Videos in Chemistry Education: Applications of Interactive Tools

The introduction of a new class called CHEM 1001, Lights, Camera, ACTION: The Chemistry of Movies and TV at the University of New Orleans in the spring 2014 semester offered the opportunity for a unique pedagogical approach to teaching chemistry to nonscience majors. The course was developed to follow a thematic approach (based on movies and TV shows) rather than a traditional topical approach (based on a standard general chemistry textbook). Broad themes for this course included the chemistry of Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Star Trek, Jurassic Park, Breaking Bad, classic movies (such as Frankenstein and The Invisible Man), science fiction movies, and superhero movies. The correctness, or, more often, the incorrectness, of the chemistry portrayed in each of those TV shows or movies would be analyzed. In the process, basic principles of general, medicinal, and analytical chemistry and biochemistry would be explored. Additionally, the critical and skeptical thinking skills of the students would be developed by problems of the day that encouraged higher levels of Bloom’s-taxonomy thinking. This chapter focuses on the development and execution of one lesson in the Game of Thrones chapter of this course. Initial data analysis and some anecdotal evidence show students are more engaged and have better retention of material using this intensive, interactive pedagogical approach as opposed to the more traditional lecture approach.

The use of videos in teaching has been found to be beneficial in the learning process. In this chapter, using video clips from movies, television series, and YouTube to enhance the teaching and learning experience of different concepts in an introductory chemistry once-a-week lecture was evaluated. Short clips depicting different concepts were made available either by showing in class during lecture or by posting on Blackboard so students could watch outside of class hours. A questionnaire-based survey was given to students at the end of the semester to evaluate the effectiveness of movie clips as a learning tool. The majority of students considered the use of video clips to be useful as they found them to be exciting, educational, and helpful for their learning process.

Videos and interactive animations can offer many advantages compared with traditional lectures and textbooks. Unlike a traditional lecture, multimedia resources have 24/7 availability and are not constrained to a fixed time module. In addition, a video can be paused and replayed by the student as often as needed. An added bonus is that multimedia tools offers a unique way for instructors to connect with their digital-native students and can promote a deep immersion of the learner in the subject matter. Opportunities for video creation include presenting lecture topics, working through examples, discussing problem-solving strategies, narrating answer keys for homework assignments and exams, and reviewing prerequisite skills. Interactive animations and simulations are especially engaging because they provide hands-on opportunities to explore both theory and practice. This chapter will present various tools for video creation, including Explain Everything, Doceri, Adobe Spark, and the exciting new “lightboard” technology. The discussion will also include: best practices for planning, creating, and sharing videos, how to create closed-captioning for YouTube videos, and suggestions for gaining support for instructional redesign projects.

Students are often reluctant or have very little time to prepare for class. They want to have the material presented to them for the first time when they attend the lecture. Having students watch a short (3 to 17 minute) video before coming to class allows them to engage more with the material when they are in the classroom setting. It also affords the instructor more time to employ active learning strategies, which have been shown to promote deeper learning and improve retention of course content. This chapter will highlight the preparation of the videos and what is done in class to emphasize the material and engage the students.

With the increasing interest in moving content out of the classroom and using videos and other multimedia tools, more classroom time is available to engage students in problem solving and development of critical thinking skills. In the current work the use of iPads in the chemistry classroom during lecture to foster peer-to-peer engagement during group problem solving and develop problem-solving skills is described. This technology has increased student engagement and participation in a chemistry classroom. Furthermore, the use of video and multimedia technology in this way has helped to foster self-efficacy and place the onus of learning on the student.

Digital badges are becoming more commonly used as a means of evidence-based assessment of student learning. In this chapter, I explain how digital lab skill badges were implemented in the general chemistry program at the University of Southern California beginning in the fall 2016 semester. The skill badges were introduced as we restructured assessment in our lab curriculum to focus less on written lab exams and more on students’ practical and experimental skills in lab. I detail how we chose which skills to assess and, focusing on the skill of vacuum filtration, explain how teaching assistants (TAs) manage filming in lab, how students submit their videos for assessment, and the grading process. Additionally, I describe recent changes and improvements we have made, including migrating from an in-house class website and database to Blackboard, adjusting point values for badges, and introducing a skill mastery bonus for students who successfully earn all three badges. Lastly, I will address some of the issues we have encountered while implementing skill videos into our program, including problems that arose during filming and difficulties uploading and viewing the videos.

Instructional videos for laboratory experiments performed in an analytical chemistry course were developed to show undergraduate students enrolled in the course how to conduct experiments. Students watched the videos before coming to the laboratory class. The effectiveness of using these videos was evaluated via a postlaboratory survey. The overall response to these videos was positive, with students reporting that the videos helped them to prepare beforehand and to understand the concepts covered in the experiment. The shortened discussion time at the beginning of class resulted in more laboratory time for the students to focus on performing the experiment and for the instructors to supervise, answer questions, make corrections to laboratory techniques, and ensure that the experiment is conducted in a safe manner.

We investigated the overall impact of assigning to students the creation of mechanism videos to be presented during the prelab lecture of second-semester organic chemistry labs. The main motivation of this study was the students’ poor understanding of organic reaction mechanisms. Despite thorough coverage of mechanisms in the prelab lecture, we found from the previous final exams that very few students understood the organic chemistry reaction mechanisms covered in the laboratory experiments. Understanding a mechanism is an important and fundamental part of the organic chemistry curriculum, and we wanted to both improve understanding of reaction mechanisms and foster an appreciation for their importance. We developed a low-stakes assignment that allowed students to display their creativity and show their understanding of the concepts. Groups of three students were asked to prepare a voiced-over video presentation of a reaction mechanism. Our hypothesis was that students would understand the methods to write mechanisms better when they prepared the video themselves and visually demonstrated the mechanism. To gauge the impact of the exercise, a survey was administered at the end of the semester. The survey includes two open-ended questions and 10 Likert-scale questions. We asked the students to describe the overall experience of creating the videos as well as watching them before performing the actual experiment. Feedback from 165 students suggests that the assignment is useful, enjoyable, and important. This exercise helped them to better understand an essential part of organic chemistry: understanding the reaction mechanisms. They also recommended this practice for future classes. The exercise has promoted collaboration and utilization of the time outside the classroom in an educational and informative manner. The review of final exams shows that the percentage of students with correct answers to mechanism questions has increased from 57% to 85%. In summary, our approach has created a positive impact in the overall understanding of reaction mechanisms in second-semester organic chemistry labs.

Faculty are always looking for new ways to engage their students and improve the learning experience. The book presented here has provided the insight and experiences of several faculty members on their use of technology and multimedia tools in their classrooms.