Active Learning Models from the Analytical Sciences - American

Chapter 15

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Establishing the Foundations of Analytical Chemistry Using a Web-Based Format R. K . Gilpin and C. S. Gilpin Department of Chemistry, Wright State University, 3640 Colonel Glenn Highway, Dayton, O H 45323

This chapter discusses the development and operation of an online course that is currently used to teach beginning analytical principles including conversions, data collection and handling, simple principles of acid-base, solubility, and redox equilibria, and beginning spectrometric measurements. The authors review some of the areas that can/do cause difficulty for first time online instructors, which they encountered during the development and operation of the course and how these problems have been solved.

Introduction Over the last decade, web-based instruction has gone from a curiosity to an accepted and often highly productive teaching tool. Today, there are many successful examples of totally and partially web-based courses that are taught in both the distance learning and the on-campus modes at small, intermediate, and large universities throughout the Nation. Unfortunately, when the natural sciences are involved, the acceptance and use of web-based teaching has not been met with open arms, but more often with passive resistance to open hostility. Although there are a variety of reasons given by both teachers and students why they do not like online activities, a number of them are either philosophical or operational based (1,2). Major concerns of many chemists, physicist, and allied professional educators are related to either their belief that: 1) teaching quantitative thinking and experimental measurement skills cannot be reproduced in a web-based © 2007 American Chemical Society

Mabrouk; Active Learning ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2007.

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200 format, but need personal contact and hands-on experiences, or 2) scientific observations are dynamic in that they are often distorted by the presence of systematic and random errors. Likewise, the major concerns of students often are related to the feeling that: 1) they are not well prepared in terms of mathematics, especially when it involves selecting the appropriate scientific relationship/mathematical formulation, and 2) they do not see direct links between the mathematics, the chemical or physical concepts, and their past, present, or future lives. In order to address chemical educator concerns about online teaching, it is important to understand why they arise. In the case of quantitative thinking, the expectation is that a student can proceed from a set of experimental observations and results to a quantitative description of the events formulated in a manner that is consistent with the first principles that describe or govern them. Secondly, individual results can change from measurement to measurement and they are complicated further by the possibility of both systematic and random errors as well as non-ideal effects. Thus, the student must not only learn the underlying concept that theoretically describes the observation, but they also must be cognizant of the fact that it contains some level of uncertainty by virtue of making the measurement and that there are effects that are not easily describable by first principle relationships (1,2). In the case of many students, they often are ill prepared in terms of their mathematical skills or the math that they were taught in high school was not done in a conceptual framework that demonstrated its relationship to solving real problems. The result of poor preparation and the disconnect between mathematical theory and its subsequent application, is that a majority of students are uncomfortable solving descriptive-based problems that provide the necessary information, but are not formulated in the final mathematical solution (i.e., the chemical or physical relationship) (1,3,4). The focus of this chapter is to discuss the design and operation of an online first term chemistry course. Key elements in designing useful and challenging courses are organization, maintenance, and innovation. Like other facets of our lives, effective communication, which involves the bidirectional flow of ideas, is vital to both teacher and student success in the online setting. It is important that communication is not confused with course delivery, which is typically the unidirectional flow of information. The posting of reading materials and lecture notes are examples of course delivery, whereas learning materials that are interactive, dynamic, and provide immediate feedback are communication tools. Some useful examples of the latter are self-testing modules, on-demand help, and other supplemental learning resources such as dynamic pictorials, interactive graphics, and computer simulations that emulate basic laboratory operations and measurements (3,5-7). The successful use of these and other innovative webbased tools have been discussed by many scholars in a variety of fields including the physical sciences, engineering, and medicine (1-14). A common thought is


201 that, when used properly, the internet is a dynamic learning resource that provides new opportunities to introduce ideas and concepts in a more graphical and interactive fashion, which enhances the learning experience not detract from it (15).


Course Structure and Organization The overall structure and organization of web-based courses are extremely important as is the design of the web site and pages that are used to navigate and retrieve information. Students have widely varying levels of computer skills and a well designed web-course must meet the needs of all students irrespective of their computer literacy (16). These might seem like obvious statements that would not be challenged by many. Nevertheless, in practice they are often not followed. However, when dynamic web-based tools are designed and used properly they have a stimulating influence on students (8,12,17).

Web Page Design In terms of general layout, consistency and repetition are good elements as is simplicity. The initial web-page (i.e., the home navigation page) should not be filled with clutter and it should be user friendly. A n interesting example that illustrates this idea is to compare the ease of obtaining information using the Web-page of the internet search engine, Google™ vs. most university and company homepages. It is important to keep in mind that elaborate web-page designs in combination with very detailed descriptive materials often do more harm than good in terms of immediately "turning-off" students. It is important that course designers consider the learners' needs not their own preferences (1820). There are a myriad of reasons why students enroll in online courses (21), but none of them are to struggle with overly ambitious web-design. It is a good "rule-of-thumb" to assume that most beginning college students are less familiar than they think in terms of the operation of their computer's hardware and software. A second consideration is related to how students are initially introduced to the course website verses their repeated usage of the site. The first few visits should not overwhelm them in intricacy or content bulk. It is often better to introduce students to the course website slowly in terms of the total number of items that they first see (i.e., assuming this option is available with the delivery platform being used). This is accomplished by turning-on or posting only a few items when the course first begins. The initial items might include a course syllabus, rules and policies of the course, the first one or two sets of lecture



202 notes, one or two interactive exercises and a complete listing of the scheduled exams. Also, a contact number and e-mail address should be two of the more distinctive items that appear on the course homepage. Likewise, it is a good idea to have these on assignment, activity, and other resource pages as well. One reason many students give when asked why they fear web-based courses is the belief that they will be abandoned when problems occur (15,22). After a few weeks, when the students have become comfortable navigating and using the site materials, the total course content can be turned-on. A n alternative approach to the staggered introduction of material is to design the course in terms of smaller modules of learning activities and to turn these on and off as the students proceed sequentially through the course (23). Both staggered and sequential approaches work well once students have become familiar with the course web-site design and navigational features. However, the sequential approach works best when students have a conceptual ideal of how each of the individual parts fit into the overall scheduling of important course activities such as exams and other assignment due dates (20). Posting these on the course's homepage from the start is appreciated by most students and minimizes misunderstandings in terms of grading expectations. In addition to keeping the homepage simple but informative, the overall design of the web-site should be user-friendly in terms of navigating between pages. Although many students are experienced at retrieving information from the Web, a large number are not. A well designed internet course must be designed to meet the diverse needs of students so that its does not overwhelm those with minimal computer skills and turnoff ones with higher skills (16). Self-guiding prompts that are distinctive (i.e., bolded, underlined, a different color, etc.) and concise (e.g., "get the notes," "help," "return to homepage," etc.) are useful navigating tools that meet the needs of most. Likewise, when designing a course web-site, it is important to keep in mind that most students fit into one of two categories. They either have difficulty navigating through several layers of web-pages or they do not wish to contend with overly elaborate "page-nesting" when they are studying (10,13,24).

Course Structure Although there are several different philosophies when considering the overall structure of the beginning chemistry course sequence in terms of content organization, this topic is beyond the scope of the current chapter. Nevertheless, the basic approach used by the authors is to teach the first term course using the underlying principles that are the common underpinnings of analytical chemistry, including conversions, data collection and handling, simple principles of acid-



203 base, solubility, and redox equilibria, and beginning spectrometric measurements. In the addition, the authors have taught this course in both the web-intensive and totally online modes and have found that a majority of students prefer the web-intensive mode based on end-of-term surveys as well as in terms of the numbers of students that enroll in each. As such, the current chapter emphasizes useful approaches and techniques for structuring/organizing and delivering materials via the web-intensive mode that have been employed by the authors in a number of beginning classes they have taught for several years with a combined enrollment of more than 2000 students. Although several different approaches have been tried in terms of assignments and testing (i.e., the amount of weight placed on online activities vs. traditional in-class exams), in all cases there have been high linear correlations between the students' final grades in the class and the amount of time they have spent using the various types of online learning resources and in carrying out interactive activities and simulations. This is based on a detailed analysis of the delivery platform's daily student logs and course grading records (1,3,6). One of the important and unifying features of the content delivery system has been the development and use of learning modules. Breaking (i.e., grouping) the course into a few subunits (i.e., referred to throughout the remainder of the chapter as learning modules) has been a useful technique of controlling information flow and guiding student progress. For most quarter to semester courses, three to six major groupings are about right in number. Fewer groupings typically do not provide enough flexibility in organizing the course content and more groupings complicate information flow and consistency as well as overwhelm many beginning students (19,23). In the first term chemistry course taught by the authors, three major groupings are used and in the second term course, four provide a better fit to the overall content being taught. Shown in Figure 1 is a flowchart that summarizes the various elements of a first term, A C S accredited, chemistry course organized into three major units of activities that each cover two to three chapters from the textbook that is used currently in the course. Each learning module is designed around a database of questions (i.e., typically 30 to 50) that are related to fundamental concepts from which the computer randomly selects ten. Each question is mathematically formulated where it can have an unlimited number of quantitative solutions. Because the computer randomly generates values for the variables within a question, each time that it is shown, it is unique. Likewise, since the database of questions is relatively large, questions are randomly selected, and new variables appear each time it is presented. Therefore, students cannot simply memorize an answer, but they must learn the basic approach behind each question in order to be successful when they are given an in-class exam on the material (25). Although there are other possible ways of organizing a first term chemistry course besides question-based, this approach has the advantage of helping



Active Learning Models from the Analytical Sciences - American

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