We have provided first-year undergraduate students on bioscience courses the opportunity to make short reflective video logs of their experience in chemistry practical classes. Three practical groups per session are provided with a video camera and brief instruction on its use. Each group must reflect on particular aspects of the practical when making the video, highlighting anything they found difficult and offering advice to someone who may be repeating the experiment at a later time. In so doing this promotes engagement with practical work during the session and thought towards how the material relates to lectures and other parts of the course. The videos are then uploaded to a video sharing website (YouTestTube.com) hosted on university servers and shared with everyone enrolled on the Introductory Chemistry module. Students may view and rate their colleagues’ videos as well as ‘making friends’ with other members of the group. This has provided a collaborative and inclusive peer-learning environment for bioscience students in a subject that is often perceived as difficult. The scheme was piloted in semester 1 of 2008/09 so a full evaluation has not taken place. A total of 32 videos were made and initial feedback from students indicated that they thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of the module and found it useful in getting to know people within a relatively large (130+) group. Student engagement was measured by the number of comments posted on videos as well as views and ratings. This has generally been good. Our initial assessment has been that this is a valuable method of promoting reflection within laboratory classes but also of fostering the formation of friendship networks in a large first year group with a broad edu-diversity at a time when retention may be a problem.

1. Stephen McClean School of Biomedical Sciences University of Ulster [email_address] twitter.com/PlanetChemistry YouTestTube.com - video sharing to promote reflection in year one chemistry laboratory sessions

3. Student Engagement in the Lab I hope she read the protocol before lab because I didn’t! I hope he read the protocol before lab because I didn’t!

14. Student Responses to Evaluation Statements Total respondents n = 105 3 27 42 24 9 Helped to Make Friends 3 9 7 60 26 YouTestTube easy to use 3 9 20 54 19 Enjoyed Viewing Colleagues’ Videos 3 22 26 38 16 Think More About Practical 3 9 17 59 17 Enjoyed Making Video 2 6 12 59 26 Camera Easy to Use 1 5 9 66 24 Initially Apprehensive Strongly Disagree Disagree Neither Agree / Disagree Agree Strongly Agree Statement

15. “ Good way to make friends within class.” “ www.youtesttube.com is a great way to interact with the class as well as learn from the practicals completed throughout the semester. it is a great idea!” “ Was fun to do, and the videos helped in revision for the test.” “ i think its a great idea to have a site like this so everyone can share comments and get to know everyone in their year!” Student Comments

16. “ Fantastic idea! Being able to watch the practicals shows you what you need to improve on and reminds you exactly what happened in the course of the experiment. Highly entertaining, makes you want to participate and increases enthusiasm towards practicals.” “ Found youtestube.com to be quite useless. Although it was good craic making the videos i still dont see the need for it at all!!!” (‘craic’ = ‘fun’) Student Comments