Pedagogy/Teaching & Learning

This presentation describes the various uses of Livescribe pens for pencasting at Dartmouth College, including flipped classrooms, answer keys, research notebooks, and teaching laboratory data sharing.  Practical tips about how to use the pens are included.

Technology should make our life easier not more complicated.  As I learn more technology, I try to implement it in my classroom to see if it makes my student’s life easier.  And in some cases it does.  During the past five years I have gradually increased “out of class” learning environment for my students, so I can have more time in class to go over problem solving.  I will present how and what kind of resources I created for my students using LiveScribe Pen and Power Point video lectures.  To increase class participation, I also started using Clickers. I will discuss some of the strengths and drawbacks of all the resources and my future plans to increase student preparation before they come to class and participation in class once they are there. 

The “flipped” classroom is an approach to teaching that involves active learning while increasing student responsibility and improving comprehension.  The flipped, or inverted, model takes traditional lecture from in-class to outside the classroom in the form of online lectures or tutorials.   Work traditionally completed as homework is carried out through engaging group activities and instructor-guided problems during class.  Techniques used to flip an undergraduate organic chemistry course, including “vodcast” lectures, electronic homework, and “warm-ups”, are discussed.  In-class discussion and problem-solving are also investigated as means to facilitate deeper learning of organic chemistry.  Student learning outcomes in a flipped organic chemistry course are predicted to include efficient problem solving skills and the ability to verbally explain the material to one’s peers.  When an inverted classroom model is applied to organic chemistry, we anticipate increased comprehension and retention of the material, as well as improved performance on summative assessments (exams).