My second year as a VIPEr Fellow extended into a third year, after teaching was upended by COVID in March 2020. Instead of completing the data collection in spring 2020, I used my in-person Spring 2021 course as the second semester of participation in the Fellows program.

By that point, as Kate McCusker mentioned in her reflection, I had gained a lot of confidence in using a more flipped format. The spring 2021 inorganic course was completely flipped, with most content delivered by short “microlectures” (mostly screencasts consisting of me narrating google slides) and in-class time used almost exclusively for problem-solving in teams of two students.

I was surprised to see how much the students liked (and preferred) the format. One even said that there was never a day when they didn’t want to come to class. Of course, I still have a list of changes I’d like to make in the spring 2022 semester, which will be my second time teaching our inorganic course using the fully flipped format.

A fear of teaching evaluations and lack of confidence in my flipping abilities had held me back in the past, but now I have leapt across a divide and may never return to lecture-like teaching!  This transition was especially enabled by having a vast trove of problems and activities to draw from for in-class workshops, all thanks to VIPEr.