A discussion forum for on-line office hours

The problem
I would like to hold virtual office hours.  I have considered Skype and Adobe Connect but it's not clear how they would show me their work, how I can give feedback quickly and effectively, and avoid answering the same question again and again.

I anticipate that most questions will be a photo of their handwritten work with the question "What am I doing wrong?"


The solution

* A discussion forum with threads on different subjects like, e.g. Reddit.

* Login is required to post questions and I control who can log in

* There is a teacher mode and a student mode

Student mode:

* Text-entry that supports equations (e.g. Mathjax)

* Students can easily post photos of their work, so seamless integration with webcam, tablet and smartphone is needed.

* It should also be possible to write/draw using a tablet.

Additional features in the teacher mode

* When answering the question, the question, including any pictures, is copied and it is possible to write/draw on the picture using a tablet.

* When answering questions it is possible to record the screen + audio and embed the resulting video automatically.

I need this feature so I can answer quickly, but I don't want the students to be able to pose questions as recordings because I can read the question much faster.

* Optionally: a feature where I can choose to get email notification when a new questions is asked (for off-peak hours).

To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

Smartphone wireless microphone apps for asking questions in large lecture halls

Just came across this app called Crowd Mics.  The price is pretty steep but they leave the door open for negotiations with academic institutions.

The same search also uncovered Beekast, but there is very little information to be had at the web site.

If you have used these or similar apps please share your experience in the comment section.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 

Book chapter on my flipped classroom

image source

I am writing a book chapter on my flipped classroom for a book on university pedagogy.  Normally I decline invitations for book chapters of any kind, but I was working on a web-book anyway so I thought I could just reformat part of that as a chapter.

Here is a draft.  Comments welcome.  Use either the comment function in Google Docs or the comment section below.



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I lecture no more

Here are the slides for my talk at the Make a Difference: Teach and Learn with Technology conference (#UCPHdif) on Wednesday

I lecture nomore from molmodbasics

Jimmy defended his MS thesis last Friday

Teacher of the year, a year later

Harald at home on top of the bookshelf

Last November I received the teacher of the year award from the University of Copenhagen. This led, directly and indirectly, to some interesting experiences this year.

November (2013)
The award is announced, I receive my porcelain owl, and shake hands with the Queen (minute 66 on this webcast)

I am interviewed for the school paper with separate photo-shoot in my office.

January
I am interviewed (over the phone) for ForskerForum - the monthly newsletter for a series of academia-related trade unions.  The interview can be found on here on page 20.

I participate in a roundtable discussion on good teaching at the university, at the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Higher Education.  The then-minister of education (now minister of taxation) moderated the discussion and the current minister of education was also there.

February
I give a talk to the chemistry department at the Danish Technical University about active learning. Here's a re-recording of the talk.

I am invited to give a talk on teaching at a local Rotary club.  It's in the evening so I decline.

I am invited to write a book review for the alumni newsletter.  You can see a draft of the review in English here.

March
I am invited to write a book chapter in the flipped classroom for a book on university pedagogy.  I am already planning a web-book on this, so I say yes provided I can write it in English.

April
I participate in a panel discussion on blended learning at the minister of education's annual meeting. The meeting is in Kolding, so I have to get up at some ungodly hour to catch a train.

May:
I give a talk to the Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark about active learning. This turns into a 2.5 hr marathon discussion!

The ministry of education gives me a free ticket to attend the EDUdisrupt2014 meeting.

Henrik from the Faculty of Science's IT Learning Center comes by and films my use of peer instruction in a course (here and here).  Afterwards we do a little interview.

June
I invited to asked write a comment on an (paywalled) article on the use of clicker in STEM education at the University of Southern Denmark in MONA - Matematik- og Naturfagsdidaktik, a Danish journal for research in STEM education.  You can find the English draft here.

I give a talk to the Faculty of Science's IT Learning Center about active learning.  That afternoon I give the same talk to the teachers of 1st year chemistry courses in my department.

August
I give a talk to the School of Pharmacy about active learning.

October
I give a talk to the Department of Computer Sciences about active learning.

I am invited to participate in a workgroup on the design of teaching portfolios for the Faculty of Science.

November
I am a keynote speaker at the Make a difference - teach and learn with technology conference.



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100K views on my YouTube channel

I passed the 100,000 views mark on my YouTube channel. That's not very much by YouTube standards but I'm still surprised given the pretty dry videos I tend to make.  Most of these videos were made for teaching of some kind, so I am happy that a few other folks found them useful.

Anyway, here are the top 5 videos with number of views.

Illustrating Entropy  19,674 (20%)

Tunneling and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy 10,331 (10%)

The Computational Chemistry Movie 9,203 (9.2%)

Molecular basis of differential scanning calorimetry 5,450 (5.4%)

Four simple examples of the Schrödinger equation 5,438 (5.4%)


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PM6, DFTB, GAMESS, enzyme design, protein-ligand binding, and protein structure validation

The publication of this paper got me thinking and this blog post is an attempt to organize my thoughts.

Background
A while back my group developed a method for high-throughput calculation of the effect of mutations on enzyme barrier heights.  The newly developed PM6 method was key to this: it was fast enough and predicted the right reaction mechanism, which AM1 and PM3 did not.

Around that time Mike Gilson and Stefan Grimme published studies were they predicted good absolute binding energies of host-guest complexes using hydrogen bond- and dispersion-corrected PM6. Again PM6 was fast enough to compute the vibrational frequencies needed for the free energy correction.

Parallel to this we have been working in protein structure determination using chemical shifts.  I am starting to suspect that the best way to validate the predicted position of key side chains is to compute their chemical shifts ab initio.  The first step this process might be a complete or partial geometry optimization using something like PM6-D3H+, followed by an QM/MM-like ab initio chemical shift calculation.  Or perhaps a similar check of all side chains.

PM6 in GAMESS
Using PM6 in MOPAC gave all sorts of problems. At that time the only other option for PM6 was Gaussian, without dispersion and hydrogen bond corrections. So the only option was to put PM6 in GAMESS, or more precisely:
1. implement PM6
2. implement dispersion and hydrogen bond correction
3. interface to PCM
4. linear-scaling FMO implementation.
5. interface to QM/MM?

+Jimmy Charnley Kromann has done 1-2 and +Casper Steinmann has done 3, both for elements up to F. Heavier elements require d-functions.  We have the d-integral code.

DFTB in GAMESS
Now Nishimoto, Fedorov, and Irle have implemented dispersion-corrected DFTB and FMO2-DFTB in GAMESS, leaving the implementation of a hydrogen bond correction and interface to PCM.

Where does that leave us?
Is DFTB as good as PM6?
For binding and frequencies the answer appears to be "yes" (see for example Table 5 and Table I). For TSs I'm not really sure, but perhaps a little better (Table 4).  We should definitely test this on our little database.
One worry is that DFTB is available for fewer elements than PM6.

What's more work: implementing PM6 for the remaining elements, and d-integral PCM implementation, and FMO2 or implementing hydrogen bond corrections and the PCM interface for DFTB? 
I think the latter.  However I should definitely ask the authors if they have similar plans and when we can get our hands on their code.  Should we decide to go ahead with FMO-PM6 this paper will be very helpful.

What about QM/MM?
AMBER now has dispersion and hydrogen bond corrected PM6 and DFTB, complete with interface to a continuum solvent method and, of course, the AMBER FF. Do we really need to treat all the atoms with SE-QM?  If not, we could go straight to applications!

One problem is that we have no real experience with AMBER. How easy is it to use? Would we get the help we need if we get stuck?  How easy is it to modify the code?

There is really only one way to find out.


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Flipping your classroom: getting started

Completely flipping your classroom with videos, clicker questions, etc. is a lot of work.  One way to make it happen is to do it in stages.  It is better to do a little bit than nothing at all.

The alarm clock approach
The most common use of clicker-questions is to give a multiple choice clicker question about half-way through the lecture to wake students up. This begs the question "why put them to sleep in the first place" but it's better than letting them sleep.  It also gives you some feedback on how much the students have absorbed.

If you feel you can't even spare 5 minutes for a clicker question because you are always hopelessly behind in the lectures then there is something seriously wrong with the way you teach.

An experiment: is lecture necessary?
1. Make a 2-3 question reading quiz on a topic you would like to skip in lecture and that you feel the book explains well.

2. Give 1-2 in-class clicker questions that, if answered correctly by >75% of the student, makes you comfortable skipping the topic in lecture.

3. Repeat a very similar in-class question on same topic next week (yes, you'll need to repeat material to make it stick).

Convinced? Good, now:

The first year
Look through your lecture notes and replace part of lectures where you mostly repeat the textbook with reading quiz and in-class questions.

The second year
Record video lectures where you deviate from the textbook and use the entire lecture period for questions.  This will also free up time for review questions on previously covered topics.

The third year
Rethink the course in light of what you have learned. Is the book helping or hurting the course? Does it cover what you want in the order you want it? If not, consider getting rid of the textbook and replacing it entirely with video lectures. When doing so, consider reducing the curriculum compared to the textbook.

Workload
Clicker questions. In my experience I get through about 6 good clicker-questions per 45 min period: about 3 review questions and 3 questions on new topics. It's OK to re-use or only slightly modify questions that you haven't used for at least a week (if you don't believe me, try it).

It's hard to write good clicker questions. Be prepared to replace questions that are too easy or too hard the following year.

Reading quizzes. You need to give a reading quiz before every lecture period where you give clicker questions on new material. The reading quiz shouldn't be more than at most 7 easy-to-answer (if you have done the reading or watched the video) questions. I often use true/false.  It usually takes me 15-20 minutes to write such a quiz.

Video lectures. The optimum length for a video is about 7 minutes. If you already have lecture notes or Powerpoint slides and are comfortable with the recording software you use then making a 7 minute video takes about 15-30 minutes depending on the amount of editing you do. This does not include the upload to Youtube, which can be up to 30 minutes depending on internet speeds, but you can do other things during that time.

Recording live lectures
Another option is to record your live lectures in year 1 for use in subsequent years.  If you lecture with Powerpoint you can use screencasting software to record and use an external microphone.  If you lecture on the blackboard you will have to get someone to record it with a video camera.  Ask your university e-learning office to borrow one.

In either case you should edit the recording into shorter videos no longer than 10 minutes. It is just a boring and off-putting to watch a 45 minute lecture on-line as it is live. If possible insert a question at the end of each video to activate the students.

Other universities have recorded lectures on put them on-line, so you might be able to find what you need just by Googling or searching on Youtube.  Notice that if you only want the students to see part of a video you can specify the start time in the Youtube link.

This post is part of an ongoing series of post on teaching tools and tips collected here.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Making video lectures: pencasts

The above video shows a pencast - i.e. a video lecture mimicking a blackboard lecture (it's in Danish but you get the idea).  This is an alternative to the Powerpoint based video lectures that I wrote about here.

The iPad + Explain Everything app
The pencast is made using an iPad and a $3 app called Explain Everything. In addition I used the headphones/microphone that came with my iPhone (which makes the audio recording a bit better) and a stylus.  Using a good stylus is really key to this approach and I have good experiences with both the Jot Script and the Jot Pro (I can't quite make up my mind whether the Script was wort the extra money).



There are many other pencasts apps for the iPad but all the other ones I have seen only give you one finite size page, whereas Explain Everhing gives you unlimited number of pages of infinite size (see 2:20 min of the video immediately above.  The video at the top of this post uses one infinite size page.

While I usually upload the video to Youtube directly from the app, it is also possible to save the movie file on Dropbox and import it into a video editing program such as Screenflow to edit out mistakes.

Note that you can import pictures, pdf files, and even entire powerpoint presentations into Explain everything to use as part of your pencasts

Other ways of making pencasts
While the Explain Everything app is cheap investing in an iPad just to make screencasts is relatively expensive.  I have also tried to cheaper alternative methods to making pencasts (NB: I haven't used either for a while so this may be outdated):

The Echo Smart Pen.  The main advantage of this pen is that it is an actual pen writing on real paper so the writing process will seem more natural.  Another advantage is that it produces an animated pdf file that makes it easy to skip or fast forward through the presentation.

The disadvantages are that (1) I found the file management (transfer, upload, etc) very cumbersome and non-intuitive, (2) no way to edit out mistakes (3) no way to import pictures or files, and (4) only one color.

Graphics tablet & pen. In this approach, made famous of Salman Khan, you use such a tablet to write in a graphics program (I used this one) on your computer while recording using screencasting software.  While low-end tablets are much cheaper than the iPad, it is much harder to learn to write one place (the tablet) while the text appears another place (the computer screen).  I, for one, quickly gave up.

Powerpoint or pencast presentation (repeated from this post):
For live lecturing students tend to favor chalk-board lectures over Powerpoint lectures, because the pace of chalk-board lectures tends to match that of note-taking.  The relatively slower pace of chalk-board lecturing also means that fewer new concepts are introduced during lecture.

In the case of video lectures these differences largely disappear.  Students can pause and repeat Powerpoint video lectures. Pen-cast lectures (the video equivalent of chalk-board lectures) are no longer restrained by the available lecture time and can cover just as much as Powerpoint lectures.

It it telling that it is possible to view Powerpoint video lectures on the on-line platform Coursera at 1.5 or 2 times the regular speed. There seems to be no demand for slowing the Powerpoint lectures down!

I tend to make Powerpoint video lectures rather than pen-casts because I often present rather complicated equations or diagrams that are laborious to write or sketch by hand. However, if I want to demonstrate some thought process (e.g. solving a problem) then I use pen-casts.

In any case, I always give students access to the Powerpoint slides or the handwritten notes I base the video on. It is much faster to read these notes than to watch the video. If the written material is clear, there is no need to view the video.

Good video lectures
* The optimal length is about 7 minutes
* One specific topic per video
* At least one multiple choice question per video
* Students can handle no more than 7 such videos (new topics) per lecture period.

This post is part of an ongoing series of post on teaching tools and tips collected here. 


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Making video lectures: Powerpoint screencasts

I have previously discussed the many advantages of video lectures compared to live lectures. Here discuss how I make most of my video lectures.

Almost all my video lectures are screencasts of Powerpoint presentations made using the screencasting software Screenflow.  Screenflow only works on Macs but there is a very similar program for Windows called Camtasia.

The two videos above nicely illustrate how I do it: you simply go through your Powerpoint presentation of your computer and Screenflow records what's happening on the screen and what you say.Then, usually after a bit of editing, I upload the video to my Youtube account.



There are two main differences between the videos and my approach: One difference is that I use the earphones with microphone that came with my iPhone for a better audio recording. The other difference is that I don't record myself talking with my webcam because I personally find these "talking heads" distracting when I watch such videos.

There are other ways of recording Powerpoint presentations.  The reason I used Screenflow is that
it has very powerful, yet easy-to-use, editing capabilities for fixing mistakes. The same is true for Camtasia and this video gives an example of a correcting a mistake.




Some practical tips
* Once you start a recording, don't stop.  If you make a mistake, keep quiet for a moment and start that part over.  You can fix the mistake by editing and the quiet moment allows you to cut without interrupting the narration.

* Keep quiet for a second before and after changing slides. This allows you fix errors on a particular slide without affecting other slides.

* Once you finish recording a video your first instinct will be to delete it.  Try waiting a day and listening to it again. I bet you'll feel better about it.

* Hosting your videos on Youtube has many advantages such as optimized views for mobile devices and good buffering for slow internet connections.  You can control who can access your videos on Youtube, though there is really no good reason not to share the video with everyone.

* However, if you want to host the video in a place not recognized by Screenflow or Camtasia, such as a university server, you can export the movie to a file and upload the file.

Other uses of screencast
Screencasting in general, and Screenflow and Camtasia in particular, are very versatile tools that can be used for many other things.

For example, I frequently use Screenflow to grab fragments of Youtube videos or simulations to include in my Powerpoint slides.  Here are some examples:



A screencast is also an excellent way to show how to use a particular program or website.  Here I show how to use a particular feature of the program MAPLE.


 This post is part of an ongoing series of post on teaching tools and tips collected here. 


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

My new research impacts this week

Your new research impacts this week

Jan Jensen

impactstory.org/JanJensen

50000+ profile SlideShare views

on https://impactstory.org/JanJensen

You've now got a total of 50168 SlideShare views on your profile, thanks to 305 new SlideShare views this week!

Congrats on passing the 50000 mark!

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9000+ profile PLOS html views

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800+ PLOS html views

on BioFET-SIM web interface: implementation and two applications.

This article attracted 20 new PLOS html views this week, bringing it up to 807 total. It marks your 7th product to get this many html views on PLOS. Nice work!

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900+ PLOS html views

on Mapping Enzymatic Catalysis Using the Effective Fragment Molecular Orbital Method: Towards all ab initio Biochemistry

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800+ PLOS html views

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200+ SlideShare views

on Short answer questions on thermodynamics

This slides attracted 54 new SlideShare views this week, bringing it up to 240 total. That's good--only 36% of 2014 slide decks on Impactstory have that many. It marks your 30th product to get this many views on SlideShare. Nice work!

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3 new Scopus citations

on PROPKA3: Consistent Treatment of Internal and Surface Residues in Empirical p K a Predictions

That brings this article up to 205 Scopus citations total. Impressive! Only 1% of 2011 Biological Sciences articles on Impactstory have reached that many citations. It's your 4th product to get this many citations on Scopus. Nice work!

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3 new Scopus citations

on PDB2PQR: expanding and upgrading automated preparation of biomolecular structures for molecular simulations

That brings this article up to 355 Scopus citations total. Impressive! Only 1% of 2007 Biological Sciences articles on Impactstory have reached that many citations. It's your 2nd product to get this many citations on Scopus. Nice work!

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3 new Scopus citations

on Very fast empirical prediction and rationalization of protein pKa values.

That brings this article up to 748 Scopus citations total. Impressive! Only 1% of 2005 Biological Sciences articles on Impactstory have reached that many citations. It's your 1st product to get this many citations on Scopus. Nice work!

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2 new Scopus citations

on Very fast prediction and rationalization of pKa values for protein-ligand complexes

That brings this article up to 338 Scopus citations total. Impressive! Only 1% of 2008 Biological Sciences articles on Impactstory have reached that many citations. It's your 3rd product to get this many citations on Scopus. Nice work!

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Video lectures

Video lectures vs live lectures
Advantages
* You can watch them anytime you want (e.g. when you are most alert)
* You can watch them pretty much anywhere you want (e.g. on the bus on your smartphone)
* You can pause and repeat part of the lectures.
* You can watch all or some the lectures again and again (e.g. while doing a homework problem or  preparing for an exam).
* Good video lectures are short (max 7-10 minutes) and focussed on one specific topic.
* As a teacher you can't "get behind" on your lecturing.
* Video lectures free up valuable class time for discussion, e.g. using peer instruction.

Disadvantages
* Students cannot ask questions right away.
- In most large courses this is practically impossible anyway.
- In my experience questions occur very infrequently, even in smaller courses.

* If you use your lectures to inspire and motivate students that is probably better done live
- While students enjoy such lectures, there is no evidence that they learn more from them than "boring" lectures.

* Students won't watch the videos
- I really recommend "reading" quizzes
- Students also skip your live lectures.

Video lectures vs assigned reading
* If your lectures (or some of them) are basically repetition of the textbook, just assigning the reading instead of making the video lectures. Make sure they read it using "reading" quizzes

* Another alternative to making videos are detailed lecture notes, if you have them already.  If you don't, making video lectures is much faster than writing detailed lecture notes.

Powerpoint vs chalk-board (pen-cast) lectures
For live lecturing students tend to favor chalk-board lectures over Powerpoint lectures, because the pace of chalk-board lectures tends to match that of note-taking.  The relatively slower pace of chalk-board lecturing also means that fewer new concepts are introduced during lecture.

In the case of video lectures these differences largely disappear.  Students can pause and repeat Powerpoint video lectures. Pen-cast lectures (the video equivalent of chalk-board lectures) are no longer restrained by the available lecture time and can cover just as much as Powerpoint lectures.

It it telling that it is possible to view Powerpoint video lectures on the on-line platform Coursera at 1.5 or 2 times the regular speed. There seems to be no demand for slowing the Powerpoint lectures down!

I tend to make Powerpoint video lectures rather than pen-casts because I often present rather complicated equations or diagrams that are laborious to write or sketch by hand. However, if I want to demonstrate some thought process (e.g. solving a problem) then I use pen-casts.

In any case, I always give students access to the Powerpoint slides or the handwritten notes I base the video on. It is much faster to read these notes than to watch the video. If the written material is clear, there is no need to view the video.

Good video lectures
* The optimal length is about 7 minutes
* One specific topic per video
* At least one multiple choice question per video
* Students can handle no more than 7 such videos (new topics) per lecture period.

You can see some examples video lectures that I made here.

Making the videos
Here is how I make Powerpoint video lectures and pen-casting video lectures.

This post is part of an ongoing series of post on teaching tools and tips collected here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Peer instruction briefly explained

Peer instruction is an alternative to the traditional lecture an was invented by physics professor Eric Mazur at Harvard.  You can read about how I use peer instruction here.

The "mechanics" of peer instruction is very simple:

1. Pose a (multiple choice) question to the class.  

2.* The students vote on the answer using clickers or e-clickers.  I use Socrative.  Mazur advocates that students not be allowed to discuss before the first vote. I encourage students to discuss right away.

3. If the majority (roughly >75%) vote correctly, briefly explain the correct answer and move on to the next question

4. If 40-75% vote correctly, ask the student to find someone who has voted different than themselves and convince them that their right, then revote.

5. Of <40% answer the question correctly, give a detailed explanation of the problem and solution.

The advantages of peer instruction

* The students are doing something actively rather than sitting passively

* They have an easier time learning from their peers who are at the same "level"

* Good peer instruction questions focus on conceptual understanding, which is rarely addressed in homework

* The teacher gets valuable feedback on what the students know and don't know

This post is part of an ongoing series of post on teaching tools and tips collected here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Reading quizzes

A basic tenet of the flipped classroom approach is that students come prepared to class and I have found "reading" quizzes good way to help ensure that. (Here I put reading in quotation marks since it can also refer to video lectures.) Put another (stronger) way, I would not attempt any kind of flipped classroom activity without assigning reading quizzes.

I use the quiz function in Absalon, which is the course management system that the University of Copenhagen uses, but I am sure most of what I discuss below can be done with other course management systems such as Blackboard of Moodle.

Some general considerations
* My reading quizzes are usually 5-10 questions covering reading/video material they familiarize themselves with before we meet.  If you require more questions to cover the assigned reading/video then you are assigning too much.

* The quiz has two purposes: 1) to encourage students do the reading/watch the videos and 2) to let them know whether they have watched them with sufficient attention

* The quizzes do no contribute to the grade, which allows me to give immediate feedback on the answer.  This is really important as it turns the quiz into a learning tool.

* I allow (and ask) them to keep answering until they get all the questions right

* Absalon allows me to label the the quiz as "mandatory", though the repercussions for not taking it is left vague.

* The quizzes are not meant to be extra homework.  The questions are easy to answer if you have read the material.  I often use true/false questions.

* The last question is always "Did you find anything confusing that you would like explained when we meet?"

* I set the deadline for the quiz at midnight the night before we meet. There is good evidence that sleep is important for the transfer of knowledge from short- to long-term memory.

* Absalon has a nice feature where I can selectively send email to students who haven't taken the quiz yet.  If I remember, I do this around 8 pm.

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Peer instruction: writing good (chemistry) questions

A good peer instruction question is a question that facilitates a good discussion and is just difficult enough that about half the students get it wrong on the first vote. Such questions are hard to write. Be prepared to spend time and mental effort on this, and to revise or replace questions in coming years as you get feedback from the students.

If you ask bad questions students will grow bored quickly. Avoid simple recall questions (the particles orbiting the atomic nucleus are called ...?), questions that can be answered by a simple Google query, or questions that require a calculator (how many moles in 32 g of Bi?), none of which facilitates discussion.

Below I collected some example of questions I have used in my thermodynamics class:

Different kinds of peer instruction questions for thermodynamics from molmodbasics

I always include a "don't know" option and tell them: "if you really have no idea how to attack the problem, don't guess; let me know by voting "don't know".

Also, don't over-define the problem. It's OK to leave things out (such as underlying assumptions or simplifications) and let them ask you as needed.

Slide 1. This is a typical multiple choice question where the students are presented with several answers that are quite different from one another. These are hard to write because it is difficult to come up with several different but plausible answers (see also slide 6).

I use this question to address two common mistakes I have seen my students make: A looks good because they confuse the entropy of the universe (which goes to a maximum according to the second law) with the entropy of the system. C looks good because students confuse the standard free energy change with the free energy of the system.  I also use graphs and pictures whenever possible.

Slide 2. A better approach is often to formulate questions such that the possible answers are "more", "less" or "the same" (or "increase", "decrease", "stay unchanged").  This is probably the most used peer instruction question format.  The challenge then is to formulate the question such that one of the wrong answers looks most plausible.  Here the two complexes look very similar so option C is somewhat attractive.

Slide 3. Another variant of more/less/the same

Slide 4. Another approach is to ask which X has the largest/smallest value of Y. Here it is important that the choices are sufficiently different so that the answer can be obtained without looking anything up or memorizing it. In this case each molecule has a different number of polar atoms. The question can also be rewritten as a ranking problem, such as that shown in the next slide.

Slide 5. Ranking in order of increasing/decreasing X. I use molecular models rather than chemical formulas so that they have to deduce the molecular charge themselves and get a sense of the relative size of the molecules; both if which are key to answering the question correctly.

Slide 6. This is an example of how to cover equations without asking questions that require a calculator.  Also, since it harder to formulate plausible wrong questions I ask for the answer that is not correct.

Slide 7. This question appears to break the "calculator rule".  However, I have taught them how to estimate the result to within an order of magnitude and formulated the question accordingly.  I use this approach only for the 1-2 most important equations covered in the course and I ask about it frequently - it is a difficult skill to learn.

Experiments and Simulations
The above type of questions can be greatly improved by including (movies of) experiments or simulations. It makes the topic less abstract and more relevant and it addresses exactly what chemistry is all about: explaining observations in terms of the behavior of atoms and molecules.

I typically search Youtube for "xxx experiment" or "xxx simulation" and then capture the part of the video I want with screencasting software such as Screenflow or Camtasia and insert the resulting movie in a Powerpoint slide. The free program Molecular Workbench also has en extensive library of simulations and allows you to make your own.  Of course you can perform the experiment in class or record your own experiments in lab.

Here is a video of some of the questions I have made for my thermodynamics course


Short Answers
Socrative has a nice feature where you can ask an open question, collect answers, and send them out for votes. For undergraduate courses I usually use this option at most once in a 45 minute period (and multiple choice for the rest) because I have found that using it more than that simply exhausts the students.  I think it is because they have a hard time formulating a written response on topics such as thermodynamics that they still find very abstract. For graduate courses I use short answer almost exclusively. Here are some short answer questions I have used in my thermodynamics course

Short answer questions on thermodynamics from molmodbasics

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Dear MONA: a chemistry professor reads a pedagogy article

MONA - Matematik- og Naturfagsdidaktik is a Danish journal for research in STEM education and their editorial office asked me to comment on an (paywalled) article on the use of clicker in STEM education at the University of Southern Denmark. Sort of a post-publication peer review, which is a nice idea.  This blogpost is a draft.

My background so you know where I am coming from
I have taught chemistry courses since 1996 both in the USA and in Denmark. I used the standard lecture model (always blackboard, never powerpoint) until about 3 years ago when I switched to peer instruction.  I use the Socrative.com site where students vote using their smartphones or laptops.

The study and the course
The paper presents an analysis of a questionnaire on the use of clickers given to students in a first-year biology course that must be taken by most science majors at the University of Southern Denmark. The enrollment was 290, 184 took the exam, and 58 filled out the questionnaire.  In addition, the paper presents quotes from 4 interviews with 10 students in their first (6), third (1), and fifth year (3).  I don't think all these student where enrolled in the course.

The instruction consisted typically of a 2 x 45 min lecture with 3-4 peer instruction questions in total. The questions focussed on either recall of facts or testing of conceptual understanding (more on this below). There was usually one round of voting with discussion before the vote.

Some observations on the study
The study states "... good teachers can improve their teaching with clickers while bad teachers don't necessarily improve their teaching just by using clickers." I think that is very true, so it is worth keeping in mind that the questionnaire offers feedback on one particular teacher and one particular way of using clickers in one particular course. More on this below.

Related to this point: in my experience it is often the "good" lecturers who are most resistant to trying clicker questions and other actively learning techniques. This is unfortunate because there is not data to indicate that students learn more from engaging lectures - they are just less bored.  As Richard Feynman wrote in the preface to his famous lecture notes:

I don't think I did very well by the students. When I look at the way the majority of the students handled the problems on the examinations, I think that the system is a failure. ... It's impossible to learn very much by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that are assigned.

The course is still mostly lecturing.  The interviewees mention that one of the advantages of clicker questions is  "People who are half asleep wake up and participate and everyone in the classroom is talking."  To me that begs the question why put them to sleep in the first place?  The "traditional" peer instruction/clicker approach is that the students prepare at home and then the entire "lecture" period is used for questions.  This is what I do.

The interviewees mention that "the clicker questions ... should test understanding and not recollection of facts and be of such difficulty that the individual student will submit both wrong and right answers."  So I was a little disheartened to read that the clicker questions included recollection of facts.  In fact the question highlighted in the article (see below) as a conceptual understanding questions is actually a factual recall question that you can answer in, literally, 15 seconds using Google.

The goal in writing peer instruction questions is to write questions that ca half the students answer incorrectly on the first vote, followed by a discussion and a second vote because this leads to the best discussion and ensures that the majority of students are challenged. So I was a little disheartened to read that the students only vote once on most questions.  The article states that on average 59.7% voted correctly on the questions, so it looks as though students would have benefitted from more discussion with each other.

I was happy to see that only 60% liked to see the result of the votes.  I never show the results of the vote. If the vote is nearly unanimous then showing the vote results is uninformative and takes time. If the vote is split than the results bias the revote.

I would very much have liked to see a question related to the pacing included in the questionnaire. The biggest critique I go when I first started using peer instruction was that the whole process was too slow.  Now my advice is better too fast than too slow.

Were the article not behind a paywall and written in Danish you would now point out to me that despite all my reservations of the way clicker questions are used in the course the study showed that the 98% of the students think clicker questions should be used in the course in future years. I would argue that after 20-30 minutes the students would welcome almost any break from being lectured to - the teacher's cell phone ringing or a knock on the door by a lost visitor - and, if asked, would enthusiastically recommend that the practice be continued.

The big question?
The study ends with, but does directly address, the "big question": do students learn more? This question is often re-phrased as "do more students pass the course" and a recent meta study indicates that introduction of active learning techniques can decrease the failure rate from 33.8% to 21.8% in STEM courses.  While this is a great way to sell the approach it is worth recalling why peer instruction was invented to begin with.

In the early 1980's - the good old days of lecturing before students could check Facebook on their cell phones - an astute physics professor developed a set of very simple conceptual questions related to the classical physics of force (the so-called Force Concept Inventory). Careful studies involving thousands of students at several different universities showed that passing a first year physics course did very little to improved these students' very poor conceptual understanding of basic Newtonian mechanics.  This was also true to courses taught by brilliant award winning lecturers.

When physics professor Eric Mazur read about this study in he late 1980's his first thought was "not my students" - motivated Harvard pre-med students who did consistently well on his exams and gave his lectures rave reviews. But as he discovered his students conceptual understanding was equally poor and their ability to solve relatively complex physics problems on the exam was a result of memorization. As a result Mazur invented the peer instruction approach where the "lecture" period was reserved to focus on the conceptual understanding, which is hard to address with homework problems - not to improve test scores.

This is why it is so important to ask good conceptual clicker questions: it is the only time they develop and are tested on their conceptual understanding of the subject. If the clicker questions are merely recall questions or mini homework problems the underlying problem (rote memorization leading to superficial understanding that is quickly forgotten) are not addressed even for the majority of the students who pass the course.

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A look inside one of my flipped chemistry classroom

Here is the approach I take in my second year thermodynamics course.

The "lecture"
* I meet with the students twice a week for 90 minutes (plus a 15 min break in the middle).

* The very first time we meet, I lecture for 5-10 minutes, then ask a question on which we vote using Socrative, and repeat.

* Before every meeting after that the students must watch 4-6 video lectures, each 5-10 minutes long. Each video concludes with a multiple choice question with answer, i.e. immediate feedback.

* The videos are based on Powerpoint slides that the students have access to while they watch the video.

* Before every meeting after that the students must answer a multiple choice quiz with a question for each video.  The questions are relatively easy to answer (often T/F) for someone who has watched the video.  The students get immediate feedback on the answer to each question.

* The deadline for the quiz is midnight before the meeting.  The quiz is mandatory, though the repercussions for not taking it is left vague.  The U. Copenhagen course site has a nice feature where I can selectively send email to students who haven't taken the quiz yet.  If I remember, I do this around 8 pm. The quizzes do no contribute to the grade, which allows me to give immediate feedback.

* During the our meetings I use the peer instruction approach, where I ask about 10 multiple choice and 2 short answer questions using Socrative.  Roughly half the questions cover material from previous weeks and new material, respectively.  The questions tend to be conceptual questions that facilitate discussion.

* The students get the Powerpoint slides with the questions (but not the answers) after our meeting.

* The Powerpoint slides and videos replace the textbook for the course.

The homework
* Teams of up to 30 students meets with a TA for a 4 hour session every week where they can get help with the homework.  If possible I show up for an hour or so for each session to get a feel what students are struggling with.  How else will you know?

* Each week I present them with about 10 homework problems, of which they have to solve a minimum of about six. The first six are relatively easy and should be doable by everyone who deserves to pass.  The last four are more challenging and one of them is typically an open ended question. The mere fact that the student chose a particular problem makes them invested in solving the problem.  In my experience most students attempt all 10.

* The answer to the question is provided as multiple choice using the PeerWise platform, i.e. the student is presented with 4 possible (often numerical) answers, where one is the correct one.  After the student chooses one answer they are presented with a detailed explanation of how the problem should be solved.  In some cases this takes the form of a video, but most often the solution was a screenshot from MAPLE.

* The homework does not contribute to the grade (which allows be to give immediate feedback). However, PeerWise uses points and badges as motivators, and I frequently highlight the number and kinds of earned badges on the course website.

How I designed the curriculum 
1. I started by writing the homework problems I really wanted them to be able to solve. They are encouraged to use MAPLE, so the problems can be quite mathematically involved.  Ideally they involve some application, experimental data, or simulation.  You can see them here.

2. Then I wrote the in-class questions related to the underlying concepts behind the homework problems. I also included some questions on estimating answers to questions that where similar to the homework questions.

3. Next I created the Powerpoint slides for the videos, containing the information they would need to do the homework.

4. Then I recorded the videos.

5. Finally, I wrote the quizzes.

Contrast this to the usual curriculum "design":

1. Find a textbook and select relevant chapters

2. Divide "number of chapters" by "number of lectures" to obtain content of each lecture

3. Hunt through problems in the back of chapters for homework problems, most of which are uninteresting "toy" problems written to illustrative some concept from the chapter.

Considerations that went in to the curriculum design
* "Relevance" is a great motivator. Write relevant homework problems and let them drive the curriculum. If something doesn't contribute to solving an problem, leave it out.

* Just in time instead of just in case.  Introduce new concepts and technique as you need them to solve a problem. "You'll need this for later" is not a good motivator in and of itself.  For example, spending a lot of time deriving an equation before you know how to use it is not very motivating.

* Cognitive load. You can handle no more than 7 new concepts at a time.  So, one new concept per video and no more than seven videos before each meeting. Yes, you'll have to reduce your curriculum to avoid drowning out the important stuff.

* Spaced learning. Things don't "stick" (committed to long term memory) until you have seen it 3-4 times over a period of weeks. Covering something once or repeating something several times in the same lecture doesn't work. This means you have to start the course with the most important concepts to you can repeat the most important stuff most often.  Yes, you'll have to reduce your curriculum since you have to cover many concept several times.

source

Considerations that went in to the choice of teaching style
* Active learning. Ultimately, you are teaching students skills not facts.  You only learn skills my actively doing something.  As you apply the skills often enough you will commit the relevant facts to long-term memory.

* Peer instruction.  Students have an easier time understanding explanations given by their peers than by you and students learn an awful lot by actively explaining things to their peers.

* Formative assessment. Answering questions is a powerful learning techniques if you get immediate feedback. Problem solving and conceptual understanding are two different skills and both must be assessed.



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Using Socrative in university courses: practical aspects

What is Socrative?
Socrative is a free student response system (or "web-clicker") that allows you to collect answers from students using the web.  I use it in all my courses at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, which I teach using the peer instruction approach.

The two features I use in Socrative are "Multiple Choice" and "Short Answer".  The video above gives a short introduction on how to do this.

Getting started
* You just make a free account and you get a room number assigned.

* You can easily try it out in your office, as I show in the video, before using it in class

Is Socrative right for you?
* Socrative is limited to 50 responses (actually 60-70 in practice) but you can use it in larger courses because you just need representative feedback to help you decide whether to move on to a different topic or not. The top students tend to vote first and correctly, so if the first 40 votes are from top students you might get the wrong impression that the majority understands the question. However, since "top students" are a minority, most students vote in pairs and not everyone bothers to vote, you can certainly use Socrative in courses where 300 students show up to lecture.

* Students need to bring a laptop or smartphone to vote.  Since many students vote in pairs and you only need representative feedback this is rarely a problem.  At the beginning of each course I send out an email to students telling them to bring a laptop or smartphone and to make sure that it can connect to the campus WiFi.

* Your classroom needs to be equipped with WiFi that can handle the load. Network problems resulting from overload is frustrating to the students. Maybe check with your IT support on this first.

In class
* As I mention in the video, when I ask multiple choice questions I control Socrative from my iPhone using the Socrative Teacher App.

* I don't show the result of the vote. If it's near unanimous there is no point and if it's split it will bias the re-vote.

* When I ask short answer questions I control Socrative on my laptop that is hooked up to the projector, because I eventually want to project the results of the vote and discuss it.  This means I have to flip back and forth between Powerpoint (where the question is stated) and the browser with Socrative.

* While the students discuss and vote walk among them (don't just stand in front of the class) as much as your classroom allows.  This way they can ask you questions and you get a feel for how many students have answered, which is especially important for short answer where you can't follow the progress on your iPhone.

Pacing: better too fast than too slow
* The main complaint about in class voting I have had from students is that it is too slow.

* Multiple choice: When ca 2/3 of the class have voted tell them "one more minute", make your way to the front of the class, tell them "last chance", then stop the vote.

* Multiple choice: If most got the right answer, don't spend a lot of time on explaining the answer.  I usually ask who wants to explain what they have voted for.

* Short Answer: don't wait for everyone to type an answer. You just need 5-10 answers to vote one.

* Short Answer: go through the top 1-3 answers and point out any errors.  If you happen to spot something very wrong in the remaining answers point it out nicely and explain why it's wrong.

* On average I get through about five multiple choice questions and one short answer question in a 45 minute lecture period.

Alternatives to Socrative
There are several alternatives to Socrative such as Shakespeak, Polleverywhere, and Learning Catalytics.  All of these alternatives can be used to collect more than 50 votes but they are not free.

I use Socrative because it is free and easy to use.



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