Conference Organizers:

Robert E. Belford 

Department of Chemistry 

University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Little Rock, AR 72204-1099

rebelford@ualr.edu  

501-569-8824 

Robert M. Hanson 

Department of Chemistry                     

St. Olaf College   

1520 St. Olaf Ave.

Northfield, MN 55057                        

hansonr@stolaf.edu 

507-646-3107              

Introduction

Web-based applications have had, and will continue to have, a profound impact on chemical education.  This online conference will bring together a variety of presentations representing recent work in this important field of chemical education. 

Schedule of Papers   

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Note: When you send a message to the conference list regarding a paper, please put "CONFCHEM" and the paper identifier, 1A, 1B, etc., at the BEGINNING of the subject line so that it appears like this:

  To: confchem@clarkson.edu

  Subject: CONFCHEM 1A . . .

This will greatly simplify finding and sorting the conference discussion in everyone’s INBOX. Note that with each title there is a link “discuss this paper” and with each abstract, below, is a link such as CONFCHEM 1A that should open up a message with this recipient and subject in most browsers. Thank you.

Abstracts

CONFCHEM 1A

Are chemistry instructors and students ready for an internet-based text?

Mark Bishop (Monterey Peninsula College)

With computers, relatively inexpensive software, the Internet, and print on demand printing, it seems that anyone can now consider writing and self-publishing their own internet-based textbook. This paper addresses the issues related to this task. The following questions are presented, possible answers are suggested, and requests are made for answers from CONFCHEM participants. Is it possible for one person or a small group of people to create a quality chemistry text and supplemental materials without the support of the established academic publishing industry? Can chemical educators be convinced that a text that is not distributed by a known publishing house can be of high enough quality to consider adopting for their classes? If there is some resistance to new approaches to delivering information, what factors might counter-balance the concerns? What's the best way for self-published material to be reviewed? Are students ready to get more information from computer-based sources? What percentage of students would want a hard copy of an internet-based text? Would they be content with a black-and-white version, assuming that they have access to the color version on the Internet? How will authors be compensated for their work? What's the best way to advertise self-published material? See http://preparatorychemistry.com/Bishop_conference.htm.

CONFCHEM 1B

Progress towards a holistic web: integrating open-source programs, semantic data, wikis and podcasts

Henry Rzepa (Imperial College London) and Marion Cass (Carleton College)

The way educators typically use the Web to support their teaching in 2006 is arguably a regression from many of the ideals first anticipated in 1994. Time pressure, a reluctance to learn "difficult HTML", and pressure from the publishing industry has allowed the Web to retreat into "shrink-wrapped" black holes known as Acrobat files. An ever greater reluctance (by both authors and publishers) to appreciate the importance of deploying meta-data in a meaningful manner means that most often, these Acrobat files represent the bones lying in an information graveyard, stripped of any "reusability" and really fit only for printing (e-books have yet to take off in any significant sense). In our article (we hesitate to perpetuate the above by calling it a "paper"!) we discuss two particular themes. Firstly, how a greater emphasis on data capture and its re-usability, together with the use of open-source software such as the remarkable Jmol, can result in a much more meaningful and future-proofed way of presenting chemical knowledge to students. We illustrate this via two resources, one designed to introduce symmetry to chemistry students, the other a dynamical introduction to pseudorotation in fluxional molecules. These can be viewed at http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/symmetry/  and http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/bpr/.. Secondly, we address the issue of how to create holistic resources and to overcome the reluctance of stressed and pressured academics by discussing two recent phenomena, that of the "Wiki" and the "Podcast". The Wikipedia is perhaps the best known illustration of how a community can coalesce and produce something far greater than the sum of its parts. Podcasting, which seems to be taking off in chemistry, focuses on audio and video content, but seems divorced from other forms of content, and is currently rather less than holistic. Currently, these two broad themes about how the Web should evolve are more or less developing independently. The prospects of coalescence are discussed.

CONFCHEM 2A

JSpecView: Developing spectroscopic representations on the web

Robert John Lancashire (University of West Indies, Mona)

In 1997, we began collaboration with MDL Information Systems Ltd and incorporated our spectroscopy (JCAMP-DX) viewer code into MDL Chime. By 2005, when the contract ended, MDL had had over 2 million downloads of the free version of the browser plug-in.

In 2006, we followed up with the release of JSpecView (http://jspecview.sourceforge.net), a JAVA based spectroscopy viewer, which can be run as an applet from a web page or as a standalone application. There are several expected uses of JSpecView, and in this presentation I will demonstrate examples where the applet can be used in a teaching environment for the interpretation of IR, MS and NMR spectra, delivery of spectral unknowns and in a laboratory setting in combination with Jmol and another JAVA applet for characterisation of visible spectra with Tanabe-Sugano diagrams.

CONFCHEM 2B

Jmol: Open-source molecular visualization and analysis

Robert M. Hanson (St. Olaf College), Egon Willighagen (Cologne University Bioinformatics Center), Nicolas Vervelle, Timothy Driscoll (molvisions), and Miguel Howard (Jmol Project)

Jmol (http://www.jmol.org) is free software for displaying interactive 3D molecules. It is designed as a component that can be used as a standalone application, as an applet within the context of a web page, or as a display subsystem within a more sophisticated software package. Because it is written in Java and requires no special graphics hardware, Jmol runs on all major operating systems and web browsers. Jmol has been developed as a collaborative project using standard open-source software development methodologies and procedures. All source code is publicly available under the GNU licenses, facilitating experimentation, testing, public contributions, and peer review. Rendering representations can be controlled using an extended version of the RasMol scripting language. The Jmol applet allows web content developers to display interactive 3D representations of molecules within web pages, providing an upgrade path for users of the Chime web browser plugin. New capabilities are being added to Jmol on an ongoing basis. As Jmol has matured over the past few years, it has become an increasingly popular component in computer based molecular visualization. We expect Jmol's popularity to continue to grow as we continue to build into it additional new features, many of which will be demonstrated in this presentation.

CONFCHEM 3A

ChemPrep: Self-paced OWL preparation for first semester general and organic chemistry

Beatrice Botch, Roberta Day, William Vining, Stephen Hixson, Peter Samal, Barbara Stewart, David Hart (University of Massachusetts, Amherst),  Kenneth Rath, Alan Peterfreund (Peterfreund Associates)

Two self-paced chemistry courses were written to help improve student preparedness for first semester General and Organic Chemistry. These courses are delivered over the web using the OWL (Online Web-based Learning) system developed at the University of Massachusetts. They are designed to take ten to twenty hours to complete and are offered prior to the start of the semester. ChemPrep/General covers topics such as matter, algebra, significant figures, nomenclature and dimensional analysis. ChemPrep/Organic covers concepts such as Lewis structures, formal charge, geometry, hybridization and acid/base theory. Evaluation studies of the Spring 04 and Fall 04 semesters show that for those students who completed more than half of the ChemPrep units, course grades and retention rates in the subsequent chemistry courses were higher. The content, implementation, and evaluation of the ChemPrep courses will be discussed.

CONFCHEM 3B

BestChoice, a model for interactive web-based teaching

Sheila Woodgate and David Titheridge (University of Auckland)

The BestChoice online tutorial system designed by the authors has been used since 2002 in New Zealand to support both first-year university students and high school students in their learning of chemistry (4000 active users in 2005).  80 modules with content appropriate to the above cohorts have been written.  In total there are 2500 screen views and 6000 possibilities for interaction generating feedback available.  A selection of these can be viewed at www.bestchoice.che.auckland.ac.nz by clicking on the DEMO MODE link.

The primary focus of BestChoice modules is interactive teaching using a programmed learning approach. We have made major strides in developing methods to simulate on screen pen-and-paper solutions to multistep problems.  The paper will describe

• factors taken into account in the design and implementation of BestChoice
• our experience incorporating use of BestChoice into first year university and high school courses
• how evaluation by over 8000 users has provided validation of the approach taken in BestChoice modules as well as useful insights for future work

CONFCHEM 4A

Creation of an online stoichiometry course that melds scenario based leaning with virtual labs and problem-solving tutors

David Yaron, Jordi Cuadros, Mike Karabinos (Carnegie Mellon University)

This paper will discuss an online review course in stoichiometry aimed at students who are about to enter college chemistry and need a review of this important foundation material. The course uses the ChemCollective's virtual lab (http://www.chemcollective.org/) and the course delivery and problem solving tutor tools of Carnegie Mellon's Online Learning Initiative (http://www.cmu.edu/oli/). The course is set in the context of arsenic contamination in the groundwater of Bangladesh. This scenario highlights the utility of stoichiometry concepts in a real world problem and allows us to, as the course progresses, shift the theme to the challenges facing modern analytical chemistry. The course contains 15 modules ranging from the mole and molecular weight up through reaction stoichiometry, empirical formula and limiting reagents. Modules typically start with a video explaining the concepts followed by a few simple tutors that serve as interactive worked examples and then either a virtual lab or more extensive problem solving tutor. Our experiences with creating and evaluating this course will be discussed.

CONFCHEM 4B

JChemPaint viewer and editor applets: Interactive 2D molecular diagrams

Stefan Kuhn, Tobias Helmus, Egon Willighagen and Christoph Steinbeck (Cologne University Bioinformatics Center)

JChemPaint (http://almost.cubic.uni-koeln.de/jrg/software/jchempaint/) is an open-source 2D structure editor for which recently two applet versions have been developed. One is a smaller viewer-only applet; the other is a larger editor applet. Based on the Chemistry Development Kit (CDK), the applet is quite rich in features, including 2D rendering of molecules and reactions, popup labels on atoms, structure diagram generation (diagram cleanup), optional use of templates, input/output capability including Chemical Markup Language (CML), SMILES, MDL molfile and many others, undo/redo capability, and much more. An installation of the editor applet is available on http://www.chemistry-development-kit.org/. The NMRShiftdb application (http://www.nmrshiftdb.org/) uses both the editor and the viewer applets. Being open-source, the JChemPaint applet can be customized for specific educational applications. Application scenarios in education as well as access information for interested users and potential contributors will be provided.

CONFCHEM 5A

Using InterChemNet for lab curriculum development and evaluation

Barbara Stewart, Robert Kirk, Francois Amar, and Mitchell Bruce; (University of Maine)

InterChemNet (ICN, http://icn2.umeche.maine.edu/newnav/NewNavigator/LoginForm.cfm) is a web-based laboratory management and curriculum delivery system that incorporates spectroscopic instrumentation, student choice, and assessment of student learning. Data from studies evaluating spectroscopy curriculum modules in terms of assessment of student learning are presented. We discuss the use of ICN as a tool for action research in the laboratory setting, focusing on two modalities that can be facilit