Rich Pancost, School of Chemistry

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Rich Pancost, School of Chemistry
E-Learning in the School of Chemistry
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What are the opportunities

• Delivery of information beyond traditional
  methods such that it is more available for staff
  and students
• Opportunities in distance learning (, widening
  participation)
• Convenience for staff and students
• Formative assessment
• More formative assessment without less staff
  workload
• Better preparation of students for practicals,
  workshops, etc.
• Summative assessment

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What are the Challenges

• Time
• Staff time
• Support time
• Money
• Initial investment in development of materials
• Maintenance?
• Resources

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What are we doing at Bristol

• The early days Putting LOTS of stuff on
  Blackboard (our VLE)
• Simple formative assessment and preparation
  (pre-labs and pre-workshops)
• Distance Learning on a budget (students on
  industrial placements)
• Bristol ChemLabS

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• Blackboard as an Archive for Information

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Why?

• It was easy

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Is it useful?

• Students loved it
• Everything is at their fingertips
• Also saves time for staff
• Not troubled for tutorial questions, handouts not
  collected
• Has it changed/improved learning?

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• Pre-workshops and pre-labs

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Why?

• It was still rather easy
• For pre-labs, made it easier to manage database,
  check that pre-labs had been done, etc.
• For pre-workshops, forced advance revision
• driven by the poor preparation for and
  performances in workshops
• Doing it online minimised extra effort for staff

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Is it useful?

• Students have taken it in stride
• Benefits
• Students are better prepared
• Workshops seem more dynamic and there is more
  participation
• Can check online who has done it
• Too soon to say if it has actually changed exam
  scores

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• Distance Learning

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Why?

• We needed to ensure our Industry placement
  students received good coverage of their Year 3
  courses.
• We used to have them take Year 3 courses in their
  4th year. Lots of problems with that
• So we had to develop some sort of distance
  learning.

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Challenges

• No money.
• Staff resistance.
• Industrial perspective loss of work time?
  Resources?
• Finally, we got a little bit of money 7500.
  That bought us some help and that help acted as
  leverage

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What did we do? For each course

• Put complete set of lecture ppt slides online
• This was a lot of work in some cases
• Sometimes had to find alternative
• Put workshops online answers went online two
  weeks later
• Put past exam questions online
• Brought students back to Bristol for assessment

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What did we do for lecture materials?

• Just put our presentation materials online
• Put ppt notes in with animation
• Put ppt notes in with animation and narration
• Put lectures in as videos

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What will we do?

• Need to have better strategy for delivery of
  video lectures
• Controlled delivery
• One course per month better pacing for students
• But have to leave materials online to allow
  flexibility
• Introduce discussion board
• With better timetable, allows academics to
  moderate their course.
• Main issue
• Lecture materials alone dont count as teaching
• We have not tapped the full range of e-learning
  resources

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• Bristol ChemLabS (or what you can do with tens of
  thousands of pounds)

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Bring all of the above together

• Make ALL lab materials available online (and in
  labs via electronic lab manuals)
• Lab Manual
• Safety notes
• Chemical information
• Background info
• Techniques info
• Make above available as video/animation/etc if
  appropriate
• Incorporate pre-lab safety and background
  knowledge quizzes that can be easily checked and
  moderated
• Include formative assessment in the practical

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Conclusions

• We think that the traditional methods for
  teaching and learning in chemistry are ideal for
  this subject lectures, practicals, workshops,
  etc. are all critical and useful
• We generally use e-learning as a tool to enhance
  those experiences
• Only with the distance learning, have we used
  e-learning to replace those experiences