The FIPSE Lectures
Chemistry Plus Technology Plus Teachers Yields Curricular Change: The FIPSE Lectures in Chemistry
John W. Moore Eastern Michigan University. Ypsilanti. MI 48197
The FIPSE Lectures in Chemistry were first presented a t the 10th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education a t Purdue University, August 1-2, 1988. The lectures were repeated a t the 196th National Meeting of the American Chemical Societv in Los Anaeles. S e ~ t e m b e 27. r 1988. The series of four lec;uren was made p&sible by a (number G008730230) to the ACS Division of Chemical Education. Inc., by the Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). FIPSE has supported similar lectures in about a dozen different disciplines. The opinions expressed in the FIPSE Lectures are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and policies of the sponsoring organization, of the ACS, or of the Division of Chemical Education. FIPSE's intention is that its grantees will present ". . . one or more major lectures about the proper aims of American postsecondary education, the obstacles, and ways they might be surmounted." The rationale for sponsoring lectures is that". . . conference presentations . . . can disseminate fresh educational thinking, stimulate discussion, and engender a sense of community among those who care about educational reform." The FIPSE Lectures in Chemistry were organized and prepared with these ideas in mind. We hope that many of the opinions expressed here will be useful to a much broader range of college teachers than just chemists; certainly our suggestions regarding the effects of technology on the curriculum need not be limited to a single discipline. Though they were presented by four distinguished chemistleducators, the FIPSE Lectures were the product of a larger, more diverse group. In May 1988 the four lecturers, Glenn Crosby, Stanley Smith, J. J. Lagowski, and I, met with a number of others to discuss the issues of technological change and the chemistry curriculum. The others involved were James Birk, Arizona State University; William (Flick) Coleman, Wellesley College; Derek Davenport, Purdue University; John Kotz, SUNY Oneonta; Elizabeth Moore, Eastern Michigan University; Rohert Rittenhouse, Eastern Michigan University; Tamar (Uui) Susskind, Oakland Community College; David Whisnant, Wofford College; and Masanobu Yamauchi, Eastern Michigan University. In two days of discussions this group was challenged to suggest things that technology enables us to do, to leave out, and to
imorove in the chemistrv curriculum. Discussions were devoied to lectureldiscussion sessions, the laboratory, textbooks and other written materials. examinations and evaluation of students, teaching strategies, and the integration of both the subiect and the tools for teachina it into a more comprehensi\.e curriculum. Many of the ideas presented in the FIPSE Lectures either came out of these discussions or were honed by them to much greater sharpness and clarity. At our planning session it became clear that a major problem in the chemistry curriculum (and probably in many others as well) is overdependence on the idea that we can somehow pour knowledge into students. Our model of a student's brain seems to equate it to a sponge that can soak up facts without ever becoming saturated. This leads to inflation of the quantity of subject-matter content presented and a consequent rush to "cover all the material." T o achieve this goal we often simply lecture more (or more rapidly) or add new topics to textbooks without discarding some older ones that are no longer needed. The quantity of chemistry that is known is expanding rapidly, and so we scurry and scheme to incorporate all of i t into the curriculum. Though technology could help to speed the assimilation of factual material, this is not the theme that runs throuah the s here. Instead there is generfour FIPSE ~ e c t u r e presented al consensus that technolorn provides for a richer, more diverse environment within which students can learn. Many of the applications of technology allow for a more inductive approachto the subject-students are encouraged to experiment, to develop hypotheses, and t o proceed on the basis of their observations and conclusions instead of being asked to memorize a set of facts. Stimulation for, and freedom to develop what Einstein called "the holy curiosity of inquiry" can be provided in many ways by technology as well as by human teachers, and the lectures that follow provide excellent examples. We need, however, to bear in mind that technology is no panacea for the perceived ills of our discipline; there is no substitute for informed intelligence, either on the part of teachers in classrooms or in the process of developing technology-based curricular materials. We hope that the FIPSE Lectures in Chemistry stimulate increased application of informed intelligence to the teaching of chemistry. Volume 68 Number 1 January 1989
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