Clicker Question

You seal a water bottle outside of a room and then put the water bottle into a special room. You leave the room and the pressure of that room is changed. Suddenly, you hear a large POP and the bottle exploded. How does the pressure in that room relate to the pressure outside of the room?

A) Pressure is higher in the special room

B) Pressure is lower in the special room

C) Pressure is the same in the special room

The students should recognize that the pressure being larger in the bottle than outside of it results in the bottle exploding. The scenario is to have students think about how pressure behaves and how if there is a large enough difference in pressure, something must happen.

Clickers Response

Clickers work extremely well in class when incorporated properly. The ability for something so simple to increase attendance, increase grade scores, increase student retention, and allow for an instructor to have a better understanding of where the class is at should always be implemented. However, I do have one concern with clickers.

I hate multiple choice questions. My experience has been that they are not testing whether the correct answer is known, rather that the incorrect ones can be identified. In my opinion, that is one limitation to the clickers. I posted for Jeff about using an iPad or something of the sorts as a clicker replacement. If a program could be written that recognizes certain key feature to problems, I think that would be even more useful. Have something that would identify a picture being drawn and certain equations being used. This would allow for the instructor to see what approaches students are applying to problems and where they begin tailing off in the wrong direction. This would require the students to show their work on the whatever it is  that is responding and then discussing. Maybe certain peoples' work could be projected also so that the method they chose can be analyzed.

This is almost like a hybrid of using clickers and what Dr. Christensen did when I watched his class. He would have the students working on problems and would constantly take someone's work and post it for all to see. This would contain that with the file but also evaluate what steps students did and what answer they obtain in the end.

Technology in the Classroom

The main thing I learned through this presentation is that even in my ideal teaching classroom, I was still so short of all the uses of technology that I could use. A discussion board and online information is not the extent, rather it seems like the bare minimum. I'm really not sure what else to say other than that it will take a lot of investigating to really determine what is the best way to implement technology, what technology to implement, and how it will guide the students to the objectives for the course.

Technology

I was just curious if there was anything outside of clicker questions that could be used to assess what students are thinking on problems. I remember Dr. Boyer, I believe, use in Journal club an online assessment sort of thing where people would answer and it would post on a website. I like something like that, but maybe even more advanced.

Ideally, I'm imagining a class where everyone has an iPad (both Shannon and Erika's dream) and there is some sort of a program where people would do work on their iPad. There would be different sections for writing down certain things, like constants or final answer, I'm not sure. But the program would recognize the writing and determine how the student did based on how the professor (assuming an expert) solved it. There could then be some sort of an analysis of the class results and what happened with the work. I guess what I'm asking, is if there is anything like this or how difficult it would be to attain this.

Incorporating Active Learning

The one active learning technique that I want to implement in my teaching is group problem solving. Similar to what Dr. Mumson did, I like the idea of have small groups (3-5) but give them difficult problems relevant to the topic. One concept I like to push on students is that chemistry is not some magical topic that must just be known but has a logical basis. This logical basis can be clearly identified by experimentation. I would have students design experiments to determine methods to understand what is being taught in class.

The best example of this is the designing experiments with the ideal gas law. PV=nRT is commonly used in introductory chemistry courses and the relationships are fairly logical. A topic would be to design experiments to find the different relationships between the variables. An example of the expected outcome would be to find the relationship between V and n. While they may not find the exact relationship constant, recognizing that blowing into a balloon is the same as increasing the number of mols (n). The result would be an increase in the volume of the balloon. This shows the direct relationship between V and n using an experience that the students have already had.

Different scenarios would be presented with new material taught, resulting in the students having to take previous knowledge or even lab experience into account to determine new experiments. I do not like the idea of teaching students to simply have an understanding of the topic, rather I think it should be to prepare future chemists.

How students should utilize assessments.

The role of assessment for the students is to make sure that what they are getting from class or studying is what is expected of them. If the assessment is difficult to the point where minimal progress is made and it is extremely difficult, then the student needs to assess their own place (meta cognition) within the class expectations.

Students should use assessment to either encourage themselves that they are on the expected path or to correct their learning so that they are on the path laid out by the instructor. I apologize for saying path but I cannot think of a better term for what a professor should be doing with the laying out of knowledge.

Response to in Class Activity

The in class project helped me to see how difficult it can be to utilize FA in a course. And in addition to providing opportunities of FA, but using that in such a manner that the education experience is that much better for the students.

I would say that the most salient features of FA is flexibility. An instructor must be willing to adapt what is being taught in response to the FA, while still advancing far enough in the teaching that the students do not lack in material covered.