Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

Description:

This is the tentative learning design for the 5 ECTS point master course “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics”. Previously the course has run as 3 hours per week, with a mixture of lectures/discussions, exercises and student presentations. Last year I ran the tropospheric chemistry part, with two hours of lecturing and 1 hour of exercises (to be solved before class). As the course content is quite heavy on chemical reactions and mechanisms the major pedagogic challenge is to ensure that the pace is not too fast. Last year I decided to use old school chalk and blackboard lectures, to ensure a slower pace. An ideal way ensures more flexibility in both place, time and pace is to transform of the blackboard lecture into a pencast.

The transformation of the lecture into a pencast will be made with the STREAM model in mind. I imagine the following activities to take place during the course of the week:

Out-of-class:
• Read curriculum.
• Watch pencast video.
• Solve exercises.
Out-of-class activity:
• Write a journal entry on blackboard answering 5-10 quick questions related to the curriculum.

In-class:
• Mentimeter/Kahoot to get an understanding of their level of understanding.
• Go through points that seems to be the most difficult.
• Students go through the exercises.
• Each week one student will do a student presentation about one part of the curriculum that is not shown as a pencast lecture.
Out-of-class activity:
• Update your journal entry.

The out-of-class activity serves two purposes:
1) It gives me an idea about the level of understanding of each student.
2) It gives the student a tentative set of notes that can directly be used for the exam.