One of the most important aspects of being a LSS
mentor is being able to teach effectively to the students of CHMB42. Through
the seminars of the five labs, we have been able to develop our skills in this,
and were able to achieve this to some extent. For the final two seminars, it
was time to bring all the material together from the five labs to help the
students prepare for their final lab tests. What if we did another standard set
of slides? Would there be enough time to go through so much material? It did
not seem feasible. So instead, we thought back to our own experiences with
final reviews. What are specific methods that teachers use to culminate so much
material in a short amount of time? I thought back to the previous semester,
when I attended the final lab review for my anatomy class (BIOB33H3). I also
thought about what Hyung did as part of his placement in CHMB42. And lastly, I
thought about many other past review sessions that I’ve attended that used one
specific special method. The solution was obvious. We decided to run a
Jeopardy! game.
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| Slides 1-3 of the final Lab Skills Seminar slides for the lab test review |
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Using Jeopardy! does not necessarily solve the problem
of covering all the material in a short amount of time. Instead, in order for
it to be effective, it has to concentrate on specific major concepts that would surely be tested on the lab
test. From my own experiences, I remember that by participating in such a game,
I was encouraged to think hard and critically about the concepts, which could
help me understand them better. It also allowed me to push myself to try to
remember information I might have forgotten, and it made me become aware of the
concepts that I was still having trouble with and had to be reviewed in more
detail. And so, I felt this would be an appropriate method to use for our final
seminars. But how can such a game be produced effectively? Here I go through
the steps we took to create our own LSS Jeopardy! game.
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| Overall flowchart of the steps involved to produce an effective educational Jeopardy! game |
To begin, it is
necessary to divide up the work among the team members. For the most part, this
means determining who gets to come up with which questions. For us, it seemed
like the best way to do this was by labs. Each of the five labs can be five of
the different categories of questions in the game. So, each of us can come up
with the set of five questions for one of the labs (best to go with the lab
each of us were in charge of), and either one or two questions for the fifth
lab. And so, that is what we did. Each of us, for the most part, came up with
five questions of increasing difficulty for his/her lab (mine were Lab 2
questions). And as we said before, the questions should reflect the major concepts of each of the labs.
The next step was
to begin formatting the Jeopardy! PowerPoint slides. I found a template to
begin with online:
Jeopardy Template Download
Using
this template, we could then make our adjustments to suit our needs. Thus, we
started inputting our questions and changing the design of the slides.
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| Sample slides from each of the five lab categories of questions |
I decided to format the question slides to reflect the
designs used for each of our previous presentations as a way to make students
recall back to them and perhaps aid in their remembering of the concepts. Next,
it was time to make sure we had all our questions included and had a primary review.
We also included the Final Jeopardy! question, which we decided should be a
spectroscopy question, since it was such an important concept that they will
definitely have to know for the lab test.
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| The Final Jeopardy! spectroscopy question, a sample Daily Double slide, and the final closing slide. |
Once we had first
completed the slides, it was time to get them reviewed by our supervisor and
the course’s lab coordinator, Wanda. We felt that this time, it would be
necessary that we went through each question along with her, to make sure they
were appropriate as lab test review material. As we did, we made some
adjustments and even changed a few questions, and after that, we finalized the
slides.
The next thing we
had to do was determine how we would organize the game and what the rules were
going to be. Initially, we decided there will be two teams that will take turns
choosing questions and answering. They would have a time limit to answer
(depending on the difficulty of the question), and each of us mentors would be
in charge of our questions (that is, determining whether a given response is
correct). If any team gets a question wrong, the other team had a chance to
steal and win the points. We also found it too tedious to deal with point loss
and negative points (except after losing bids), so we did not bother with that.
As for prizes, we decided to get some candies to share with everyone and Lana
gave us some chemistry pins that we can give to the winners.
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| The entire LSS team running one of the Jeopardy! seminars |
Soon it was time
for us to try the game out for the first time. We divided up the tasks among
the four of us (yes, all four mentors would be presenting together for these
last two special seminars), so that I was in charge of controlling the slides,
Natalia kept track of time limits, and Donald and Taleen kept track of the two
teams and their points. The game turned out well, and we were able to explain
some of the answers as we went along to enhance the learning experience.
However, we took note of some things that did not go too well so that we can make
changes before the final one. Overall, the students seemed to have received the
game well and had fun playing it while they reviewed the lab concepts and
theories.
Final LSS – Jeopardy! (Final Version)
After that, we
made some adjustments to the slides to make things run a bit more smoothly. We
indicated the time limits directly on the slides (because they seemed to vary a
lot), changed some questions slightly, and noted which questions should include
an explanation after it’s answered. We also decided to further subdivide the
two teams into smaller sub-groups so that each of them can take turns answering
and that way more people can get a chance to answer.
At
our second attempt, things seemed to go a lot more smoothly and we were able to
allow more students to participate. Again, they seemed to have liked the game,
and as we reminded them of some of the concepts with our explanations, the
students seemed to have appreciated it. I found the process of creating this
game to be a really good learning experience. It allowed me to review many of
the concepts again, and, in a sense, it tested me to see how much I remembered
from our seminars. I was able to get things clarified that I might have not
been able to before. It also allowed me to further develop my teamwork skills
as we worked together to complete it and make sure the questions were
appropriate. As we presented, again I felt a sense of accomplishment, since we
were able to effectively work hard together to bring the main concepts learned
from the labs and the students could benefit from it for the last couple times.
Overall, I felt that the Jeopardy! game was a good idea, since it allowed us to
really concentrate on the more important concepts, and be able to deliver the material
effectively to students in an engaging way, so that they can become more
prepared for their final lab test. In the future, I will continue to seek new
methods to complete specific tasks if they are likely to be beneficial and
efficient.
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