Problem

Helping students understand a complex chemical reaction

Dana Lashley began using flipped learning in her Organic Chemistry II for Life Sciences lecture course to help students in her large classes better understand topics they were consistently failing to master from year to year. Specifically problematic was the Aldol reaction, which requires conceptualizing how two complex molecules come together.

To help students better grasp this concept, Dana started experimenting with flipped learning her second year at William and Mary. Flipped learning requires creating content for students to engage with outside of class that prepares them for work in class necessitating the application of their understandings to more deeply engage with the material. She noticed a dramatic difference in student performance on the Aldol reaction in the class where she implemented flipped instruction versus in her other class where she did not. In fact, whereas before she started creating instructional videos she had students coming to her constantly asking questions about the Aldol reaction, she can’t recall a single student coming to her to seek clarification since she started these flipped lessons on the topic. Students have told her they enjoy being able to watch the videos again, something they can’t do with an unrecorded lecture. Additionally, students who grasp the concepts more quickly can watch at double speed which helps Dana to reach students at different mastery levels. As a result, she began experimenting with other topics and noticed that for simple topics there was no difference in student performance, but for the complex topics, it made all the difference.

Solution

Quizzes embedded in a Panopto video help students focus on the subject in more manageable chunks and provide immediate formative feedback

Although using flipped instruction has improved student performance overall, she is now at a point where she wants to ensure students are actually watching the videos, so she sought to find a way to incentivize and make these instructional videos more engaging. In order to facilitate this process, she is using Panopto, which has a feature that will allow her to embed questions throughout her instructional videos that students can answer to check for understanding as they watch the content. She is also using Blackboard to adaptive release smaller ten-minute chunks of video, so students have to interact with the content through the questions, answer the questions correctly, and only then will the next segment of the video appear. For example, with the Aldol reaction, students would watch the first ten-minute segment and then answer a question that would practically apply what they just learned to explore outcomes of different molecules reacting.

Resources:

Getting Started with Panopto

Creating Quizzes in Panopto (PDF)