of my elementary school teacher friends were feeling the pain of not only having to beef up their own science content knowledge, but to also learn to teach science using active, inquiry methods. The days of opening the book and defining science vocabulary words were over! At about the time my youngest son was attending kindergarten (2007), I began to think - “What do we do at my own institution to prepare elementary teachers to teach science?” I learned that our elementary teachers were herded through all the regular non-majors, large lecture courses and were required to take a total of 12 hours of science. They then had a “science methods” course their senior year.  Those large lecture courses were very much using the telling is teaching model – I know because I taught the non-science majors chemistry sequence for 6 years.  As conventional wisdom will attest, those who raise a concern end up being tapped to solve the problem! I ended up co-leading an interdisciplinary group of science faculty to develop a new four semester sequence of inquiry based science courses for pre-service elementary teachers.  I had been teaching chemistry in the lecture format for over ten years. However, the process of learning how people learn science changed my own personal teaching philosophy. Telling people what I took years to figure out was not an acceptable way to facilitate the construction of solid science principles for future teachers. By working outside my comfort level with other science faculty, I had authentic learning experiences in physics and geology using constructivist, inquiry methods. As a result of this experience - I knew I couldn’t go back to my “old” tell them and drill them style of teaching. High teaching evaluations and litany of teaching awards aside – I knew I wasn’t really advancing learning – I was just facilitating fact gathering. What does this have to do with the flipped classroom? Fast-forward four years – the course transformation program was launched on our campus. Chemistry was selected as a “gate keeper course to be transformed” and I was asked by our chair to help transform our large enrollment general chemistry course. The goal was to increase learning outcomes and reduce the Drop/Fail rates. I just had to share what I had learned about constructivist theory, active learning, process learning and all the other evidence based teaching practices I had picked up during my sojourn into the course development of the pre-service elementary science curriculum.  I convinced my chemistry colleagues that student centered active learning was the way to go to help uncover and disrupt misconceptions such that we could lay a solid foundation in chemical principles for all our STEM majors. The problem is that when you move to an active learning model – you have to give up some class time to let the students make mistakes and mess about with the activity to find their way to developing their own concept map. Our solution was to take some of the direct teach material and skill building training out of the face to face time of class and chunk and package it into learning modules delivered by a home grown homework service called Quest. Since we started this project, the university has changed learning management systems, and we are now delivering out outside of class content via Canvas. Hence we were able to free valuable class time for more engaging, thought provoking, guided inquiry type activities. Today I’m known on campus as the woman who flipped her class. When we started down this road, I didn’t even know what the word flipped meant! Rather, we were just trying to use widely available technology to enhance our student’s experience. I have sense learned a lot about the subtleties of the different types of technology-enhanced teaching. I would refer to our class more as a blended learning environment than a flipped class. Regardless of what you call what we do, our focus is on creating a supported student centered learning environment - both inside and outside the traditional face to face class room. ... View more

[originally posted July 2014] One of the first challenges I encountered in flipping a class was how to make short videos specific to a topic I was covering.  I’ve found that for short, low-maintenance videos, Jing is a really valuable resource.  This free download, available from TechSmith, allows you to record up to five minutes of video, then stores it online (also free).  While there is no real editing capability without purchasing the Camtasia software, it is a great resource for its simplicity.  Here's an example of one of my early Jing videos: Video Link : 1779 These days, I mostly use the full Camtasia and edit carefully, but I still use Jing occasionally for a quick and less formal screen capture.  For example, I’ve used Jing quite a bit to show people the basics of navigating around a software package, or to briefly review a topic with which my students should already be familiar.  I can record, upload, and send a link in only five or ten minutes. ... View more

[Originally Posted Sept 18, 2014] This year, I’ve spent a huge amount of time developing video content for my classes.  So far, I’ve done a tablet-only video style, using a skeletal PowerPoint presentation, which is annotated with a tablet as I narrate.  This works well for presenting information cleanly and concisely - but it’s boring.  I’m continuing to ponder how I can improve my format to be more engaging and effective. To be honest, I really love standing in front of a class, communicating an idea.  I like reading student’s faces to see if  they’re with me.  I like the spontaneous, lively, and  sometimes very funny twists that a discussion can take.  I love dropping a quick joke when things are lagging, and bringing people back together. So, how can we capture (or at least imitate) the interactivity and engagement of a face-to-face lecture in a video format?  Fortunately, this is not without precedent:  The television industry has been experimenting with delivery formats for seventy-plus years, and success in TV is all about engagement.  As I think about connecting with an audience and/or communicating information, here are a few that I find particularly effective:  The Nightly News.  The anchor creates a personal connection (think Walter Cronkite, P eter Jennings, or Katie Couric), but there is usually a screen with key information that is overlaid, and then a cut to a narration-and-footage story.  The Blue Collar Comedy Tour.   One of the keys to any stand-up production is that it’s recorded in front of a live audience.  The camera always  pans to show the audience laughing and engaged, and the viewer is caught up in the feeling of sitting in the audience.  The million-plus hits on Bill Engvall’s Dork Fish bit on YouTube testifies to its effectiveness.  The Daily Show.  Similar in style to the nightly news, but designed to be a comedy show, with a live audience that is never shown, and so similar in many ways to a laugh track.    Glenn Beck’s Chalkboard.  An incredibly simple way to convey information, and Beck used it very effectively.  The advantage here is that the student can watch the instructor interacting with the problem.  Unfortunately, most professors (myself included) lack the artistic ability to really make this work.    The Ted Talk.  An increasingly popular format, but I confess I’ve never gotten into it.  It mixes the screen and the narrator pretty well, but involves an extensive set and production. There are a number of other video formats which have been used on the web for teaching STEM subjects, such as Tyler DeWitt's hands-and-face format, the very cool behind-the-scenes set from Simon Walsh, founder of Maths Doctor, and even the occasional artistic production that is visually stunning, but well out of the range of my capabilities.  And, frankly, sometimes I find that I’m so mesmerized with the artwork on these productions that I forget to pay attention to the content.  Like a song in which you love the tune, but don’t know the words. I’d love to hear from readers on this one.  What delivery formats you find to be most effective for engaging students and promoting learning?   What are the strengths and limitations of each one?  (Note:  There are a coupled of politically-charged examples above, but this about communication.  Please keep comments focused along those lines).  I look forward to reading  your comments! ... View more