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[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.
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.
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.
Resources | Score | Use by Students (%) | Rank of 17 |
Worksheets & Keys | 3.8 | 100 | 1 |
Daily Quizzes | 3.3 | 100 | 2 |
Study with Other Students | 2.8 | 90 | 3 |
Internet | 2.8 | 98 | 4 |
Online Homework | 2.7 | 100 | 5 |
Hard Copy Textbook | 2.3 | 88 | 6 |
ChemTours | 2.0 | 80 | 7 |
ACS Study Guide | 1.8 | 59 | 8 |
Kahn Academy Videos | 1.8 | 71 | 9 |
Evening Tutorial Sessions | 1.8 | 63 | 10 |
Self-identified Videos | 1.4 | 56 | 11 |
Office Hours | 1.4 | 49 | 12 |
Tutoring Center | 1.2 | 44 | 13 |
UC Davis Wiki | 1.2 | 49 | 14 |
Thinkwell Videos | 1.1 | 46 | 15 |
Online Textbook | 1.0 | 49 | 16 |
Office Appointments | 0.9 | 34 | 17 |
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 ususally has a chemistry tutor present.
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.
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.
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