[Rationale] [Dissemination on Internet] [Title page]
Electronic Curriculum
Conventional methods to deliver this kind of curriculum, such as print, lecture, and video, are not adequate. We believe that an electronic medium is the medium of choice for introductory chemistry, for several reasons:
Flexibility. A chemistry curriculum must be flexible to accommodate the disparate needs of the faculty and students who use it. There cannot be a curriculum that serves all purposes, but an electronic curriculum can be much more extensible than a curriculum based on a textbook.
Core and context orientation: Instructors can teach chemical concepts followed by examples, or teach examples followed by concepts. An electronic chemistry curriculum can incorporate and cross reference both approaches, thereby providing a much richer learning environment for the student.
Diversity: An electronic chemistry curriculum could easily incorporate the diverse backgrounds and needs of most students by emphasizing the context in which chemistry is important in a diverse array of disciplines. For example, we could teach the gas laws within the context of either the human respiratory system or the environmental chemistry of the atmosphere.
Interactive course material: The touchstone of electronic course materials should be the degree in which the material is different from a textbook. It is not enough to transcribe the text to a computer screen, nor is it sufficient just to incorporate sound, video, or animation into existing text. The electronic course material must provide an interactive environment to engage the student in learning.
Doing better things: There is a distinction between doing things better and doing better things. Most of the enthusiasm and effort in applying educational technology to the chemistry curriculum has been directed toward doing things better. Our efforts are directed toward doing better things with technology.
To achieve these objectives, we assembled a team consisting of content experts, undergraduates, programmers and a scientific visualizer to realize the electronic curriculum. Animation and video modules were constructed at SUNY Stony Brook to elucidate, illustrate and reinforce many of the basic concepts of molecular structure and chemical reactivity. Topics for animation and video were chosen based on a study to identify chemical principles that were difficult for students to grasp and that could be clarified by way of visual images. The animation modules can also serve as important tools for instruction in lecture exercises.
An evaluation tool for giving quizzes, examinations and for grading homework was created and tested at SUNY Buffalo in the introductory chemistry program. This program, called VizQuiz, is scheduled to be published by the Journal of Chemical Education Software in 1995. The program presents quizzes or homework sets on Windows-based computers and grades them automatically. The questions can contain virtually any multimedia type of material (e.g., QuickTime or Video for Windows movie clips with or without sound) stored on disk or CD-ROM. If a local LaserDisc player is available, the questions can also contain video clips from the LaserDisc, displayed on a separate monitor or by video overlay on the computer screen for suitably equipped computers. The software is ideally suited for evaluating student work, and can be extended to serve as a self-assessment tool for users of our electronic curriculum.
A prototype of the electronic curriculum that includes multimedia elements was constructed at SUNY Binghamton using Multimedia Toolbook. Text, photographs, artwork, animation, simulations, video, and sound as appropriate were composited onto a blank video screen to convey a particular chemical principle. Users can progress logically through a series of screens as well as hyperjump from topic to topic by clicking on hot words or icons. A toolbar is available to navigate, set bookmarks, search text, view the periodic table, access a glossary, and use a calculator. In starting the software, the user is first presented a choice of following a traditional core outline of chemistry, or of approaching chemistry in one of six context areas: biology, medicine, engineering, ecology, industry or geology. To avoid large hierarchical structures, headings are only two levels deep, corresponding to the chapter and section headings of a text. A user could follow a mainstream presentation of chemistry with excursions into applications in one of the six context areas. Alternately, a user could proceed along one of the six context areas, with excursions into the core areas of chemistry for background information.
A graphical user interface, called Chem STAIRS (SUNY Technologically Advanced Instruction and Research System), was written at SUNY Albany to integrate the programs written at the four University Centers into a coherent package of computer assisted software for chemistry. An additional program, called ChemNet, was written to give easy access to a set of programs that allows communication with a user's computer center computers, library, e-mail facility, the Internet via Mosaic or Netscape, and utilities such as ftp. The program is customizable to the individual needs and choices of a particular site.