Teaching for sustainability and accessibility beyond the next academic year
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
It’s 8am in the old world. 60 miles away, a student paces the train platform, anxiously waiting for their delayed train. 45 minutes by train then 30 minutes by bus. 9am lecture, 1 hour, nothing else on the timetable today. No chance of being on time, what’s the point? 50 miles away, another student gets into their taxi. £50 per trip to campus for an accessible taxi, £50 to attend a single 9 o’clock lecture in an otherwise empty day, plans to study at home for the rest of the day anyway because there’s never enough adjustable height desks on campus. 30 miles away a student waits outside their s ..read more
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Final year projects: has the time finally come for chemistry education topics?
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
With much of the fretting about the 2020/21 academic year focussing on the logistics of laboratory work and particularly the final year project. We’ve long held final year projects as a capstone research experience in BSc courses (and more so, but with greater justification in MChem courses). The reality is, a BSc is not entirely sufficient preparation for the ‘cutting edge’ of chemistry research in this century and a 15 credit project is little more than ‘just another module’. Some academics are incredibly successful at integrating these smaller research-training projects into their wider arc ..read more
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The trying to teach in a pandemic navel gazing post
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
There is an overwhelming amount being written about teaching in the time of COVID-19 or with other similarly witty titles. Lots of opinion pieces, many of which are actively harmful and symptomatic of the kind of existential angst gripping many at the moment, and often not indicative of what otherwise rational people would ‘normally’ think. Group think is a massive problem when we all work in greater isolation, we stay in contact more naturally with our smaller social-professional circles, with people who think similar to us and act as an amplifying chamber for our perspectives and limit our v ..read more
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If I were starting teaching (in HE) this year…
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
I started this weeks…months ago. Before the current pandemic and the widespread upheaval. But I realised that my drafts folder was overflowing with 80% written posts so I’m trying to finish and publish them. With this one, I want to publish a followup thinking how I’d do it if I was starting in 2020/21 academic year. Following on from an excellent #LTHEchat on Wednesday night and a conversation that has continued on twitter, I’ve been thinking about what are the basic essentials for teaching and assessing in HE. The capsule wardrobe of teaching methods and ideas that are sufficient to get by o ..read more
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HE STEM Conference Day 2 #STEMConf20
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
The Keynote on day 2 was Prof James Longhurst on the challenges and opportunities of embedding Education for Sustainable Development. I very much enjoyed this session as it simultaneously reassured me that I’m on the right lines with the work I’m doing in getting ESD into my teaching (example: using the right frameworks and descriptions) and also provided lots of food for thought. It’s a great time in the academic year for that because the Sustainable Chemistry module starts this afternoon and as I admitted in my own talk later, the content is dynamic based on what is important each year I te ..read more
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Escape from the VLE
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
I’ve been toying with the idea of using our VLE (Blackboard) to build an escape room type activity for sustainable chemistry. We’ve got a session in a computer classroom coming up so this seems like the ideal opportunity to get on with it. The structure of the escape activity is going to be a series of tasks linked by tests. I will use the adaptive release function on Blackboard so that task 2 only becomes available to a team on satisfactory completion of task 1. Each task will involve some elements of information retrieval, problem solving, puzzle solving and inputing an answer into a Blac ..read more
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HE STEM Conference Day 1 #STEMConf20
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
I’m at the Advance HE Stem Conference today and tomorrow. It’s been a while since I was at a general STEM education conference rather than the chemistry (and physics) specific ViCEPHEC or MICER events and I’d forgotten how good it is to get perspectives from other disciplines. The keynote today was Prof. Nazira Karodia of the University of Wolverhampton and her key message was that STEM education needs to step up and become more of a social education, addressing the student as a person and do far more than just immersing a student in discipline specific knowledge. In the context of preparing ..read more
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12 Days of Teaching, Day 4: mini Problem Based Learning
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
I love the idea of problem based learning (PBL). To me, it is one of the most sticky forms of learning and the one most relevant to the holy grail: life-long learning. It’s how we all learn as adults really, well I do. The principle idea behind problem based learning is…that the starting point for learning should be a problem, a query, or a puzzle that the learner wishes to solve. Boud, 1985 as seen in Boud and Feletti ‘The Challenge of Problem Based Learning’ LINK For me, I am most motivated to learn when I have something to solve. Why is my monitor blinking on and off? I have lear ..read more
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12 Days of Teaching, Day 3: Google It!
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
Our university email runs on Gmail and so brings a host of useful applications through GSuite for Education. Over the past few years they’ve become integrated in how I teach and were we to switch providers, I’d need a replacement for a lot of these (and time to convert…). Appointments: I run my calendar through Google and so can create appointment for students. There is a link in my email signature, they can see where in any semester week I’ve blocked out appointment slots and they can book themselves in. This replaces back and forth email exchanges to sort out times (it still happens, bu ..read more
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12 Days of Teaching, Day 2: Slide Design
A Chemical Unconformity – The possibilities were once endless…
by KJHaxton
4y ago
Search Google Ngram Viewer for PowerPoint* and you’ll see that the phrase rockets into our vocabulary from 1991 onwards. It appears briefly in the 1870s and steadily from 1945 onwards, but really becomes a thing from the early 90s. I’ve cropped the scale to show how the phrase permeates books from 1980 onwards. And below is the equivalent time period for the phrase active learning. I’m digressing with active learning however, just that it’s not a new thing. Back to slides and Powerpoint. A search of GoogleScholar reveals a clutch of glorious studies on the shift from paper-based ..read more
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