Ohio State Chemistry Flips the Classroom

A former student of mine approached me last spring
break, and we were talking about what we can do to
improve student performance in the
classroom, and we've adopted this "flipping the
classroom approach," where the students watch lecture
videos online. They do a pre-lecture assignment and
then that opens up the classroom space for us, to
have better discussions, to dig into the deep
underlying concepts of the chemistry content, and to
also get them to work on problems rather than just
copy down notes. Ten years ago I wouldn't be able to
do this because I would have had to write to
lecture on the chalkboard, the students would have
had to copy it down, but now with the technology we
have - it really opens up the classroom for us. I
think it's a very exciting time in education because,
um, at a school like Ohio State we have plenty of
resources available, to play around, and really
enhance our learning for our students, and that's
really the bottom line. To better deliver the
content, and to get our students to understand
some concepts that they may not have picked up
if we'd taught in a traditional way.