This tutorial for my Dundee group is going to be essentially another run of the one I provided in Aberdeen a few weeks ago. The material will still be relevant, and in fact the students will be more familiar with the content.
However, there were improvements that I wanted to make.
For the exercise on interpreting geological cross-sections I wanted to prepared set of sketches showing the evolution of the location. Unfortunately these did not exist in the Tutor Notes for the original use of the question in the 2008 TMA. I drew my own set using MS Paint and the pen of my Tablet PC. These images were then inserted into a PowerPoint, which I can run at the tutorial.
For the radiactive decay exercise I added a few points to the Tutor Notes to remind me to review nuclear structure, and to describe decay in terms of particles, and in terms of numbers of nuclei and the half-life. I also found some more 1p coins to give the possibility of more points on the graph.
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Another S104 Earth science tutorial
Monday 8 April 2013 at 13:31
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SXP288 Elluminate for NMR: Intepreting spectra
Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:18
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This second NMR Elluminate tutorial is the core of the NMR tutorial work - it covers interpretation or prediction of the NMR spectra from protons within simple organic molecules.
We were provided with a short PowerPoint presentation of eight slides showing the structural formulae of three organic molecules and the corresponding NMR spectra. Colour-coded version matched up the lines within the spectra to the chemical groups responsible for them.
As I am not familiar with this subject (apart from the short period spent teaching this module last year) I worked through all of the relevant module material. I then found that working out the spectral features was relatively straightforward. There was one feature whose details did not match up clearly to the rules of the simple models we used. I asked for clarification on this from the topic specialists on our dedicated support forum, but did not receive a response before the tutorial.
The material covered in the PowerPoint was not enough for a tutorial as students would probably not to be sufficiently familiar with the topic to work through these examples within a tutorial. I referred back to the presentation I used last year. I had provided a summary of the rules at the start of this presentation.
I made a few minor changes to improve the clarity of these slides, including stretching the content and darkening the colours. Then I rehearsed the presentation via Elluminate on my Tablet PC, using the pen to annotate the screens, including writing out the working.
My intention was to get the students to apply the rules for the examples. Therefore I extracted key screens containing the rules and placed them on our group forum for students to print out before the session.
In practise the session ran well. The students, although again reluctant to speak, did contribute and successfully worked through the three examples. They seemed to appreciate the exercise (though I have not had any specific feedback). I provided a pdf version of the annotated whiteboard screens on the forum afterwards.
We were provided with a short PowerPoint presentation of eight slides showing the structural formulae of three organic molecules and the corresponding NMR spectra. Colour-coded version matched up the lines within the spectra to the chemical groups responsible for them.
As I am not familiar with this subject (apart from the short period spent teaching this module last year) I worked through all of the relevant module material. I then found that working out the spectral features was relatively straightforward. There was one feature whose details did not match up clearly to the rules of the simple models we used. I asked for clarification on this from the topic specialists on our dedicated support forum, but did not receive a response before the tutorial.
The material covered in the PowerPoint was not enough for a tutorial as students would probably not to be sufficiently familiar with the topic to work through these examples within a tutorial. I referred back to the presentation I used last year. I had provided a summary of the rules at the start of this presentation.
I made a few minor changes to improve the clarity of these slides, including stretching the content and darkening the colours. Then I rehearsed the presentation via Elluminate on my Tablet PC, using the pen to annotate the screens, including writing out the working.
My intention was to get the students to apply the rules for the examples. Therefore I extracted key screens containing the rules and placed them on our group forum for students to print out before the session.
In practise the session ran well. The students, although again reluctant to speak, did contribute and successfully worked through the three examples. They seemed to appreciate the exercise (though I have not had any specific feedback). I provided a pdf version of the annotated whiteboard screens on the forum afterwards.
Review of Elluminate for S282 resit
Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:17
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Edited by Dave Edwards, Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:17
After a bit of reflection I decided to add a few quiz questions to the session.
This did actually help in the session, because the students were very reluctant to speak (though occasionally they did speak). I was very pleased I made this change, because it forced some interactivity.
The session ran to 1 hour 20 minutes. I liked the fact that I managed to review some of the astronomy whilst discussing revision and study skills.
I spotted a couple of minor issues with slides and corrected them afterwards (a version of the file is here . The spray diagram example needs to be replaced next time with either an electronic version or (probably better) a hand drawn diagram with much thicker lines.
There was some technical difficulty for me at the start of the session. I had planned to use my Tablet PC to write on the whiteboard during the session. I also wanted the benefit of my large monitor. However this took me down a path of screen resolution and orientation problems, culminating in the microphone button (conveniently located at the bottom of the Elluminate window) being off the bottom of my screen. I had to settle for just using the monitor.
[4 April 2013]
SXP288 Elluminate for NMR: Chemical structures
Monday 8 April 2013 at 10:05
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To support the students' work on nuclear magnetic resonance in SXP288 (Practical science: physics and astronomy) we need to run two Elluminate sessions fairly close together. I decided to offer these fairly early as the information I had from students indicated they were making rapid progress through the NMR topic. I used two Doodle polls to let students indicate their preferred days of the week.
The first session covers valency and covalent bonds, functional groups, structural formulae, naming conventions and isomers for some simple organic molecules. The module team provide a short PowerPoint presentation based around fifteen slides including a few test questions at the end requiring students to identify structures and to draw structural formulae.
I reviewed the PowerPoint I used last year and made a few minor changes. This file ran to twenty slides. I had already included additional slides reviewing the naming conventions and I also split the test questions over more slides to improve clarity. I also stretched some of the images to improve the readability in Elluminate.
I prepared a pdf file from the PowerPoint slides, and used PDF Annotator (along with my Tablet PC) to hand write my speaking notes onto the slides. I also included all the annotations I planned to provide with Elluminate via the Tablet PC.
After printing this out I ran through the presentation myself. I still felt that students would find applying the naming rules difficult during the test questions unless they had easy access to the appropriate material. Therefore I extracted a few key slides into a separate PowerPoint, and exported this to a pdf file. This was then posted on the tutor group forum along with a suggestion for students to print it out ready for the session.
I posted this file and discussed it within Elluminate with my colleague Sye Murray.
Al this activity took nearly a day.
The first session covers valency and covalent bonds, functional groups, structural formulae, naming conventions and isomers for some simple organic molecules. The module team provide a short PowerPoint presentation based around fifteen slides including a few test questions at the end requiring students to identify structures and to draw structural formulae.
I reviewed the PowerPoint I used last year and made a few minor changes. This file ran to twenty slides. I had already included additional slides reviewing the naming conventions and I also split the test questions over more slides to improve clarity. I also stretched some of the images to improve the readability in Elluminate.
I prepared a pdf file from the PowerPoint slides, and used PDF Annotator (along with my Tablet PC) to hand write my speaking notes onto the slides. I also included all the annotations I planned to provide with Elluminate via the Tablet PC.
After printing this out I ran through the presentation myself. I still felt that students would find applying the naming rules difficult during the test questions unless they had easy access to the appropriate material. Therefore I extracted a few key slides into a separate PowerPoint, and exported this to a pdf file. This was then posted on the tutor group forum along with a suggestion for students to print it out ready for the session.
I posted this file and discussed it within Elluminate with my colleague Sye Murray.
Al this activity took nearly a day.
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