TECHNOLOGY REPORT pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Enhancing Undergraduate Chemistry Education with the Online Dynamic ChemWiki Resource Ronald J. Rusay,† Michelle R. Mccombs,‡ Matthew J. Barkovich,§ and Delmar S. Larsen*,§ †
Department of Chemistry, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, California 94523, United States Center for Biophotonics, University of California, Davis, Sacramento, California 95817, United States § Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis, Davis, California 95616, United States ‡
ABSTRACT: The ChemWiki is a multi-institutional, collaborative venture to develop free, open-access, dynamic chemistry textbooks. It contains an extensive, hyperlinked network of topic modules to provide a growing, “living” archive of content. Much of the content is still under construction and requires further participation from the chemistry education community to help develop the project to maturity and meet its full potential. KEYWORDS: First-Year Undergraduate/General, Graduate Education/Research, High School/Introductory Chemistry, Second-Year Undergraduate, Upper-Division Undergraduate, Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary, Internet/Web-Based Learning, Textbooks/Reference Books
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apidly rising undergraduate fees and textbook costs are significant challenges to students in higher education, which impede the pursuit of degrees for many students, in particular, under-served, at-risk students. The recent Higher Education Opportunity Act1 calls for “students [to] have access to affordable course materials by decreasing costs to students and enhancing transparency and disclosure with respect to the selection, purchase, sale, and use.” Virtually every college and university in America is making efforts to address these issues. The ChemWiki is one such effort and is a multi-institutional, collaborative venture to develop the next generation of free, open-access, dynamic chemistry textbooks.2 Although initial construction over the past three years has focused largely on entry-level general and organic chemistry courses, when completed, textbooks at any level will be adaptable. The ChemWiki contains an extensive, hyperlinked network of topic modules to provide a growing, “living” archive of content. All topic modules are maintained in a “core” and “wikitexts” are constructed for specific courses and classes from edited lists of hyperlinks to the core. Course content can be added or removed without affecting any concurrently running classes; this flexibility empowers instructors to construct wikitexts that best suit their teaching styles and needs. Construction proceeds via two mechanisms, partly by students and partly by faculty: (i) student construction of raw content from the ground up and (ii) the integration of existing online and offline material provided by faculty and other experts in chemistry from the top down. Materials from both routes are implemented in parallel at multiple institutions and are processed through a hierarchal vetting structure involving both students and faculty to eventually ensure accuracy and reliability. Although in its early stages, this approach provides the direct involvement of a broad contributor base, which will aid in developing the ChemWiki’s widespread transformative goals. The ChemWiki garnered 31,902 student visitors in the first year of development and 491,173 in the second year. Assuming this rate of 15-fold increase holds, over 7.5 million students are expected to visit in the third year. This student traffic (with >32,000 h of confirmed online reading and reviewing) demonstrates that, once Copyright r 2011 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
completed, the ChemWiki will serve a broad educational need. However, much of the content is still under construction and requires further participation from the chemistry education community to help develop the project to maturity and meet its full potential. More details can be found online at the ChemWiki home page.2
’ AUTHOR INFORMATION Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected].
’ REFERENCES (1) Higher Education Opportunity Act Home Page. http://www2. ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html (accessed Mar 2011). (2) ChemWiki Home Page. http://ChemWiki.ucdavis.edu (accessed Mar 2011).
Published: April 08, 2011 840
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed101119d | J. Chem. Educ. 2011, 88, 840–840
