Now that a month has passed since my very first VIPEr workshop—today is 25 July 2022--I thought I’d put my toe in the water, take a bite out of the VIPEr process of renewing and rejuvenating my teaching in inorganic chemistry, and write my reflection piece.
Before attending my first VIPEr workshop in June 2022, I had figured that I did a lot of lecturing in my inorganic chemistry class, and that my style was fairly uniform (too boring?) for all of my class periods, and this was confirmed with the VIPEr data I have received and after the discussions and conversation that I engaged in during the workshop.
Rather than try to completely re-do my course, my hope is to incorporate at least one LO into my course next spring. I also hope to use discord to discuss problems I encounter with my fellow inorganic chemists. I will also be much more self-aware than I have been in the past, and I want to do more think/pair/share activities in class. I hope this will yield increasingly useful learning experiences for my students.
My goals may be humble, but how do you eat a VIPEr? One bite at a time. That’s it for now.
I see in an email that I read today (25 July 2022) from Barb Reisner that "During the second year of the project, we encourage you to incorporate at least four learning objects, including two literature discussions in your course, and comment on or click “adopted” for the activities that you used on VIPEr. Remember, LOs can be as small as an exam question or in-class activity. Once you’ve revised your syllabus, we’d love to have you post a new syllabus LO on the VIPEr site so people can see the original and revised versions since meeting this summer and reflecting on student data. If your syllabus isn’t ready yet, no worries! I just wanted to get this on your radar now." Maybe I'll be taking a bigger bite out of VIPEr than I indicated in my reflection.