Writing an informed teaching statement for a university faculty position

In the US new open faculty positions are starting to be announced and ChemBark and Chemjobber are curating a list for chemistry this year.  Most of these positions will require a teaching statement. When I wrote my teaching statement back in 1996 I really didn't know what to write. You find a textbook, make some lecture notes, show up 3 hours a week and write on the blackboard, and assign some problems in the book. How do you fluff that up so it fills a page?

The main point of this blog post is that in 2015 the traditional lecture model is just one of many teaching styles you can choose and you should make an informed decision, i.e. even if you choose to lecture you now really have to argue why you choose that.  What follows is a very, very brief overview (CliffsNotes) that is mainly intended to introduce you to terms that you have not have heard of but that you really need to know in order to make an informed decision.

Alternatives to the lecture approach
The main argument against the lecture model is that students only real learn by actively doing, do the the most general umbrella term for these new approaches is active learning. One fairly popular variant of active learning is project based learning which can be combined with inquiry-based learning.  These approaches can be hard to implement for large-enrollment courses. Another, increasingly popular, variant of active learning is the flipped classroom approach. The flipped classroom is often equated with blended-learning and video lectures, but the flipped classroom approach can also be based on a textbook.

There are several variants of the flipped classroom that differ on how the "lecture" time is used.  The most basic implementation of flipped classroom is simply to use the lecture time as help sessions for homework. The flipped classroom approach can also be combined with inquiry based learning using the POGIL approach.  Perhaps the most popular variant of the flipped classroom approach is the peer instruction or "clicker" approach, which scales very nicely to very large courses.

Another interesting new idea in education (that can also be used with the standard lecture model) is specification grading which is part of a relatively new movement within higher education called competency-based learning.

Finally, here are two recent peer-reviewed studies that document improvements in learning compared to the traditional lecture approach: Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics and Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class

Some pedagogical terms and concepts
Here are some  pedagogical terms and concepts that should inform your teaching no matter which style you choose.
Cognitive load - you can learn up to 7 new things at a time
Spaced learning - it doesn’t stick until you’ve seen it 3-4 times over a period of time
Formative assessment - you learn by answering questions if you get immediate feedback
Just in case vs just in time teaching - “You’ll need to know this later” is not a good motivator

Video Lectures and Web clickers
Though not strictly required, many teachers who use the flipped classroom approach make video lectures. This can be done relatively cheaply and easily using screencasting software such as Camtasia or Screenflow together with Powerpoint. One can also make pencasts (handwritten video lectures) using, for example, iPad apps such as Explain Everything or the Livescribe pen but such pencasts often appear too slow when watched online.

Traditional clickers are increasingly being replaced by "web-clickers" such as Socrative or Poll Everywhere on smartphones and laptops

More information
Active learning: tools and tips
My flipped classroom: what I did and how I did it
Why Not Try A Scientific Approach To Science Education?
Psychological insights for improved physics teaching
Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative - Resources
Confessions of a converted lecturer (Youtube) (abbreviated version)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

#twitterquiz: an educational experiment

I recently came across this tweet which makes very innovative use of pictures to ask a multiple choice question.  After some experimentation I made this quiz yesterday

A chemical equilibrium #twitterquiz #RealTimeChem pic.twitter.com/mms2Tzq4HN

— Jan Jensen (@janhjensen) May 14, 2015

So far, the tweet has received 2,568 impressions and 741 engagements, which is twitter-speak for number of people who saw the tweet and clicked on it, respectively.  This is in large parts thanks to retweets by RealTimeChem, A-Level Chemistry and EiC, each with several thousand followers.

The question is taken straight from my teaching material and 741 is far more students that I reach in a year of teaching at the University of Copenhagen.  Did I just teach my first (Nano)MOCC?

Anyway, since I use peer instruction in all my courses I have tons more questions so this won't be the last #twitterquiz I post.

If you would like to make your own #twitterquiz you can find the images here.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

My teaching statement from 1996

Here is the teaching statement I wrote when was applying for tenure track positions in the US in 1996.  Glad to see the WWW is still around today, otherwise it would have spoiled all my teaching plans :).  How this would look like if I had to write it today is a topic for another blog post. 

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Jan H. Jensen

Lecturing.  Even though I am a theoretical chemist I strongly believe that doing experimental demonstrations is one of the best ways of teaching and I have used it whenever I could.  It is a great way to show chemical concepts at work and it makes everything less abstract.  I have used experiments both as a way of introducing a topic and as a summary.  In both cases I generally ask the students to predict and explain the outcome to me first.  Ideally, I would like to perform one short demonstration per lecture but an appropriate demonstration for a given topic can be hard to find.  So I would like develop some new demonstrations as part of my teaching efforts.

Invariably we as chemists must explain these experiments and other phenomena in terms of atoms and molecules and this can be very hard.  For example, it is easy enough to say that heat is the random motion of molecules, and quite another to make the students imagine what we think this really looks like.  I think the easiest solution is to use computer graphics to generate animation to describe these things.  Computer animations are routinely done in computational research and there is no reason why one could not create and show these animations during lecture.  Furthermore, additional demonstrations could easily be made available outside of class if a computer lab is available.  Many of the programs used to calculate and display chemical results are easy enough to use so that students can be given access to them outside class.

In addition I would like to explore an attractive and increasingly viable alternative to the traditional computer labs, namely the World Wide Web.  The development of the JAVA language will soon make it possible to imbed 3-dimensional objects and movies, which can be rotated and manipulated interactively, in Web pages.  In effect, this will enable instructors to make interactive course notes or textbooks available to students in a format that most students already will be familiar with.  Furthermore, this material can be accessed from almost anywhere and at any time.

I have intentionally kept my comments fairly general because I believe they apply not only to introductory chemistry (where I have the most experience) but also physical chemistry and graduate classes.  Suitable experimental demonstrations may become harder to perform in-class for higher level courses, but these classes are generally small enough so that the demonstrations could be performed even in a research laboratory.

Research.  Science is best taught through research.  Based on personal experience I believe that undergraduate students should become involved in research as early as possible, and I plan to actively encourage that.  Basic computational chemistry has a fairly easy learning curve and students can quickly get started.  The subsequent interpretation of results will naturally lead the student to learn basic chemical and quantum mechanical principles.

It is hard to say how one would teach graduate students in general since that clearly depends on the individual student.  However, I will address one general expectation.  Students will be required to take on both computational and theoretical/programming projects, though not necessarily an equal amount of both.  Student whose main interest is computational chemistry should have at least some modest ability to alter the computer programs with which they work, so that their research is not totally determined by the capabilities of the programs they employ.  Theory/programming oriented students have to learn how to effectively apply the tools they develop.  Planning and performing a thorough theoretical study of a particular chemical problem is a non-trivial task that must be taught.

Shared students between experimental and theoretical groups are becoming increasingly popular, and I think it is a positive development.  Such students would not be required to take on a theoretical/programming problem.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0  

Python peer instruction questions

                   

I am teaching a molecular simulations/intro to python course and have just finished drafting the last sets of peer instruction questions. Here's the last question. The idea is that they have to write a small python program on the spot but this might be more of a take home question.  Can you do it?

I'm not always this "evil".  Here's a more typical one.

          

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0  

What do I want in a learning management system?

I am in a university work group where we discuss recommendations for a new learning management system (LMS). The point of this blogpost is to help me get my thoughts together on this topic.

General philosophy.
1. I would like a barebones open source or easily customizable system where I seamlessly can plug and play different modules such as quizzes, discussion forums, etc.  There could be a default for each, but if I find better options I should be able to use them.

2. I think it is better to encourage the use freely available tools (Google Calendar, Google Docs, Sharelatex, Youtube, Wolfram-Alpha, Reddit, Quora, etc.) that the students will have access to after they graduate. I think the university should offer tutorials, etc. on using these tools directly to students.

3. I think the default for material on the course page should be "viewable by anyone", with an option to change for individual elements.

Things I like/use about the current system (delivered by ITS Learning and called Absalon)
Quiz. I give use reading quizzes extensively.  There are two things about the I really like about the Absalon implementation.  One is that you can label the quiz "obligatory" (it's just a word that appear)s. Students really take this seriously even though there are no explicit penalties for not taking the quiz. Another very useful feature is that I can send email only to students who haven't taken the quiz.

Bulletin board. The bulletin board is very prominently displayed and you can mostly count of students seeing it when they log in.

Planner. Absalon has a rudimentary planner/calendar with links directly to assignments and quizzes.

Mathjax. Very useful for typing equations

Plagiarism detection. Very useful for reports.

Student activity. List of who has logged in when or taken quizzes.

Copy from last year. Of course it's very useful to copy quizzes etc from last years course page.

In-active files/view as student. Files and folders can be made active or inactive where the latter can be viewed only by instructors and TAs.  Very handy for sharing solution sets, etc.  It is pretty easy to see  if a file or folder is inactive, but if I doubt I can choose "view as student".


Things I miss
Quiz.
1. Option to schedule the email to students who haven't taken the quiz at a particular time and date.
2. Option to have the answer to a quiz question revealed immediately after the answer.
3. Some kind of badge system for quizzes, e.g. Genius badge = 10 correct answers in a row, etc.
4. For questions with free text answers: option to see answers from all student on one question at once.
 
Open.  The course page is completely closed to students who are not signed up.  It would be very helpful to give access to other students so they can see what the course is about before they sign up.

SMS or other notification/reminder feature.  Right now every interaction with students is through email, but what good is an email notification about a quiz that is due in two hours if the email is not read.  Actually, iPhone one can mark email contacts as VIP and get notifications when VIP emails arrive, so that might fix it.  Not sure if that works on Android or if students have set up forwarding. Also, next time I teach I'll set up and share a Google calendar for the course, which might help and/or use the remind app.

Integration with social media.  Some way to automatically share announcements, etc. on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.  E.g. with Twitter I am thinking something send directly to their Twitter address, so they get alerted - not some hashtag.

Better discussion forum. I wrote about that here.

Dropbox integration. I spend a lot of time uploading files to the system.  I already keep my course material on dropbox, so it would be great of one could mirror drop-box folders (with some control over what files are visible to the students).

Mobile friendly/app. It is very important to be able access and work on the site with a smartphone or tablet.

In-active files/view as student. More detail is needed on student activity. Who has downloaded what file when?  Create contact lists for groups of students who match certain criteria.  E.g. who has not downloaded the last homework problem yet.  Also overview of single student's activity.

Extract student identifiers to create accounts on other systems.  This is currently amazingly complicated.


Comments and questions very welcome.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

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.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 

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

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.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 

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

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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

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

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

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.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0