Refurbishing and assessing the concept of ‘pre-reading’: Multimedia snapshots and web-based assignments.

Abstract

Tertiary students have been traditionally instructed to prepare for lectures by completing a ‘pre-reading’ task. This may be a book chapter or a section from the lecturer’s notes, covering material which is imminently about to be discussed in class. However student participation in this non-compulsory task is often poor, with many students either under significant time pressure, finding the task intimidating or lacking appropriate access to the resources. In first-year chemistry we have adopted a new approach to this concept by developing short videos – ‘snapshots’ – which are ultimately tethered to a short web-based assignment. The closing date for the assignment falls before the material is covered in lectures, and each one is worth a small component of the overall assessment. The videos are generated using a tablet PC, via screen capture of a PowerPoint presentation. Invariably these presentations have also been annotated using ‘digital ink’. A number of flash animations developed between this author and the textbook publisher have also been incorporated. Project aims include delivering a compact overview of upcoming topics in lectures a glossary for introducing new terminology, and conveying three-dimensional perspectives of complex molecular structures and dynamic chemical systems. We discuss some of the early and very encouraging retention and outcomes statistics.