Chemical Education Today
Editorial
Academic Extensions of Gresham’s Law According to Gresham’s law, bad money will drive out good that is completely virtual cannot provide students with the same money (1). In economics the law applies to situations where knowledge of chemistry that a real laboratory program can. For two things of different value are either perceived to have equal a long time, I have held that much of what students need to learn value or are required to be accepted as about chemistry is only accessible having equal value. For example, if a A “laboratory” program that is completely through direct, hands-on laboratory government requires that all coins of experience (2). the same denomination be accepted virtual cannot provide students with the This is not to say that virtual is as legal tender but some of the coins vacuous. People are making money contain smaller quantities of precious same knowledge of chemistry that a real via their avatars in the virtual world, metal than others, then those debased Second Life (3), and Disney and laboratory program can. coins will be used to pay for goods others are creating virtual worlds and services and the coins with more for young children (4). Like virtual precious metal will be hoarded or even melted and sold as the laboratories in chemistry, these virtual worlds can teach immetal. The bad coins drive the good ones from circulation. My portant lessons, often with much less risk to the learner. But if observations of chemical education indicate that Gresham’s law simulated laboratories are perceived to be of equal value in all applies in our discipline as well. respects, an academic Gresham’s law will apply: Simulations will Everyone would like textbooks to be as inexpensive for our drive out real laboratories—those in which students: “appreciate students as possible. Used books are a good way to save money that chemistry is an experimental science; know and appreciate (and resources), but when bookstores sell used books at greater certain chemical substances and their properties; have encounprofit than new ones, there is less remuneration for the authors tered and dealt with the problems of accurate measurement; and and publishers who do the major work of creating the textbooks have learned manipulative skills” (2). in the first place. Publishers have merged with other publishers, There are many examples of highly effective simulated cut costs by outsourcing many tasks, and gone to three-year laboratories. The ChemCollective project has many excellent revision cycles. Some students (those who purchase a new book simulated laboratories freely available (5). More are being crein the revision year) pay a lot more, while others (who purchase ated in collaborative fashion by teachers across the country. The a used book) pay somewhat less. The finished product is also laboratory program at my own institution includes some exerdebased. An author, for example, has requested that I forewarn cises that do not involve hands-on manipulation of chemicals our book review editor that he had tried, but failed, to correct and laboratory equipment. These exercises are pedagogically imegregious errors such as breaking chemical formulas across a line portant in our program, and we would not want to do away with (Na on one line, Cl on the next) and weird hyphenations such them, but we would also not want to do away with hands-on as “fluori- de”. Such errors, presumably caused by a computer, laboratory work in which students synthesize, analyze, measure, would never have been made by an editor conversant with the and experience the properties of chemical substances—even subject, but such editors cost more than computer algorithms. some that need to be handled with care and respect as a result This is an extension of Gresham’s law. We assume that a of their dangerous properties. textbook is a textbook and have little opportunity to compare Whether to completely replace real laboratories with virtual the quality of current textbooks with the quality that used to laboratories is a question likely to come up in your local area. be achieved when each publisher had a cadre of editors and Watch for it and provide knowledgeable input with the goal of production staff who were fully conversant with the subject. achieving the best possible education for chemistry students. Outsourcing cuts costs yet it also means that many errors, some trivial, some substantive, are being introduced each time a textbook is revised and its re-composition outsourced. Authors can find and correct only so many errors, marked corrections are Literature Cited (all sites accessed Feb 2008) sometimes missed, quality is compromised, and students, who 1. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham’s_Law and are understandably confused by errors in textbooks, are unnechttp://eh.net/encyclopedia//article/selgin.gresham.law. essarily shortchanged. More experienced production staff and 2. Moore, J. W. J. Chem. Educ. 1989, 66, 15–19. longer revision cycles would obviously be beneficial, but there is 3. Second Life: 3D Online Virtual World; http://secondlife.com/. a negative incentive for publishers and authors to adopt such an 4. Barnes, B. Web Playgrounds of the Very Young. New York Times, approach. Bad production drives out the good, to the detriment Dec 31, 2007, p C1. of students, the ultimate users of the product. 5. The ChemCollective; http://www.chemcollective.org/. Another potentially disastrous extension of Gresham’s law involves virtual laboratory exercises. There is a real possibility Supporting JCE Online Material that many educational institutions, at all levels, will look at the http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2008/Apr/abs475.html costs of real laboratories compared with computer-simulated Full text (HTML and PDF) with links to cited URLs and JCE articles virtual laboratories, and opt for the latter—much less expensive— Supplement: Partial list of references to articles on virtual laboratories alternative. This would be a bad thing. A “laboratory” program Blogged at http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/chemeddl/ © Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 85 No. 4 April 2008 • Journal of Chemical Education
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