Remote Teaching Case Studies: Iain Smellie, School of Chemistry

Aisling
Thursday 23 July 2020

For the next few weeks, the new Education blog will be publishing a series of case studies on remote teaching that the Technology Enhanced Learning team has been running here at St Andrews over the past few months. In this series, we interview academics, undergraduates, and postgraduates to get a sense of how things have been going. We listen to what they have to say about the process: the advantages and disadvantages, the highs and the lows; and we learn about some of the outstanding and creative innovations that they have made along the way. 

Dr. Iain Smellie is a Lecturer (Education Focused) in the School of Chemistry and he is our most recent interviewee. He talks about how laboratory (“lab”) modules were affected as the pandemic began to gather pace and about the new technology for lab work that delivers simulations of various techniques and well-known experiments.  He discusses how he has switched his teaching to a “flipped” format which allows him to use the lecture hour for discussion and tackling sample problems, rather than for the delivery of material which he now makes available by video in advance of the lecture. Finally, we hear about how chemists have been invading kitchens all around the country and sharing “kitchen chemistry” experiments on social media.

 

Tell us about your role at the University of St Andrews.

I was first employed as a “University demonstrator” in 2008 and I am currently a Lecturer (Education focused) in the School of Chemistry.  My role is to teach laboratory-based courses but I escape from the lab from time to time to teach other classes too.

 

How much had you integrated the use of technology into your teaching before the Covid-19 outbreak?

For many years we have used MMS and Moodle for our lab courses and both of these platforms are very useful. Moodle allows us to deliver course content, such as pictures of equipment, safety information and videos of key techniques. Our current set of videos were made by a former colleague and one of our students and they are really brilliant resources to have. We also use Moodle to set up practice and assessed MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions): these have been very important for delivery of pre-laboratory exercises that cover aspects of laboratory safety and overall GLP (Good Laboratory Practice). More recently, we have been looking at how MCQs can be used for post-laboratory assessments too.

 

We use MMS for submission of laboratory reports: the feedback function is very good and has helped us move to an online submission and annotated feedback system in our Honours lab courses. We have a pool of iPad pros and Apple pencils too: these allow us to mark reports and provide feedback in the same we as used to do on paper. This development has been very positive; in fact, I am not sure that I could easily go back to marking and returning paper reports to our 3rd year students. MMS is very helpful for administering our large lab classes.

 

What were your first thoughts when you heard that St Andrews teaching was moving online?

It was very clear that this would immediately affect all the lab modules that were still running at that point. We had however experienced significant lab disruption before due to the snowstorm in February 2018, so we had some idea of the options available at short notice.

 

How did you manage the process of moving your lectures and tutorials online?

The tutorial sessions in the course I was involved in were ending in March and we would normally have moved to class workshops at that point (these were delivered as online walkthroughs). I only have one lecture course for 5th year MChem students. In recent years I slowly moved this to a “flipped” format where the lecture hour is more for discussion and tackling example problems than delivery of material (this is available in advance). I was able to offer meetings on MS Teams with anyone who wanted to discuss or pose questions online. For the most part, I found that MS Teams worked very well. However, there were some problems when it came to sharing hand drawn structures and reaction schemes. This issue is now a key discussion point for us; there are a few solutions under investigation at the moment.   

 

Did the process of moving online make you think differently about your teaching and the best way to deliver it under these circumstances? Did you make any changes?

Yes, I have modified the materials further for the “flipped” course as a result of experiences this year. From a lab perspective, I can see more scope for videos made in-house of newer techniques and experiments: these are useful pre-lab materials in “normal” circumstances but they will be very useful for the forthcoming academic year. I am doing a fair bit of video editing just now and I am planning which new films are required.

We already make a lot of use of the MCQ facility provided on Moodle. So far it has proved to be very adaptable in terms of the sorts of formative and summative question sets and exercises it can deliver. We started looking at Moodle MCQs about 8 years ago and in that time we have learned a lot about where they can be most effective. The closure of teaching facilities earlier in the year has made me test the system even further and it has proved to be very capable. I particularly like the ability to provide detailed and consistent feedback via online MCQs.

MS Lens has proved to be an excellent tool for capturing exam and class test responses. I think we will make more use of this app in laboratory teaching in future: it will make it possible for students to easily capture copies of their lab book entries to make an online copy of their lab book. This could be a welcome move since good lab book keeping is an important skill, and recording this online will hopefully make a good link to the use of formal ELN (Electronic Lab Notebook) software that is in use by colleagues in commercial laboratories.

 

You are a Lecturer (Education Focused) in the School of Chemistry. Have you discovered any aspects of the new technology to be especially practically useful for the teaching of your subject in particular?

In terms of new technology for the laboratory work, there are several options now to deliver simulations of various techniques and well-known experiments.  These are very interesting, although we have found that video footage that is made in-house with extensive input from students is particularly effective.

During the lockdown, some chemists have been sharing “kitchen chemistry” experiments on social media. There are now a few examples in the literature of tech available in the home being used to do 1st year level analytical experiments (see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00483 for a very recent example).

 

What one piece of advice would you give someone based on your own experience?

Consider whether online MCQs might be compatible with your course, either as formative or summative exercises.

 

Given what you know now, what would you say to someone apprehensive about moving their teaching online?

From a laboratory perspective it is difficult, the tactile nature of practical work (especially synthesis of compounds) is hard to replicate online. However, there are options available: analytical work in particular can be approached using online data sets, simulations or videos and there are “lab at home” examples being reported. I think we will see many innovative approaches in the near future. A very elegant recent example is a set of open-access virtual reality resources that have been produced by Dr Maria Gallardo-Williams at NC State University

 

What are your favourite online resources for teaching Chemistry?

There are so many! But this list gives a flavour of what is available.

Chemtube3D – This is an excellent resource from the University of Liverpool, it is comprehensive and allows students to view animations of 3D structures.

Periodic table of videos – This is a wonderful project from the University of Nottingham, the videos combine descriptive sections with demonstrations, it has been running for over 10 years now and covers an impressive range of topics.

Compound Interest – This is an excellent infographic focused resource aimed at a wide audience, I find it can be very helpful to our 1st year students. (https://www.compoundchem.com/infographics)

Mnova – This is very useful to our students for processing NMR data. (available via Apps Anywhere).

Mercury – This is easy and free to use and is very useful for our students to visualise crystal structures. (available via Apps Anywhere).

MS Lens – This app has opened many new possibilities for us going forward.

 

Is there anything else that you would like to add?

I would like to thank Dr Florence Laibe, Dr Claire Brodie and Mr Iain Patterson for the tremendous online video resources they produced in our teaching laboratory.

Dr Neil Keddie has played a key role in implementing the iPads for online marking and feedback in our Honours laboratory courses.

Dr Brian Chalmers has provided excellent course material for introducing comprehensive MNova support for our honours level laboratory courses.

 

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