• Unit: CH20149-150 Organic synthesis, reaction mechanisms and spectroscopy
  • Department/School: Department of Chemistry
  • Level: Honours [Second year]
  • Unit Tutor: Simon Bedford
  • Keywords [pedagogical]: large-group-teaching
  • Keywords [technical]: audience-response-systems, ars

Background

Aims and objectives
The session was the conclusion to a series of lectures on retrosynthesis. The aim of the lecture was to give students further opportunity to test their understanding of the course material and to identify and clarify areas of uncertainty.

What actually took place?
After a short familiarisation, the students were asked a series of questions on the course material. Each question was followed by a short interval to allow students to think and discuss the answer before multiple choice answers were displayed; students were then asked to vote. Responses were logged and displayed in graphical format, after which the answers were discussed and explanation given for the correct response.

What was the role of the technology? What did the technology add?
The ARS enhanced the formative testing by providing immediate and accurate feedback of students’ responses.  The majority of students were actively involved in the task throughout the lecture, and a consistent number of responses were recorded for each question.

Outcomes

Were the objectives met?
Using the ARS, feedback on the students’ performance and the distribution of responses was quickly observed. The unit tutor then adapted the explanation of the key points in the answers to the level of understanding displayed by the results.

How did the students find it?
The students seemed to find the lecture a fun way of testing their understanding of the module. Feedback from the students at the end of the lecture suggested that most students enjoyed using the clickers and would be keen to see them used in further lectures. Undoubtedly, this was partly due to the novelty value of new technology but nevertheless it was encouraging to see a positive response to their use in formative testing.

Were there any unexpected outcomes?
The equipment was handed out at the beginning of the lecture and students were asked to leave the handsets on their desks as they left. It was interesting to see that students weren’t tempted to take the handsets away with them – with one hundred students, all the handsets were returned at the end of the lecture!

What tips do you have for others?
The voting process could take a minute or two for all the students to vote and for the system to register the responses (approximately one hundred). Therefore, if many of the questions were easy, the voting process could take longer than asking/answering the questions and become an intrusion rather than a benefit.

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