Making and Characterising Silver Nanoparticles

By Michael Seery On January 25, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Here’s a video demonstration of how to make silver nanoparticles, and change their colour easily by adding silver ion to a seed solution. Colour is monitored by UV/visible spectroscopy and some particle sizing is done by dynamic light scattering and TEM (transmission electron microscopy). This is a short overview video of a much larger interactive [...]

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My experiences of teaching online: A case study

By Michael Seery On January 5, 2012 · Leave a Comment

My paper on taking a module that was taught in class and moved online has been published in CERP (free to access). The paper aims to share my own experiences in teaching a module online so that others considering this approach might find some information of use.

The paper is set against a [...]

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Chemistry Education Research and Practice

By Michael Seery On November 21, 2011 · Leave a Comment

I still remember the pleasant surprise of discovering that there was a journal dedicated to the teaching of chemistry in higher education. Sometime in late 2005, I Googled something about assessment in chemistry, and out came a result: “Assessment in Chemistry and the Role of Examinations“, a great paper questioning the value of [...]

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Twitter and Professional Development

By Michael Seery On November 18, 2011 · 4 Comments

I was, in the time-scale of the internet, a little late to the Twitter party. If the early adopters were Cambrian, I am probably somewhere around Jurassic. Like many, I thought it was about what you ate for breakfast (weetabix and a nice cup of tea, thanks) and tweckling people from your multi-dimension [...]

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The rise and rise of clickers in chemistry

By Michael Seery On September 19, 2011 · 5 Comments

As recently as 2008, a review of clickers in Chemistry Education Research and Practice had difficulty finding reports of their use in chemistry lecture rooms. In the intervening years, the increase in usage has been nothing short of meteoric. It’s interesting to survey the recent literature to consider how clickers are used in [...]

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Variety in Chemistry Education 2011

By Michael Seery On September 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Variety in Chemistry Education (ViCE) UK is one of those conferences. Unmissable, pragmatic, friendly, and always informative. I’ve gone every year since I started teaching, and love catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. Its value lies in the fact that it is based on presentations by chemistry lecturers on things they have [...]

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New Directions

By Michael Seery On June 15, 2011 · Leave a Comment

It’s hard to believe we are at the end of another academic year. It doesn’t seem long ago since I was welcoming new first years in and giving my final year induction talk to the incoming anxious, but eager fourth years. But here we are already in mid-June, which also means the end of my [...]

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Leaving Cert Chemistry – Example of Context

By Michael Seery On May 31, 2011 · Leave a Comment

In a previous post, I had a ramble about how the LC chemistry curriculum needs reform. This post aims to put a bit more meat on the bones. There is a lot of material available for teaching chemistry in context, but a recent paper* on the topic is [...]

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Worked Examples in Chemistry – Literature

By Michael Seery On May 24, 2011 · Leave a Comment

This post aims to summarise some literature on the use of worked examples in the teaching of problem solving in chemistry. Crippen, drawing from the work of Sweller and others has summarised worked examples as follows (taken from Crippen, 2010, below):

Worked examples are sample problems which have already been solved and provide the learner [...]

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What’s wrong with Leaving Cert chemistry?

By Michael Seery On May 5, 2011 · 3 Comments

A nasty physicist once remarked that all of chemistry can be summarised as acids reacting with bases. I laughed it off at the time, but that casual remark made me think long and hard about my subject. Could it be that chemistry could be reduced to this? Could all of those reactions be distilled down [...]

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Study and Communication Skills for the Chemical Sciences

By Michael Seery On January 15, 2011 · 2 Comments

A few months ago I reviewed a book Study Skills for Science, Technology and Engineering Students. While I couldn’t fault the authors on the content or their good intentions to pass on useful information gleaned from years of experience of giving students advice, it reminded me of a book I once used as a student [...]

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YouTube: Acquiring a UV/visible spectrum; choosing cells and solvents

By Michael Seery On December 6, 2010 · Leave a Comment

This video shows how to acquire a UV/vis spectrum and demonstrates the different types of cells and solvents that can be used – showing the absorbance ranges for each.

Funding from DIT and the NDLR gratefully acknowledged.

Related Posts:Using Pre-Lecture Resources in your [...]

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