Abstract:

Students, both traditional and non-traditional, find themselves in a predicament with too little time and too many demands placed on their precious time. Many students deal with the problem by prioritizing, which sometimes results in neglecting those subjects which are deemed unrelated to their majors. One such course is organic chemistry which is a core requirement for health science majors. This paper deals with author’s efforts at using web based videos to enable student preparation prior to the class. Students are required to watch the assigned video(s) and attempt to solve problems posed in the video. They are also required to keep a one minute paper with three components. The components are (a) I totally get the topic (b) would you elaborate on the topic and (c) I am still unsure of the topic.

The students are required to send in their one minute paper using University e-mail by 6 AM on class days. This concept called Just in Time Teaching (JiTT) enables the author to focus on each student’s needs. The author expects a decent buy-in from the students for this teaching strategy especially since they are provided with incentives for their time, in the form of grades. Students could obtain as much as 10% of their overall grade in the subject by watching videos, submitting on time one minute papers and solving problems posed in the videos.

Better prepared students enable more effective use of class time. Class becomes more interactive and time is spent clarifying concepts and invoking those concepts to solve problems. This teaching strategy helps in enabling the students to develop problem solving skills, instills confidence and initiates an abiding interest in the course.

Keywords:

Web based videos, problem solving skills, just in time teaching.