Variety in Chemistry Education 2012

Variety in Chemistry Education is one of my favourite annual conferences. This year it was held along with the Physics Higher Education Conference, providing the catchy Twitter hashtag #vicephec. The meeting was opened with a keynote lecture by Martyn Poliakoff, better known to YouTube subscribers as the star of the Periodic Table of Videos series. What struck me most about this presentation was the sense of collaboration - a world-renowned scientist sharing his knowledge with that of a skilled video journalist. Hopefully it is a collaboration that might inspire others. This beautifully delivered talk ended with a special tribute video to Ronald Nyholm (one of the two men behind VSEPR theory), which I suspect had even the quantum physicists choking back a tear. 

With the onset of presentations, it became clear that the organisers had carefully thought about the programme, with clear themes emerging. The first being the increasing use of technology in education. This included several talks on supporting in-class learning using multimedia resources. Simon Lancaster spoke of a trial regarding flipping the lecture, and on a similar concept, David McGarvey and Katherine Haxton spoke about pre-lecture activities they developed for their students. Dylan Williams talked about using multimedia clips for supporting lectures, and David Read on some fantastic worked answer videos for allowing students to engage in self-assessed work (during the summer, which they liked!). Technology continued into workshops on screencasting, wikis and online practicals.