Communication Cite This: J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXX
pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
ConfChem Conference on Select 2016 BCCE Presentations: Twentieth Year of the OLCC Robert E. Belford* Department of Chemistry, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas 72022, United States S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: The ACS CHED Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE) ran the first intercollegiate OnLine Chemistry Course (OLCC) on Environmental and Industrial Chemistry in 1996, and is offering the seventh OLCC on Cheminformatics and Public Compound Databases: An Introduction to Big Data in Chemistry in 2017. This Communication summarizes the past, present, and future of OLCCs, which evolved out of the online ConfChem conferences that the CCCE has run since 1993. OLCCs actually pioneered the use of HTML papers before ConfChem did, as well as enabled discussions centered on different sections of a paper. OLCCs are technically hybrid courses involving local faculty facilitators who meet faceto-face with students and online guest lecturers who are experts in the topic of the OLCC. These not only allow schools to offer courses on topics they may not normally be able to offer, but open up the opportunity for collaborative teaching and learning across multiple institutions, both academic and nonacademic. This Communication summarizes one of the invited papers that was presented in the Select CCCE Presentations of the ACS CHED CCCE online ConfChem that was held from October 30 to November 25, 2016. KEYWORDS: Upper-Division Undergraduate, Graduate Education/Research, Chemoinformatics, Safety/Hazards, Collaborative/Cooperative Learning, Computer-Based Learning, Internet/Web-Based Learning, Chemometrics
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Internet Archive.6 The first OLCC in 1996 consisted of 3 papers that were discussed for 2 weeks apiece, followed by 2 student papers, all being discussed by students and faculty from 20 different schools. This OLCC actually pioneered the use of HTML-based papers before ConfChem did, and only half the students in 1996 had graphics-capable Internet browsers.7 Two years later during the second OLCC, 100% of students had Internet-capable browsers; in fact, the Internet matured so much over those two years that the second OLCC had problems with overloading the students with too much work.7 The next major change came in 2004 with the fifth OLCC,8 which was an interdivisional course involving the ACS CHAS (Division of Chemical Health and Safety) and CHED. This OLCC followed the ConfChem model in the sense that each week a new author presented material, although the course did use two freely downloadable online textbooks: the National Research Council’s Prudent Practices in the Laboratory: Handling and Disposal of Chemicals,9 and the 2003 edition of the ACS Safety in the Academic Chemistry Laboratories handbook.10
INTRODUCTION This JCE Communication describes the Fall 2016 ConfChem1 paper celebrating the 20th anniversary of the intercollegiate OnLine Chemistry Courses (OLCCs) that have been organized by the ACS Division of Chemical Education (CHED) Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE).2 In addition to running OLCCs, the CCCE organizes symposia at ACS national meetings and Biennial Conferences on Chemical Education (BCCEs), runs an online newsletter, and runs the online ConfChem conferences, like the one this Communication refers to. This paper, the Twentieth Year of the OLCC,3 was discussed from November 21 to November 25, 2016, and gives an overview of the OLCCs from a past, present, and future perspective. The entire paper and discussion are attached to this Communication as Supporting Information.
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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The term OLCC, or OnLine Chemistry Course, is a misnomer dating to the nascent Internet, and today OLCCs would be classified as collaboratively taught hybrid courses, involving residential faculty facilitators who meet face-to-face with students, and online guest lecturers. The OLCC curriculum delivery model evolved out of the ConfChem online conference model, where authors post papers and material online and then discuss them with participants over a listserv list server. The first ConfChem occurred in 1993 and used FTP and Gopher servers to distribute text-based papers that were discussed over the ConfChem list.4,5 In an OLCC this basic protocol was modified to allow authors to discuss papers with both students and faculty. Although the first four OLCC sites are no longer online, the first three have been preserved by the WayBack machine of the © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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CONFCHEM 2.0 In 2010 with the indispensable help of Jon Holmes of University of WisconsinMadison, the CCCE undertook an effort to update the ConfChem and CCCE Newsletter to Web 2.0 technologies using the Drupal content management system that impacted future OLCCs. This work was supported by a CHED ACS Innovative Projects Grant, and when completed not only allowed papers to be discussed by commenting Received: December 26, 2016 Revised: May 23, 2017
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b01017 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
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directly on the paper, but also allowed for the archiving of papers on one searchable site. This required creating two new Drupal Content types, or web pages: “ConfChem Conference” and “ConfChem Article”. When an author submitted a paper to a conference, it was posted as an “Article”, with the title, author, and abstract automatically appearing in the conference home page, and was sorted according to the discussion schedule.11 The Fall 2015 Cheminformatics OLCC12 was a collaborative effort between ACS CHED and ACS CINF (Division of Chemical Information), supported by an NSF TUES grant and designed to enable schools to bring recent cheminformatics advances into the chemistry classroom, especially those associated with the digital representation of data and chemicals. The ConfChem content management system was modified to allow each paper to be broken into smaller TLOs (Teaching and Learning Objects) that could be individually discussed. That is, instead of discussing a whole paper as is done in ConfChem, specific sections of a paper could be discussed under different contexts. Students also developed individual and collaborative projects, some of which were presented at a special Cheminformatics OLCC symposium during the Spring 2015 ACS meeting in San Diego. Most of the discussion during the ConfChem was centered around ways to discuss papers, and the challenges of keeping up with discussions occurring on multiple sections of a paper. In addition to the hypothes.is social annotation system and Stanford’s Digital Humanity’s Lacuna Stories that were mentioned in the paper, Eric Mazur’s Perusall13 was mentioned. It was clear that the upcoming OLCC was pioneering new territory for the ConfChem community, and the discussion did accurately reflect some of the major challenges we would face in the Spring of 2017. In the Spring of 2017 the CCCE will be running the seventh OLCC, which will be on Cheminformatics.14 This OLCC will focus on chemical data and an introduction to new and emerging resources like the NIH NCBI PubChem, which contains information on over 92 million chemical compounds. The CCCE is also working with the hypothes.is social annotation software platform,15 with the objective of extending the discussions to objects external to the Drupal website, and these were subsequently reported in the CCCE Spring 2017 Newsletter article, “Experimenting with Hypothes.is”.16
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Communication
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
* Supporting Information S
The Supporting Information is available on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b01017. Full text of the original paper and associated discussions from the ConfChem Conference (PDF)
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. ORCID
Robert E. Belford: 0000-0002-4933-6379 Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
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REFERENCES
(1) American Chemical Society, Division of Chemical Education, Committee on Computers in Chemical Education. Fall 2016 ConfChem: Select 2016 BCCE Presentations. https://confchem.ccce. divched.org/2016fallconfchem (accessed May 2017). (2) ACS DivCHED CCCE: Committee on Computers in Chemical Education. http://confchem.ccce.divched.org/ (accessed May 2017). (3) Belford, R. E. Twentieth Anniversary of the OLCC. https:// confchem.ccce.divched.org/2016fallconfchemp7 (accessed May 2017). (4) Applications of Technology in Teaching Chemistry, An On-Line Computer Conference, original site. http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~toh/ ChemConference/http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~toh/ ChemConference/ (accessed May 2017). (5) Applications of Technology in Teaching Chemistry, An On-Line Computer Conference, CCCE Archive. http://confchem.ccce.divched. org/1993SummerConfChem (accessed May 2017). (6) Internet Archive WayBack Machine. https://archive.org/web/ (accessed May 2017). (7) Harrison, A. M.; Archer, L. J. Challenges and Opportunities for OnLine Courses in Chemistry, Summer 1999 ConfChem. http://confchem. ccce.divched.org/1999SummerConfChemPII4 (accessed May 2017). (8) Online Chemistry Course (OLCC)Chemical Safety: Protecting Ourselves and Our Environment. http://science.widener.edu/svb/olcc_ safety/ (accessed May 2017). (9) National Research Council. Prudent Practices in the Laboratory, Handling and Disposal of Chemicals; National Academy Press: Washington, DC, 1995; https://www.nap.edu/read/4911/chapter/1 (accessed May 2017). (10) Safety in Academic Chemistry Laboratories, 7th ed.; Vol 1, 2003. https://www.store.acs.org/eweb/ACSTemplatePage.aspx?site=ACS_ Store&WebCode=storeItemDetail&parentKey=8e9252cc-ecf9-4d8db741-def590f4ac69 (accessed May 2017). (11) Belford, R. E.; Pence, H. E.; Cornell, A. P.; Holmes, J. L. The Twentieth Anniversary of ConfChem Online Conferences: Past, Present, and Future, Fall 2013 CCCE Newsletter. http://www.ccce.divched.org/ P5Fall2013CCCENL (accessed May 2017). (12) Fall 2015 Cheminformatics OLCC. http://olcc.ccce.divched.org/ Fall2015OLCC (accessed May 2017). (13) Perusall Home Page. https://perusall.com/ (accessed May 2017). (14) Spring 2017 Cheminformatics OLCC. http://olcc.ccce.divched. org/Spring2017OLCC (accessed May 2017). (15) Hypothes.is Home Page. https://hypothes.is/ (accessed May 2017). (16) Belford, R. E. Experimenting with Hypothes.is, Spring 2017 CCCE Newsletter. https://confchem.ccce.divched.org/ 2017SpringCCCENLP6 (accessed May 2017).
CONCLUSION
Over the past 20 years OLCCs have allowed schools to collaboratively teach courses that they might not otherwise have been able to offer. Through the use of online guest lecturers, experts have been brought into the classroom and interacted with students from multiple schools, providing opportunities to students that may not have been available without the OLCC. These courses also offer a form of faculty development in that facilitators gain experience in collaboratively teaching courses on topics they do not normally teach. Potential topics for future OLCCs include toxicology and green chemistry, the history of chemistry, and the Internet of chemistry things, and it is hoped that these interdisciplinary multi-institutional courses will continue to be offered in the future. B
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b01017 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
