For the first time in quite a few years I will be teaching general chemistry in two 75 minute meetings (Tuesday and Thursday) as opposed to the 'normal' three 50 minute meetings (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). From what I remember, I don’t like the Tuesday-Thursday classes. They are long and it is difficult to keep my attention that long let alone the students. Another negative is that it also means that I have to switch from my normal 4 exams + a final to 3 exams + a final. Wait a second, that means less grading for me…perhaps that is a positive and not a negative. The biggest issue is that there is this period from Thursday after class until Tuesday in class where students feel like they can totally ignore the fact that they are taking chemistry. That is certainly a problem. I have some thoughts, but I would sure love to hear other ways that people combat this issue.
First, I will be posting screencasts to moodle on Fridays. I have used this in the past a little bit, but I don’t know how successful it has been. I think my second idea will make it more useful. I do intend to keep these short, 10 minutes or less. They are going to start were we end class on Thursday. Hopefully I will be able to cover some of the background/mundane material and work an example problem.
Second, there will be a quiz on Moodle that comes live Sunday afternoon and runs until some point on Monday. Sure, I could use an online homework system of some form, but I would rather write my own questions. I think it helps them prepare for exams better knowing what types of things I ask. I do still use book questions as suggested problems, and I post worked out solutions to them.
Finally, I am not going to lecture for 75 minutes. I think I will split class in half. The first half will be my traditional lecture and the second half will be students working on problems in groups. I am already nervous about covering the material, but hopefully they will find this helpful. I usually do small amounts of group work in my lectures and then commit the day before exams to all group work. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I know I am not presenting any real earth-shattering ideas here. But I am thinking about this now and maybe some other VIPEr members out there are too. Hmmmm, we really need to think of a term for members of our community. Snakeheads? Fellow slitherers? Snake bit? VIPErosity? Perhaps that is a topic for another BITeS.
This is how all of our classes are so I also agree with Adam. So I have had to do this in all different types of classes. It is important to do practice in lecture for general chemistry to reinforce the material by problems. It is necessary to break up the class as much as possible. Lecture on a topic and then give some practice problems as examples. I have had a hard time breaking up large classes for group problems but I am interested to hear how it works for other people.
I also give weekly quizzes to make sure they students keep up on the material and that has worked very well. It is hard when there is so much time between lectures.
As you may recall, I taught those sections last year (Fall and Spring). I agree completely that the biggest challenge is the 5-day gap from Thursday to Tuesday. I addressed this in two ways: 1. I scheduled the bulk of my individual meetings (office hours) on Fridays and especially Mondays, whenever possible. This helped for a small subset of students. 2. I used online homework exclusively and often gave deadlines on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday so that the homework process became a daily routine, incorporating all seven days of the week. I like your screencast idea - that would be new technology for me, so it's not something I tried. I toyed with the idea of online quizzes, but gave them during class instead.
In regard to the 75 minute sessions, I like the length, but it was clear to me that it was a long haul for a certain percentage of the students if I just stood and lectured. Therefore, I broke up the time with quizzes (as mentioned above) and working problems, though I didn't have them break into groups. By design, my "lectures" were extremely discussion intensive and I called on students at random throughout the class period (easily dozens of times per class). The interactive nature of me asking and answering questions and encouraging them to help each other through verbal descriptions worked really well. Based on feedback, the students enjoyed this sort of interaction (both with me and each other). I'm sure you realize this, but wIth only two sessions per week, the amount of time spent working problems needs to be carefully monitored, or else you will not be able to cover the syllabus effectively (quantity OR quality).
I taught summer session last year for about 120 students and the "lectures" were TR 8:00am-10:30am. I don't know who thought that 2.5 hours twice per week was a good idea when scheduling, but it makes 75 minutes sound great!
I had a "mini-midterm" during the last hour of every Tuesday class. I would have preferred the first hour, but since the class started at 8am, I thought students were more likely to be sleepy or late at the beginning. I used Piazza.com to spur classroom discussions. With a mini-midterm each Tuesday, activity on the forum would gradually increase through the weekend through Monday. I had "virtual office hours" through the forum on Monday evening.
I broke up the 2.5 hour class time with lots of cold-calling on students, clicker questions (using socrative.com), and having students work in groups and then come down to the board to explain the answer. Participation was part of the grade (no penalty for wrong answers). They weren't too fond of the cold-calling, but several students admitted it kept them awake and forced them to pay attention. I tried to give them a bathroom break about halfway through (sometimes I forgot). Bottom line is that I would only talk for 10-15 minutes at a time tops before having the students do something to check their understanding.
As already suggested, I would recommend that you not split the class in half, but rather do student activities interspersed between 10-20 minute lectures. The class time actually went surprisingly quick. Sometimes I would skip over examples I had planned to save time and then just tell students that they'd be in the lecture slides posted online after class for additional practice.