All good things come to an end

Today was the final day of instruction in my first DISCOVERe course! Looking back on the term, given other responsibilities, I certainly didn't do as much innovation and exploration as I would have liked to incorporate the tablet into my class. However, I am overjoyed and proud that the first half (or so) of the semester involved a flipped classroom approach, where I recorded screencast lectures in advance of each class; my students were required to watch those before coming to class. The reason that I didn't continue this approach through the entire term was because I was also requiring students to perform textbook readings in advance of class as well, and the two approaches were mostly redundant.

What I'm even more proud of is that I faithfully recorded every lecture (except one, because of technical difficulty) and posted each one on YouTube. As mentioned in the previous post, I've seen resounding success with this approach. Today, my channel for my course (both my tablet and non-tablet sections combined have an enrollment of 84) has received 5,805 video views, in which 53,090 minutes of video have been watched by my students. As soon as I post grades, I will be allowed to access my student assessments for the purpose of analyzing my successes in more detail and comparing my tablet and non-tablet courses.

In one month, I will start instruction on my second DISCOVERe tablet instruction course: Applied Bioethics. A graduate course, this will be fundamentally different from my genetics tablet course, and I'm really looking forward to learning about and inventing more new ways to use a tablet computer in class!