Podcasting as an Effective Pedagogy for Teaching Chemistry During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced all educational institutions worldwide to switch their active routine to ONLINE. With students attending classes virtually, a number of problems arose including the absence of social interaction and the imposed difficulty of digesting the materials of different courses, especially for those with a scientific background. General chemistry (GC), as an introductory course, is usually registered by students from different backgrounds, including Science, Engineering, and Agriculture. At the United Arab Emirates University, the second level of GC (GCII) is more focused on problem-solving as related to various topics. With the absence of face-to-face experience because of the COVID-19 circumstances, students’ understanding of the chemical concepts and implementing that in problem-solving has become a challenge. The current work investigates the effect of using professionally-made podcasts of GCII on the extent of understanding of students registered for this course during the period of 2020-2020 over a course of four semesters. The results of surveying the usage and feedback of students engaged in this experiment are outlined. Conclusively, this pedagogy is fully supported by most of the students who regard it as a suitable alternative to the face-to-face settings.

casts can improve academic achievement by allowing students to study on an individual basis while also allowing lecturers to adjust lectures to students' requirements.
In addition, using podcasts in the classroom makes the learning process much less informal. This encourages students to open up more and provides them with the opportunity to gain a wealth of knowledge and insight. For example, teaching chemistry to students can be difficult since they must understand the composition, structure, and characteristics of matter; quantitative principles, kinetics, and energetics of matter transformations; and fundamental ideas of organic chemistry. Therefore, an interactive Chemistry class is where both the instructor and the students are engaged for an effective learning process. This also allows students to expand their learning beyond standard text-based learning. However, the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic highly affected this ideal scenario and forced educators to search for alternative approaches to deliver the scientific information in a convenient manner.
One of the clearest advantages of podcasts that teachers should take use of is the ability to record existing courses. Students may simply access them as fantastic study tools this way. When students prepare to take exams, these study resources are essential. Any student who has had trouble grasping a certain topic in class can listen to the audio of that lecture to alleviate their worries. Because the courses are recorded as podcasts, students may learn at their own speed. This option to study the lecture multiple times is very beneficial for students from other parts of the world or those with learning issues. It is also true that convincing students to view an hour-long video of the lecture might be difficult. As a result, providing students with shorter audio recording that they may listen to at their leisure assists them to study outside of the classroom setting. Ince podcasts put students in charge to study and understand the topics quickly, the students feel encouraged to take a more critical view or creative thinking when preparing any tasks. As a result, podcasts have an overall favorable impact on the learning process that extends beyond the classroom. Accordingly, podcasts may be the greatest approach to retain your students' focus on the task at hand. In this study, the effect of using podcasts of General Chemistry II (GCII) on the extent of learning of Science, Engineering and Agriculture students

Course information
In this study, podcasting was investigated as an alternative pedagogy for General Chemistry II (GCII) course as an introductory course during the COVID-19 pandemic. GCII course is composed of eight (8) chapters and is mainly based on concepts dealing with thermochemistry, thermodynamics of materials, chemical kinetics, chemical equilibrium under different solution conditions, electrochemistry and selected properties of solutions. The main theme of the course is to investigate the concepts of each of these topics followed by problem-solving. The main resources of this course are: textbook; Chemistry: The Central Science, as the latest edition from the published, and is made available for students as an ebook on Blackboard, in addition to the instructor-developed lecture notes, as pdf files that are usually uploaded on Blackboard for students to download and study from. The assessment of the course is carried out through four (4) progress exams and one (1) final exam. All exams are also carried out virtually using a correspondus lockdown browser with a monitor.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, this course was delivered on ONLINE basis using BlackBoard Collaborate Ultra. Through these ONLINE sessions, each instructor shares a pdf of the lecture notes with the students and elaborate on the lecture contents, while a recording of each online session is made available for students to download.

Podcasting experiments
A set of professionally-made power point files has been developed by authors. These were made colored and animated, as part of the authors' efforts to make it appealing for the students to study from. Figure 1 shows the cover slide of the GCII lecture notes, which were also used for all podcasts. Lecture notes exclusively cover the entire contents of the course with step-by-step illustrations of solving problems, as shown in Figure 2 for a typical approach for solving a problem in one of the topics (Chemical Kinetics). The notes also include figures, tables, solved, and unsolved exercises, which are adapted from the textbook for noncommercial educational purposes only.  The development of the GCII podcasts took place over two stages. In the first stage, a software called "Camtasia, TechSmith, USA" was used for screen capturing and audio recording the lectures. During the recording sessions, both power point presentations and Camtasia were simultaneously working, while a noisefree microphone and speaker system were used for the recording, and all recording sessions were performed in a well-equipped noise-free studio to ensure the high quality of the recordings. All explanations of the lecture notes were recorded through the voice-over feature of Camtasia. In addition, all lecture animations were recorded using the screen capturing feature of the software. At the end of the recording of every lecture, a media file (as *.MP4) is generated after confirming the quality of the recording.

Podcasting delivery to students
The second stage of the development of the GCII podcasts involved the use of "Panopto, USA" platform, where all podcasts were uploaded at the beginning of every semester. Figure 3 shows a typical layout of the as shown in Figure 6a. A detailed testimony of the students indicated the importance of the podcasts in this regard and the subsequent benefit of simplifying the concepts being discussed in class as a result of knowing about them through the podcasts before class. Around 70% of the students considered the GCII podcasts an appropriate alternative for completely or partially missing lectures, as shown in Figure 6b. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the ONLINE BlackBoard collaborate ultra sessions were routinely recorded and made available to students to download. However, students absolutely considered the GCII podcasts a more convenient resource of study, as shown in Figure 7a. Detailed testimony of the students indicated that two main reasons largely contributed to the advantage of the podcasts as a unique resource of study. The first reason was related to the uninterrupted podcasts where all media files were entirely focused on the topics, hence contributed to a better understanding of the subjects. The second reason was related to the shorter duration of the GCII podcasts (10-15 minutes at most) as compared to the collaborate ultra sessions, as shown in Figure 7b, which is a further conformation of the fact that shorter podcasts are more appealing to the audience than longer podcasts [12]. The GCII podcasts were professionally made using a combination of well-designed animated power point presentations and Camtasia. Accordingly, around 90% of the students indicated that no further improvement is needed for these podcasts, as shown in Figure 8a. Accordingly, 30% of the students considered podcasts a sole resource in case no lecture notes are available and 50% of the students combined the podcasts and the textbook as potential resources as an alternative to the lecture notes, as shown in Figure 8b. Based on the analytics provided by Panopto, where all podcasts were uploaded and accessed by the students, and the students' feedback, it is evident that podcasts successfully acted as an alternative for the absence of the face-to-face settings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It should be mentioned that the student test sample of the GCII podcasts in the current study were not involved in the previously developed General Chemistry I (GCI) podcasts that were evaluated in 2017 [13]. It is therefore an advantage for the coming Science, Engineering, and Agriculture student cohorts to have podcasts of both GCI and GCII to rely on for as an additional resource for their studies.

Podcasting as an Effective Pedagogy for Teaching Chemistry During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond
International Journal for Innovation Education and Research, Vol.10 No.10 (2022), pg. 211

Conclusion
The current study showed the effectiveness of using podcasts of General Chemistry II as a successful pedagogy during the COVID-19 pandemic and as an alternative to routinely recorded ONLINE lectures. The podcasts developed herewith were professionally recorded using Camtasia and were made available to students using Panopto platform. Automatically generated analytics showed the eagerness of the students to view and download the podcasts throughout the semester of study, while the students' feedback showed their dependence on these podcasts to a large extent as an additional resource as an efficient alternative remedy for the absence of the face-to-face settings. Our studies indicate the likelihood of using podcasts of scientific subjects by the upcoming cohorts of Science, Engineering and Agriculture students due to its proven success.