ConfChem Conference on Flipped Classroom: Using a Blog To Flip a Classroom

This communication summarizes one of the invited papers to the Flipped Classroom ACS Division of Chemical Education Committee on Computers in Chemical Education online ConfChem held from May 18 to June 24, 2014. Just in Time Teaching is a technique in which students read the material before class and respond to a few questions. In a first-year seminar course, The Chemistry of Food, students were assigned to maintain blogs for the entire CentreTerm, a 16-day term. To create an online learning community, the instructor’s blog in lieu of a quiz was used as a forum to assign the readings and pose questions about the readings. The comments on the instructor blog, as well as individual student posts, were used to develop the classroom discussion; moreover, many of the readings were not discussed in class but entirely online. Many students who would not normally participate in class were more than willing to participate online, thus providing the class discussion with more variety and greater input from the students.