For the past few years, I have used video pre-labs (posted on YouTube) as a way to introduce students to the week's experiment in General Chemistry Labs. There were number of reasons for this, and now that I've done it for a while, I'd like to get some feedback. There's a poll on this blog (look left, right above the fish...) to collect your opinions/preferences. If you'd like to leave additional comments, leave them here, that's why I put up a post as well as the poll. I'm not trolling for praise, I really just want to know how useful the video pre-labs are compared to some other options. Setting up, shooting, editing and posting the videos takes a little bit of time and effort, and I kind of enjoy doing it, but if students don't consider it a positive contribution to the lab experience, I could probably re-direct my effort toward other projects.
I really appreciate the explanations in the pre-lab videos. I have time to think and go over the printed procedure after watching the video and come prepared to lab. I think I get a little more out of lab too, since I might already have questions for the instructor.
ReplyDeleteThe pre-lab videos have been very helpful. For me, my productivity is enhanced not just by reading the lab manual but by visually seeing what I will be doing before the lab. I recently didn't do as well on a particular lab and I wondered why - I figured it might have been because there was no video (Iodination). If you would, please, keep going on posting the videos. Thank you.
ReplyDeletePre-lab videos are extremely helpful. Its nice to know what the lad is supposed to look like before we get there and be able to visualize it when we read through the procedure. Also when you put the equation that we would use in there, that helped abundantly.
ReplyDeleteThe Iodination experiment was a bit of a test to see how people would do without a pre-lab video. The old pre-lab video for that experiment is still up on my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpY8TQHzV2g&list=UUQ3QBoDJlPSGDb7UnnORd2g), but I made it before we got the new SpectroVis Pro spectrometers, so most of the in-lab technique part would have had to have been re-recorded, and I wasn't feeling all that well for a 1-2 week stretch back at that time so I didn't have the voice or the energy to re-shoot.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone has additional comments, feel free to continue leaving them. At this point it looks like most people find the pre-lab videos valuable enough that I'll happily keep making them. Thanks for the comments you've already left and thanks for any others yet to come.
I like having the prelabs to give me an idea of what I will be doing and looking for in the lab. Very helpful
ReplyDelete