An Assessment of a Physical Chemistry Online ... - ACS Publications

Information • Textbooks • Media • Resources edited by

Chemical Education Research

Diane M. Bunce The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. 20064

An Assessment of a Physical Chemistry Online Activity Marcy Hamby Towns and Kelley Kreke Department of Chemistry, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306 Deborah Sauder Department of Chemistry, Hood College, Frederick, MD 21701 Roland Stout Department of Chemistry, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke NC 28372-1510 George Long Department of Chemistry, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705-1090 Theresa Julia Zielinski Department of Chemistry, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ 07764

The Internet and WWW connect people to each other and to information with unprecedented speed and freedom from geographical barriers. On the WWW one finds teaching and learning projects ranging from placing grade books, quizzes, and tutorials on the Web to the formation of learning communities that erase the geographical isolation between teachers (1–3). The chemistry community too participates in the WWW growth explosion. The Division of Chemical Education symposium “Chemistry and the World Wide Web” at the 213th American Chemical Society National meeting contained 39 presentations. Many of these described projects that had an impact on the students in a specific professor’s classroom— electronic grade books, quizzes, and tutorials. In general, the approach was to use the Internet as a repository of information for students. Few presentations mentioned the potential benefits of using the Web to connect students and professors from diverse institutions to form a professional learning community. This paper analyzes an attempt to engage students and their faculty in just that type of collaboration. To enhance the use of the Internet and the Web as effective tools to support student learning, we need to carefully evaluate the course modules that are used for online projects. The multidimensional nature of the WWW itself requires that we build a multidimensional understanding of the value of these innovations. We must dissect our activities to discover strengths and weaknesses so that we can develop instructional materials and WWW environments that lead to more effective learning for students and faculty. Our goal is to understand the principles of effective design and implementation of successful WWW innovations. Since students use these innovations, we need to understand their perception of the Internet and computer-mediated instruction. Using the “It’s a Gas” physical chemistry online activity, we asked what are the perspectives of the students and faculty who participated in an online physical chemistry activity? *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].

Methodology

The Project The project titled “It’s a Gas” is briefly summarized here (4, 5 ). For this online module we set out to present a chemistry problem in a nontraditional format—a play. As the dialogue unfolds, two chemistry professors, Prof. Wall and Dr. Redikong, discuss how students could evaluate three different mathematical models of gas behavior (the ideal gas equation, the Van der Waals equation, and the Redlich– Kwong equation), at a specific temperature. Dr. Redikong’s idea is to have the students do nonlinear curve fitting of these three mathematical models via Mathcad (or other symbolic mathematics software) and use sound statistical arguments to choose the best model (6, 7 ). The project was structured so that the students would work in cooperative groups at their home institution, then work collaboratively as a larger team on the Internet via a list server. A cooperative approach was used because the faculty in this project often use small-group activities in their own classrooms and have found them to be a valuable method for increasing students’ understanding. In addition, connecting physical chemistry classes containing small numbers of students (10 or fewer) via a list server gave students the opportunity to discuss different approaches to problem-solving within a larger interacting community. Zielinski facilitated the list server and gave the students encouragement and clues (but no outright answers) to help them solve the problem. Each group of students was instructed to examine the pressure– volume behavior of nitrogen at a fixed temperature by fitting given data to three different mathematical models. The groups analyzed the fitting parameters and shared their results with students at other campuses via the list server. After exchanging this information, the groups used statistical arguments to choose the best mathematical model and reported their choice and reasoning to the list server group. The results of the project are detailed in Stout et al. (5 ).

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Information • Textbooks • Media • Resources

Research Approach, Data Collection, and Data Analysis To gather information about the perspectives of the students and the faculty who participated in the “It’s a Gas” online project, we needed to use an approach that would help us to understand their experiences. Thus, we used a qualitative approach because it permitted us to obtain data that provided more depth and detail and it allowed us to investigate the perspective of the students and faculty without using predetermined classifications. To understand what the “It’s a Gas” online project meant to the students and faculty and how we could modify subsequent online projects, we directed the data collection at capturing the student’s and faculty’s perceptions of the activities. Archives of student email to the project facilitator, faculty email, and the student and faculty responses to an open-ended questionnaire comprised the data for this study. The responses to the questionnaire were grouped by question and analyzed to discover themes or patterns. Comments from the email archives were used to check patterns that emerged from the questionnaire data and to broaden the way we described the perspective of students and faculty. The final product of the analysis of the questionnaire transcript and the email archives was three categories—strengths, weaknesses, and improvements, which helped us synthesize and frame our findings. Findings and Discussion Table 1 displays our findings as three categories— strengths, weaknesses, and improvements—and it serves as a road map to guide the reader through the discussion. Each

category is presented with representative quotes from students and faculty taken from the questionnaires and archived email interactions. These quotations provide a framework for and give context to the findings.

Strengths of the “It’s a Gas” Online Project The strengths of the “It’s a Gas” project as described by students and faculty were the interaction among students, the use of Mathcad and modern technology, and the experience of authentic problem-solving. Interactions among Students. The project was designed to be a cooperative endeavor within the students’ own classroom and on the list server. Thus, it was not too surprising that more than half of the students found the interactions among students to be a strength of the project. Lisa spoke for many students when she wrote: “I think it’s good to interact with other people when faced with a difficult problem.” More general comments by Melissa and George—“The strength of the project was the communication between students” (Melissa) and “It made us communicate and think” (George)—voiced an overall enjoyment of working with other students and the building of relationships between students. Indeed, cooperative learning as described by Johnson and Johnson is composed of five essential components, two of which the students referred to as strengths of the project: effective interpersonal skills and positive interdependence (8, 9 ). Faculty also found that the interaction among students was a strength of the project. As Sauder wrote: “[the] students had to work together” (10/7/96). The project was challenging, and students benefited from pooling their ideas to make progress. Their reward, as Sauder noted, was “a great sense of accomplishment once they got answers” (10/7/96).

Table 1. Categories and Supporting Quotations from Students and Faculty Category

Quotation a

Strengths Interactions among students

I think it's good to interact with other people when faced with a difficult problem. (Lisa)

Use of Mathcad and modern technology

It [Mathcad] has great potential for making tedious calculations very accessible to the student. (Theresa)

Authentic problem-solving

[the strengths of the project were] I would say that learning to solve a problem on our own without [a] cookbook. (Ed)

Weaknesses Technological difficulties and facilitating student interactions

Communications was a major flaw in this experience….the problems we had with systems going down or working unreliably was a major headache, but beyond our control. I believe that it may be in part responsible for the lack of student interaction on the net, and the small number of questions or comments posted. (10/3/96, Stout, faculty)

Problem-solving

Many times it seemed we would just sit and flounder for a while, muster the courage to ask a question and then, not being fully equipped to move on, move on and plunge into the work. I did not fully understand the mechanics of how to get the desired answer, to how to ask the right questions. ( Jim, as communicated by Long on 10/4/96)

Improvements Facilitate interuniversity interaction among students

Better computer links and require groups to make a weekly posting and analyze or criticize other groups findings. (Al)

Clarify tasks and goals

I would give the groups a little more directions how to proceed and what results were expected. ( Mindy)

Implementation of online projects

I would not have given this project at the beginning of the semester, but more towards the end, after the students got some background experience of what P-Chem is about. ( Jenny)

aQuotations

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are from students unless otherwise indicated in parentheses.

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Use of Mathcad and Modern Technology. More than onethird of the students commented that using Mathcad and modern technology (i.e., the Web and the list server) were key strengths of the project. For some students, this online activity was their first experience using computer software to analyze data. They discovered that these programs execute mathematical calculations faster and more accurately, as Terry stated: “It [Mathcad] has great potential for making tedious calculations very accessible to the student.” This remark, and others like it, indicate that if we want students to use the computational tools that modern scientists use and to recognize that they yield results more rapidly and accurately than calculator or pencil and paper, then we need to incorporate curve-fitting and statistical analysis into the physical chemistry curriculum. However, it is not clear that the students progressed to the point of being able to extract relevant statistical information using the software (5). Most of them had only a rudimentary appreciation of the application of statistics to data analysis. Developing and using sound statistical arguments involves risk-taking and requires practice. Other students focused their comments on the Web and the list server. The nature of this project required the students to use the Web to access the play and ancillary materials. The “It’s a Gas” play included hot links to other Web sites that contained useful, interesting, and humorous information. Some students found using the Web to be the most enjoyable and rewarding part of the project. For example, Mark found that “the most rewarding aspect [of the project] for me was using the Internet to get the information we needed to get and complete the problem.” To complete the project we required that the students use the list server to share problemsolving information and to ask questions. The list server promoted communication, collaboration, learning, and the formation of an incipient learning community among the students. As Al stated, “The main strength [of the project] was the information posting, for it allowed other students to see what ballpark there [sic] data was in.” Although we believe that it is important for students to use technology to have the opportunity to work with models, theories, and concepts, we also view the formation of a larger learning community as a key to helping the students construct meaning. Authentic Problem-Solving. Although the study guide identified the final goal of the project and some intermediate goals, each group of students had to devise its own problemsolving procedures. This project was not a cookbook lab, as Ed noted when he wrote “I would say that [the strengths of the lab were] learning to solve a problem on our own without [a] cookbook.” However, other students struggled with this instructional problem-solving milieu. One of the faculty’s goals was to have students learn how to approach and solve problems that were not from a textbook. Students are well acquainted with problems that have “definite, deterministic answers” (10). In essence, these are exercises for students, not problems, which permit multiple approaches to a solution or a variety of solutions. Real-world problems rarely present themselves in clear and tidy packets, and interesting scientific questions can be complex and complicated. The faculty agreed that “the material was content rich…[and] lent itself to open inquiry by the students” (Long, 10/9/96). Students need more experiences with these more ill-defined or content-rich problems to change the expectation

that all problems are easily tractable and can be solved by a defined algorithm. We need to challenge and nurture students like Mark, who wrote that the most rewarding aspect of the project was “solving a problem without looking at procedures.”

Weaknesses of the “It’s a Gas” Online Project The weaknesses of the project as described by students and faculty were the technological difficulties and the facilitation of interaction between students, and the use of appropriate problem-solving strategies. Technological Difficulties and the Facilitation of Interaction. The week the “It’s a Gas” project began, hurricane Fran roared into the North Carolina coast and the students at UNC at Pembroke lost Internet communication with the other campuses for more than one week. Simultaneously, the list server did not function well. The students became frustrated with their inability to send and receive messages. One student wrote the following message to the facilitator: “Dear Dr. Z, this operation is beginning to become frustrating. To date I have not received any email messages from anyone. Would [you] please see if there is any way that I can get these messages? Thank you.” We realized that this frustration would appear on the student questionnaire. When asked to write about the weaknesses of the project Luke wrote: “The Internet communication was down for most of the schools, hindering interaction for the first couple of weeks of the project.” Although the communication was not down for most schools, and interaction was not hindered for a “couple of weeks”, this quote illustrates the level of frustration that these problems generated for the students. The frustration extended to the faculty, who observed student enthusiasm for using the Web and email waning as the technological problems appeared. We all agreed that the breakdown in communication was unfortunate. As Stout aptly stated: “communications was a major flaw in this experience…the problems we had with systems going down or working unreliably was a major headache, but beyond our control. I believe that it may be in part responsible for the lack of student interaction on the net, and the small number of questions or comments posted” (10/3/96). Coupled to the breakdown in technology was an ensuing lack of communication between the students at different universities. Frannie wrote that the weakness of the project was “not enough communication between students at different schools.” The email that was shared among students from different schools during the project was lacking in depth. As Al wrote: “The main weakness was [that] the postings were vague. They did not state how they attained the data nor why their data was correct.” The faculty agreed that the students needed to report their results in greater depth and with fuller explanations. Problem-Solving. The “It’s a Gas” project required that the students stretch their problem-solving abilities. They had to transform information in the play into discrete problems that could be solved. The students became frustrated as they realized that the project was a “problem” rather than an “exercise”. Some students wanted precise procedures to follow; as Ed wrote, “sometimes the lab was not clear enough on how to go about finding the answer.” Faculty reported that students were requesting precise directions on how to proceed, which in accordance with the constraints of the project, they


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would not give. Despite encouragement to refer questions to the list server group, the students did not ask students at other universities what approaches they were using to solve the problem. This made achieving the goals of the project a difficult task, as Nancy and Jim indicated: “My main weakness was that I didn’t clearly understand what exactly we were trying to find. For example, after I found R [the gas constant], I had no idea when the end was near” (Nancy); and “Many times it seemed we would just sit and flounder for a while, muster the courage to ask a question and then, not being fully equipped to move on, move on and plunge into the work. I did not fully understand the mechanics of how to get the desired answer, how to ask the right questions” ( Jim, as communicated by Long on 10/4/96). Jim articulated a pattern of behavior that all of the faculty participating in the project observed. As Long expressed it: “First I observed many of the same things that Roland [Stout] and Debbie [Sauder] did. The students were often afraid to ask questions” (10/4/96). Wishing to change this behavior during the next online physical chemistry event, we discussed why this happened. We developed three explanations for the students’ inability to ask questions, none of which are mutually exclusive. First, it appeared that some students had no problem-solving heuristics to invoke, and therefore had great difficulty just asking questions that would help them proceed. If students are unwilling to lose their “smartness ranking” among their peers by asking questions (i.e., they must publicly show that they do not know the answer), then the problem-solving process can stall (11). Typically this culture flourishes in disciplines that are competitive and where a cooperative model is not often used. Second, we noted that the students lacked experience in analyzing data and drawing reasonable conclusions. Students were expected to fit mathematical models, to alter parameters to better these fits, to recognize that bad guesses yield results that are physically unreasonable, and to draw reasonable conclusions using sound statistical arguments. Nancy and Jim’s quotations illustrated the lack of confidence many students had in their ability to analyze data. Faculty observed that the students were not comfortable taking the intellectual risks required to be successful. Third, collaboration on the Web results in a type of cooperative learning environment that is different from that found in a classroom. The face-to-face and knee-to-knee interaction as described by Johnson, Johnson, and Smith (9), cannot take place if the participants are not in the same room. Computermediated communication (CMC) is described as having a “narrow bandwidth”—lacking the nonverbal information (facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.) used to form impressions of other people. Thus, we believe that CMC may slow collaboration among groups of students because they cannot build a feeling of community in the usual way (5, 12, 13). As we continue to develop our online activities we believe we must structure interactions to help the students build this feeling of community.

Improvements for the Next Iteration Suggestions for improving the next online project were aligned with the strengths and weaknesses reported by students and faculty. Recommendations focused on facilitating student interactions between universities, clarifying tasks and goals, and implementing the online projects. 1656

Facilitate Interuniversity Interactions among Students. The students enjoyed interacting with each other and suggested methods of facilitating the interaction between students at different universities. Students proposed using other groups to improve the depth and detail of messages. For example Alice suggested “try[ing] to make the groups help one another rather than having the groups appeal to the moderator.” Al suggested “require[ing] groups to make a weekly posting and analyze or criticize other groups findings.” Faculty involved in the project believed that making the groups more interdependent would encourage the students to interact with each other’s messages. It could also enhance the level of detail and the quality of analysis in the student messages. Facilitating student interactions on the list server would maximize the strength of the cooperative aspects of the project by helping the students to form a cooperative learning community. Clarify Tasks and Goals. Even though the students had access to a study guide that delineated the goals of the project, they suggested explaining the goals and tasks more clearly. For example, Mindy, Melissa, and Julie all wanted clearly defined questions: “Have clear directions and procedures” (Julie); “Explain the questions a little more” (Mindy); “I would express the questions of the problem more clearly” (Melissa). These recommendations may have sprung from the laboratory experience of the students. If the students were used to cookbook procedures, then laboratory assignments that required them to develop their own procedures to find solutions would make them uncomfortable. They may not have known how to take an authentic problem that was sketched out in broad strokes and translate it into recognizable solvable “chunks” (14 ). However, Long (10/9/96), Stout (10/7/96), and Sauder (10/3/96) reported that the students gained selfconfidence as a result of generating their own procedures for solving problems. The students also gained an appreciation for working together. In Sauder’s class it was the middle-ability students who “came up with the breakthrough that allowed my class to get as far as it did” (10/3/96, Sauder). Implementation of Online Projects. Both students and faculty expressed concern about when to run the online activity during the fall semester. Learning a relatively new software package took time, and the consensus among the faculty was to have the students perform some computational activities prior to the online activity. This would allow the students either to learn enough about the course software to be successful or to refresh their memory about the nuances of Mathcad or other course-specific software. Accompanying the idea of reacquainting the students with the software or helping them learn a new software package was the recommendation to initiate the online activity after the students have seen the material in class. As Jenny wrote, “I would not have given this project at the beginning of the semester, but more towards the end, after the students got some background experience of what P-Chem is about.” Another reason to use familiar material was suggested by Long who wrote that material familiar to the students could be used “as a hook to get students interested in the project” (10/9/96).

Implications Part I: The Next Iteration Armed with our evaluation, we crafted the next online project, which focused on the spectroscopy and structure of iodine—a topic covered in the second semester of physical

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chemistry. We made two modifications designed to facilitate student interaction and to divide the problem into more tractable tasks. To increase the number of messages and encourage interaction among groups of students, we included prompts in the laboratory directions. For example, one of the prompts read “Write a brief note to the listserv explaining your understanding of what causes materials to be colored.” We decided that the facilitator would be in charge of asking probes for other groups to respond to if the students did not take the responsibility upon themselves. The structure of the iodine activity was like that of a traditional laboratory exercise in that there were clearly defined tasks for the students to accomplish. The iodine activity consisted of 13 minimodules or steps designed so that the students could not access the next module unless the current module was completed. A report of this project is in press (15). Beyond the iodine activity, we plan to structure future projects so that groups of students at different universities are responsible for specific tasks. This procedure is often used in engineering laboratory courses where different groups are responsible for specific design elements, which mesh together to build a final product (for example, designing blades, a support structure, and the main assembly to ultimately construct a windmill) (16 ). In the real world, industry also divides tasks according to research groups, scientists, or subcontractors who have expertise that can contribute to the quality and costeffectiveness of an overall project. This design reflects the importance of working as a team to achieve goals in the real world.

Implications Part II: Unexpected Treasures— Forging a Learning Community among Faculty As the “It’s a Gas” project progressed, the faculty email discussions widened to include discussions of pedagogy and professional practices. We began sharing advice, for example discussing how we taught different concepts and what concepts we emphasized or omitted. We asked each other questions and exchanged information. We brought different strengths— Web management expertise, spectroscopy, computational chemistry, assessment, writing skills, etc.—to each project and we drew on each other’s strengths throughout each project. We self-corrected and we grew. We developed into a professional learning community that rendered our geographical isolation null. Our learning community allowed us to adopt new practices and to forge professional links. We have a synergetic relationship that has increased our professional motivation through working with colleagues who are interested in similar teaching and learning issues. By the end of the “It’s a Gas”

project, team members began writing papers and generating presentations. The more experienced members of our team offered their classroom wisdom and have evolved into offcampus mentors for the less experienced members of our team. We all freely shared personal professional competencies. Our professional learning community is the vehicle by which we are transforming our classroom practices and enhancing our professional development. This may be the unexpected treasure of the project. Literature Cited 1. Gomez, L. M.; Gordin, D. N.; Carlson, P. In Proceedings of AIEd ’95, Seventh World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education; Greer, J., Ed; Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education: Charlottesville, VA, 1995; pp 17–24. 2. Gordin, D. N.; Gomez, L. M.; Pea, R. D.; Fishman, B. J. J. Comp. Mediated Commun. 1997, 2(3); available: http://cwis.usc.edu/dept/ annenberg/vol2/issue3/gordin.html#foot1 (accessed July 1998). 3. Smith, S.; Stovall, I. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 911–915. 4. Sauder, D.; Towns, M. H.; Stout, R.; Long, G. R.; Zielinski, T. R. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 269–270. 5. Stout, R.; Towns, M. H.; Sauder, D.; Zielinski, T. J.; Long, G. R. Chem. Educator 2(2): S1430-4171(97)01107-2; available: http:// journals.springer-ny.com/chedr (accessed July 1998). 6. Mathcad; MathSoft, Inc.: 101 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, 1997. 7. Shoemaker, D. P.; Garland, C. W.; Nibler, J. W. Experiments in Physical Chemistry; McGraw-Hill: New York, 1996. 8. Johnson, D. W.; Johnson, R. T.; Holubec, E. J. Cooperation in the Classroom; Interaction: Edina, MN, 1993. 9. Johnson, D. W.; Johnson, R. T.; Smith, K. A. Active Learning: Cooperation in the College Classroom; Interaction: Edina, MN, 1991. 10. Moore, J. W. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 365. 11. Seymour, E. Sci. Educ. 1994, 79, 437–473. 12. Kreke, K.; Towns, M. H. Chem. Educator 1998, 3(4), S 1430– 4171(98) 04232-5; http://journals.springer-ny.com/chedr (accessed August 1998). 13. Towns, M. H.; Sauder, D.; Stout, R.; Long, G.; Zielinski, T. J. Coop. Learn. Coll. Teach. 1997, 8(Fall), 14–15. 14. Gabel, D. L.; Bunce, D. M. In Handbook of Research on Science Teaching and Learning; Gabel, D. L., Ed.; MacMillan: New York, 1994; pp 301–326. 15. Long, G.; Sauder, D.; Shalhoub, G.; Stout, R.; Towns, M. H.; Zielinski, T. J. J. Chem. Educ. in press. 16. Gay, G.; Lentini M. J. Comput. Mediated Commun. 1996, 1(1); available: http://cwis.usc.edu/dept/annenberg/vol1/issue1/ IMG_JCMC/ResourceUse.html (accessed July 1998).


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An Assessment of a Physical Chemistry Online ... - ACS Publications

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