1. Higher Education Academy June 2012 Dr Simon Lancaster (CHE) @S_J_Lancaster @ChemVignette

2. Does your syllabus compel you to present lots of material?

3. Are your lectures interactive?

4. Do you sometimes wish you had more time for interaction?

5. Which of these aspects would you like to address? Attendance Attention Understanding Enjoyment Encouraging private study

6. So, whats the solution(s)? Bribery Its hopeless Taking the Lecture out of the Lecture Lecture Flipping Replacing lectures with study packs A practical approach to freeing up lecture time The inverted classroom Learning through enquiry Something else, see the presentation at #VICEPHEC

7. What do I mean by Lecture Flipping? Students are strongly encouraged to watch a screencast recording of the (previous years) lecture the flipped lecture is replacing. They attend the timetabled teaching slot and are engaged in as interactive and as challenging a session as the lecturer can muster using every audience participation device at their disposal.

8. The trial Three second year chemistry lectures in descriptive main group organometallics. Students watched the screencasts in advance and were then engaged in a interactive session. Extensive use was made of audience response handsets but also whiteboards for drawing structures and equations.

9. Uptake

10. What is an Organometallic? A compound with both metal and carbon atoms. A coordination complex in which one of the ligands contains carbon. A large musical instrument constructed from tin pipes. A compound containing a metal-to-carbon bond. An organic molecule with a metal in it somewhere.

11. How is the Li–C bond polarised? Why then are organolithium reagents soluble in organic solvents? Illustrate with a diagram.

12. Why do species like Me 2 Mg form electron deficient bonds? To annoy organic chemists To frustrate undergraduates To increase the valence electron count To temper Lewis acidity and involve all the orbitals.

13. Which of the following are genuine student evaluation comments? 1. A lot of the descriptive chemistry was very dry and essentially boring. It is hard to teach this kind of material but the 'flipped lectures' seemed to combat this. 2. I think the 'flipped' lectures run by Dr. Lancaster were a really good idea and I felt more engaged in the module. 3. I appreciated Dr Lancaster's efforts to make the lectures interesting and engaging in a modern way. The 'flipped' lectures were very successful. 4. I really enjoyed the flipped lectures and find that revising that material is much easier. 5. The flipped-lectures are a definite step in the right direction, away from archaic lectures with little or no mental stimulus, towards a more interactive learning experience that maximises learning outcome! 6. They were good fun as it was nice to have interaction with the lecture as opposed to just being talked at, it was also nice having knowledge of what you were talking about as we had already gone through the material! 7. I think the flipped lectures were a really good idea because it was a more interactive way to engage students into learning, rather than the repetitive routine of having to listen to the lecturer work through a PowerPoint presentation for an hour.

14. Preliminary Conclusions Flipped lectures are an exciting opportunity for innovative blended learning. They are not an easy option for staff or students. This model does not involve any reduction in contact hours. Student reaction has been extraordinarily positive. I will be doing more but have no plans to completely phase out lectures.