Working without a net: one man’s attempt to implement active learning methods in organic chemistry
This talk will be an account of things I’ve tried, and how I implemented them, both before and after attending the cCWCS workshop on Active Learning in Organic Chemistry. This will be as close as possible to an unvarnished look at success and failure, a report on work in progress. Collaboration by the listeners will be encouraged.
For many years organic chemistry was taught at Gloucester County College using the traditional lecture format. During the past academic year I had the opportunity to “flip” the classroom for both semesters of the two semester sophomore organic chemistry sequence. This presentation will describe the techniques and technology used to accomplish and deliver the flipped classroom, explain and show how each semester topics were divided and presented to the student, and discuss the use of classroom time during the semester. Preliminary student performance and comments from this past academic year vs. standard lecture format performance from previous years will also be presented.