Michael Seery

I’ve started a new blog over on University of Edinburgh’s new blog website – these are posts specifically focussed on chemistry education, looking at important and I hope interesting things from staff/student perspectives.

What is the key literature on chemistry laboratory education?

VLEs are choccaful of information and we are doing a lot of thinking about how to make it as easy as possible to get to the relevant information.

I read with interest this series of blog posts on promotion in academia, discussing external promotions (having to move beyond your institution to get promoted), internal promotions, and using the former to achieve the latter.

This week I ran the third Methods in Chemistry Education Research meeting (MICER18).

I was invited to contribute to the TEAM conference in March but couldn’t make it in person, so sent this screencast.

Katherine Haxton has challenged us to write a blog post on a memorable teaching situation.

We are now coming up to half way for the webinar series I launched this year.

David Read blew my cover on Sunday night with a tweet mentioning my averaging of Likert data in our recent work on badges.

Respected Dr Dr Mrs Seery, we hope that you can come to our conference in somewhere you’ve never heard of and tell us about your interesting and exciting work in Pre-Lecture Resources for Reducing Cognitive Load at our Conference on Chemistry and Chemical…

One of the difficulties students often raise is that the lab report they are required to produce is different for one section (not looking at anyone…) than it is for others.

Yesterday’s post discussed our recent work in thinking about how to build experimental design into the teaching laboratory.

A great dilemma lies at the heart of practical education.

Some references to 19 petitioners to Chemical Society and others This list was compiled for the purpose of creating/editing Wikipedia articles about Women in Chemistry.

This image became very popular today with many people looking to share (and credit) it.

Later this month I am hosting a webinar, hopefully first in a series.

I enjoyed VICEPHEC this year.

One of the first challenges that emerge when considering teaching in laboratories is to define the kind of environment we are teaching in, and what that means for student learning.

It’s the time of the year to crank up the new projects.

A new review addressing this topic was recently published.

Much of my work over the last year has focussed on pre-labs.

While in Australia, I was invited to present a talk to the Monash Education Academy on using technology in education.

Melbourne Seventh City of Empire, part of the “Brave New World: Australia 1930s” Exhibition at National Gallery of Victoria I’ve spent the last two week in Australia thanks to a trip to the Royal Australian Chemical Institute 100th Annual Congress in Melb…

In 2014/2015, 18,495 people opted to study undergraduate chemistry at higher education in the UK.

This is my 200th blog post.

Anyone involved in e-learning will know of the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, which draws together information processing model (dual coding), cognitive load theory (working memory), and the notion of active processing.

It’s been 10 years since “Developing practical chemistry skills by means of student-driven problem based learning mini-projects” was published in Chemistry Education Research and Practice, and it marked the kick-starting of an accidental career invested in

Many thanks to Scott Lewis/USF who put an interesting paper on students’ approaches to study in introductory chemistry my way.

Two related themes emerged for me from the Methods in Chemistry Education Research meeting last week: confidence and iteration.

Academics have a complicated relationship with Wikipedia.

“Sublimity,” Hauptmann says, panting, “you know what that is, Pfennig?”

Update 2021 – These PDF files now have a lovely new home on the RSC site: https://edu.rsc.org/resources/higher-education/university-chemistry-education I don’t know if I am missing something, but I have found it hard to locate past issues of University Ch…

This is not a post on whether the lecture is A Good Thing or not.

I’m always a little envious when people tell me they were students of chemistry at Glasgow during Alex Johnstone’s time there.

I have been reading quite a lot about why we do practical work.

This week is All Aboard week in Ireland, essayed at “Building Confidence in Digital Skills for Learning”.

I have heard the term learning gain on and off but considered that it was just an awkward phrase to describe learning, a pleonasm that indicated some generally positive direction for those needing reassurance.

Marcy Towns’ lovely paper from 2015 described the use of digital badges in higher education chemistry, specifically for assessment of laboratory skills.

As pat of our ongoing development of an electronic laboratory manual at Edinburgh, I decided this year to incorporate discussion boards to support students doing physical chemistry labs.

In a small laboratory off the M25, is a man named Bob.

The following was a pre-conference piece submitted to a Royal Society conference on assessment in practical science.

Here is a talk I gave to school teachers at an NCCA event in Dublin Castle earlier this year.

The annual Variety in Chemistry Education/Physics Higher Education conference was on this week in Southampton.

Over the summer we have been working on a lab skills badging project.

Over on the Education in Chemistry blog, Paul MacLellan wrote an excellent article on reasons teachers don’t engage with education research, which is well worth a read.

Contracts have been signed so I am happy to say that I am writing a book on chemistry laboratory education as part of the RSC’s new Advances in Chemistry Education series due for publication mid 2017.

My thanks to Prof Tina Overton for alerting me to the fact that these exist.

I’ve compiled this list for another purpose and thought it might be useful to share here.

Literature on laboratory education over the last four decades (and more, I’m sure) has a lot to say on the role of practical work in undergraduate curricula.

How do we prepare students for practical skills they conduct in the laboratory?