So, it appears that I will have 5 or possibly 6 students in my inorganic class. The smallest I've ever had this class is more like 10-12. Any thoughts or tips on teaching a class this small? I don't feel like lecturing will work (my organometallics class is regularly <10 and I don't lecture much there, instead I do this).
This fall I am teaching gen chem with an emphasis on case studies and small group problem solving. I'm guessing I will try something like that...
The results of the Survey on the Undergraduate Inorganic Curriculum are now (well, probably 24 hours from now) available in Inorganic Chemistry (http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.5b01320).
In the paper we've presented the results of the survey, our interpretation, and our preliminary recommendations. However, we believe that these results merit a community discussion and hope that you'll share your perspective on the undergraduate inorganic curriculum in this space on VIPEr.
Does anyone have thoughts to share (good or bad) on either or both of these resources? I will be teaching Gen Chem I and II at Rider University this year and we are adopting these teaching tools. The textbook is available free and therefore represents a significant cost savings for the students (https://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/chemistry). I have looked through the book and it seems to be pretty solid, but haven't used it for teaching yet.
The 2013 Inorganic Curriculum Survey asked respondents about the resources they used when they teach inorganic chemistry. The choices included inorganic chemistry textbooks, activities from the Journal of Chemical Education, articles from the primary literature (e.g., JACS, Inorg. Chem.), demonstrations, online homework, online resources, podcasts, videos, Wikipedia, and other. About 20% of respondents selected "other" and provided information about these resources.
In our introductory class, we've periodically used Sapling online homework system. We are looking at a new book for the fall that comes with the Smartwork homework system which seems quite a bit like Sapling. Anyone have any experience with both and can talk about the differences and pros/cons other than price?
My students and I are in the process of developing a foundation level book with an emphasis on solid state and materials. You can learn more about it here: https://www.ionicviper.org/web-resources-and-apps/inorganic-chemistry-w…
We are a small school with relatively small classes. My exams (for any course/level) typically contain at most 10 multiple choice questions. However, we are now administering the ACS exams as final exams for many of our courses. Since I started, we have always graded these by hand using self-generated answer sheets where students write in their choice (no bubble filling). For multiple reasons, we think we need a more efficient (and accurate) system.
I describe the various ways that I've incorporated literature discussion learning objects (LOs) into my inorganic course in a BITeS blog post. I'm curious to hear more about what others have done. Do you sprinkle discussions throughout the course? (At the end of each section? How many?) Do you save them all for the end? Do your students work on articles individually or do you prefer to have the whole class read articles together?
Of course there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution....
So I know we have LOs and discussions about what people do on the first day of class. Does anyone do anything cool or interesting on the last day of class? I have actually stayed on (actually even 1 day ahead) of my syllabus this semester and have some wiggle room to think about how to wrap up the semester. Crazy and fun ideas welcome.