TrAC - Internet Column

To cite this article please refer to the printed edition of TrAC: Trends Anal. Chem. 15 (1996) 381

Chemical Education on the Internet

Y. Wolman

Jerusalem, Israel

cheskea@vms.huji.ac.il

The World Wide Web (WWW) has an increasing amount of chemistry related resources being made available on a regular basis to the chemical community. Information on the various topics and aspects of chemical education can be found and located on the various Web pages which are devoted to this subject. Additional information is scattered over the various chemistry and/or education Web pages. This article is designed to highlight a number of these WWW sites and provide a brief indication as to what these sites contain.

Web resources

There are a number of chemistry teaching resources home pages that one should be aware of: The Australian Chemistry Network Teaching Resources [1]; Ralph Logan's Chemical Education Links to the Web page [2]); the ChemEd resources list [3]; Kurt Irgum's Chemical Teaching Resources List [4]; the Global Instructional Chemistry page at Imperial College [5]; the Teaching Resources page at the Chemistry Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [6]; and Steve Lower's ChemCAI page [7].

Over 400 chemistry departments (and their number continues to grow) all around the world have their own home page. Many of these home pages contain information about the various teaching programs conducted by the corresponding department. The kind and depth of information varies from department to department. One may find a very short entry of one or two sentences (e.g. the description of courses given by the chemistry faculty at University of California - Santa Barbara [8]), or a very detailed description of the course, list of textbooks, additional course materials, reading list, information about the examination, etc. (Jason Kahn's class Biochemistry 674 given at the University of Maryland (UMD) is one example [9], another example is the Chemistry in Context home page (10) - an introductory chemistry course taught at UMD as part of the introductory physical science component of the Maryland Collaborative Teacher Preparation).

Teaching and learning with/via the Web is much more than making syllabus and other course information available via the Internet. The whole topic of teaching and learning with the Web was the subject of a workshop that was held at the first international conference on the WWW (May, 1994) [11].

There are various teaching modules as well as whole courses in chemistry available over the Internet. Some were designed and built especially for the Internet, others are based on regular classes given at the school. A few examples are: Polymer Chemistry Hypertext [12] which has been developed at the University of Missouri-Rolla; Gary Wiggin's classes in chemical information: C400 Chemical Information Sources and Services [13], C401 Computer Sources for Chemical Information [14], C402 Current Topics in Chemical Information [15]; and Joseph Warden's class in chemical information [16]. One may learn about the usage and scope of various chemistry and biochemistry resources from the Louisiana State University (LSU) chemistry library Web page, Selected Reference Sources in Chemistry and Biochemistry [17] and from the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Medical School library page Literature Search Practicum [18]. Two examples of teaching modules, both developed at the chemistry department, Imperial College (London) are: Advanced Organic Lab Experiments (19) and The Concept of Pericyclic Reactions [20].

During the last few years a number of educational projects have aimed to provide dynamic multimedia content into the chemistry classroom, to determine effective hypermedia designs for chemical education, and to evaluate the distribution of multimedia educational material over the Internet and/or CD ROM, have been developed. Some of the well known projects are Chemistry Visualized from the university of California - San Diego (UCSD) [21], The Virtual Classroom developed at the University of Akron [22], and The Chemistry Hypermedia Project at Virginia Tech [23].

Other projects are in various stages of development, for example, a collaborative project of eight institutions, headed by the Chemistry Department of Lehigh University - Chem-PRIME [24].

Various educational supplementary materials are available over the Internet. In the area of chemical information see J.J. Gosper's lecture "Manual and Computer Aided literature Searching CH361A" [25]. The Clearinghouse for Chemical Information Instructional Materials (CCIM) has its own home page [26]. The home page lists all the materials which are available for distribution. Some of these materials can be downloaded via the Internet. Materials that cannot be downloaded can be ordered via e-mail.

Chemistry teaching at the high school level can benefit from the Internet as well. There are a few resource lists for the high school chemistry teacher, e.g. The Professor, A High School Chemistry and Physics Teacher home page [27], James Aldridge's page Chemistry Teacher Resources [28]. A large number of physical science modules for K-12 age group are available, and are summarized in the Physical Science page [29].

Recently the opening of Cyber High School was announced [30]. It is a private, college preparatory high school. The instruction takes place over the Internet, using a specially designed curriculum. The actual chemistry classes take place in the third year of study.

Lists and archives of chemistry textbooks are available on the Net (e.g. [31]), electronic textbooks can be browsed and/or downloaded. An example of such a "virtual" textbook is a series of polymer books [32].

Electronic journals in the area of chemical education are expected to be available in the near future. Two journals - The Chemical Educator [33] and The Multimedia Journal of Chemical Education [34] are in their last stages of publication. The Journal of Chemical Education has its own gopher [35], however the material there is old and not full (e.g. contents of few 1993 issues and the first two issues of 1994). The Journal of Chemical Education Software has its own home page [36] which provides detailed information about the available software as well as enabling one to order via the Internet the desired software. Another chemical education software project is Project Seraphim [37]. Unfortunately, the Seraphim gopher is an old one that has not been updated for a few years.

One of the areas of activity of the larger chemical societies is chemical education. The ACS Division of Chemical Education has its own home page [38] which contains information about the various activities of the Division. The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has an Education home page [39] that carries out the Education Division Newsletter as well as a lot of information about the activities and involvement of the RSC in various aspects of chemical education.

Non-web facilities

Internet is not only Web home pages. Internet is also using the network for more than browsing, viewing, reading and/or downloading home pages. Usually people are e-mailing, telneting and/or ftping as an integral part of their scientific and educational work.

The problem of using e-mail in education in general, and in chemical education in particular, is relatively an "old" problem. One of the first electronic scientific conferences over the Internet was the Chemical Education Chemical Conference that was held in the summer of 1993. Using e-mail in chemical education was a topic of a paper authored and presented by C.H. Snyder and J. Sholloy - "Application of Networked Computers and Electronic Mail in a Chemistry Course for Nonscience Students" [40]. This paper got such a warm response that it was electronically discussed after the Conference. Summaries of these discussions are available over the Internet [41-43].

Discussion Lists also use e-mail, in this case it is a one to many discussion. Among the many chemistry discussion lists there are few devoted to chemical education. Chemistrytm (Chemistry telementoring) [44] is such a list. It is a small list (about 160 participants) of students in colleges and high schools and their teachers who exchange ideas and information on various topics of chemistry. E.g., recently, the aspects of the "new" IUPAC periodic table was discussed, high school students ask for help and advice in their chemistry projects. Another list is Chemed-L [45], a much larger list with relatively high traffic volume. Its members are teachers in universities, colleges and high schools who exchange ideas and information about various topics in chemical education (e.g. using calculators in exams, cooperative learning, chemistry paperless library, the problem of using contact lens in student laboratories, safety glasses or goggles, what is preferable?).

Mailing lists are used not only for discussions, they have been used for electronic conferences for the last few years. Another electronic chemical education conference is planned for June-July 1996 - ChemConf'96 [46]. Many of the lectures which are going to be presented and discussed deal with chemical education on the Internet (e.g. "Recent Application of Hyperactive Chemistry and the WWW" - H. Rzepa; "Network Instruction Chemistry" - S. Smith; "Development and Delivery of Chemical Education Hypermedia Using the WWW" - B. Tissue; "Use of the Internet in Teaching Chemical Information Sources" - G. Wiggins).

Another use of mailing lists is in tutorial teaching over the Internet. These tutoring courses are not free. The number of participants is limited and each student has his own tutor and/or consultant. Each consultant and/or tutor has a small number of students. Teaching materials and lessons are distributed via mail lists, discussions between students, tutors and/or consultants are carried either by mailing lists or by personal e-mail depending on the circumstances. Two examples of such courses are the Computational Chemistry for Chemistry Educators given by the North Carolina Supercomputing Center (NCSC) [47] and Principles of Protein Structure given by Birkbeck College University of London [48]. These two courses are such a success that they already have been given a few times, NCSC is planning to give the computational chemistry course a few times in 1996 and Birkbeck College is already planning another course for the Summer 1996 - StructureBased Drug Design [49].

Conclusion

In closing I would like to remind the reader that this article was prepared during the first week of 1996. The Internet is a very dynamic system, it is changing and modifying all the time. Many of the home pages described are only a few months old, a few home pages that were around about six months ago either disappeared or changed their address. By the time this article is published there will be many additions and changes to the chemical education resources on the Internet. However I am sure a sufficient number of these references will still be operational so this article should not be that much out of date when you read this.