Case Study: University of Alabama achieves higher attendance and seamless live handwritten chemistry instruction with Explain Everything

The University of Alabama Lecture Delivery and Live Broadcasting

The University of Alabama faced the challenge of teaching highly visual chemistry courses in very large lecture halls (up to 400 seats) where traditional whiteboards were ineffective, and later needed to move quickly to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Associate Professor Diana Leung adopted Explain Everything’s whiteboarding tools to preserve handwritten drawings and live problem-solving in both in-person and remote settings.

Using Explain Everything on an iPad with a stylus, Leung shares the app’s canvas to room projectors via Apple TV or to remote students via her laptop and Zoom, records lectures with audio, and edits/exports sessions as PDFs or MP4s. Explain Everything enabled a seamless transition to online delivery while keeping scheduled live classes, led to significantly higher attendance and participation compared with courses that used pre-recorded lectures, and allowed large-enrollment classes to retain the visual, interactive instruction chemistry requires.

University of Alabama

Diana Leung

University of Alabama