POSTER SESSIONS Prepared by John Moore, Eastern Michigan University The oaoers . . .nresented in the ooster sessions were dominated (by design) by computer-oriented material. T h e Division's Committee on Comnuters in Chemical Education was asked hy the conference organizing committee to prepare n d a t e of-the-art vroaram for this Cunfwence. The maiurity of these were designed for hands-on experiences i n d thus were obvious candidates for poster papers. Several of the Computer Committee's efforts. h&wever.a&eared as "birds-of-a-feather sessions" andlor workshops; thkie are discussed elsewhere in this report as well as here. The other poster papers presented a t these sessions fell into three more categories: laboratory instruction, teaching andlor pedagogical approach, and audio-visual methods. The poster sessions will be divided into these four categories for discussion. ~
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Computers in Chemical Education The computers-in-chemical-education business is booming! The rapidity of change in this area, as well as the tremendous reduct~unin costs. Kin he seen by comparing the computrroriented activities at the Fourth Hirnn~nlCmftwnce with thost. at the Fifth Rimnial Cunterence. Two years before, a t Madison, a session was organized a t which minicomputer vendors provided machines on which authors of contributed papers Auld run their programs. One author even brought his own computer, but i t required a van for transoort and considerable muscle to unload. The least expensive computers displayed were in the $10,000 to $20,000 price ranee. and some of the machines accessed via teleohone Lonnecti& cost millions of dollars. Just the terminal; used to contact these larger computers cost $1500 to $2000 each. Two years later, a t Fort Collins, the microcomputer revolution had produced an entirely different situation-trulv an anticipation of the 21st century, when nearly everyonewill have access to inexpensive computing power. For example, William Butler of the University of Michigan ( I ) shipped two Commodore Pets to Fort Collins via United Parcel, carried one with him on an aimlane. and stuffed one in the trunk of m.v car. All worked perihctly whm they got there and delivtwd excellent comnuter-assisted mstructiun ororrams. The total cost of ail four computers was around $3006, and anybody can go down to the local computer store and buy one! What is more, the computer store will have a considerable selection of different systems in the price range of $800-4000. George Gerhold of Western Washington University (2) demonstrated his Southwest Technical Products 6800 system 142200).This computer can he uaed to pn,yram and &li\,er (.'A1 lessuns wing PILOT, a pr,w~.ri~~l, high-lrwl language that is designrd to sitnplity nwling or muat 01 the repetit~veoper. ations of ;I CAI prugram. For CAI al~plication;PILOT is 511oeriur to RASI(', the hkh-lcvel lanruae~:most commmdv available on microcomput;?rs, and implementation of PILOT on a microcornouter is a significant advance. Gerhold also chaired a birds-of-a.feather svssiun titlwl "Smart 'l'ermmali and CAI Progmmminx." Another alwroach to CAI on a microcomputerwas taken by Daniel ~ a c e r of o Syracuse University (3).This system, constructed from a kit supplied by The Digital Group of Denver, Colorado, costs about $2500 and delivers CAI programs written in an extended BASIC that has most of the features of Dartmouth BASIC. (That all BASICS are not alike-especially on microcomputers-is a problem 14 / Journal of Chemical Education
users of this lanrmaee must face.) Macero has taken advantaee of the ubiquity Gf ,~ASICby adapting existing programs to 6 s system. Some of these are from the hook by Paul Cauchon, "Chemistry with a Computer," Educomp Corp., Hartford, Connecticut, 1976. Cauchon, a teacher a t the Canterhury School, and Mark Lyndrup and George Brubaker, hoth college chemistry teachers, are currently marketing these programs through a company that they founded, Programs for Learning, P.O. Box 954, New Milford, CT. Though a very small comoanv. . .. Proerams for Learning..had one of the few commercial displays at the Filth Hienn~al(:onierena!. They demonstrated BASIC CAI .nrurrams on a Prucessor Technolaw "" SOL microcomputer, and they claim that the programs can he adanted to almost anv machine. For anyone whose annetite iur i'.U WH, whetted l;y these demonstr&ms,Alfrrd h a ui the Uni\,criit.v of Kan>asled a birds-ui-n-feathersession ent~tled,"l)t.sig~~iny CAI I'rogrnms," at which tundamrntal CAI strategies for any computer system were discussed. Anuther significant development in the microcomputer field was reported by Stanley Smith of the University of Illian6 a nois ( 4 ) . In hoth a workshoo on comouter eraohics .. . pw>ters c s h n paper hr demonst rated that the I'IATO system ,.on nun deliwr CAI lesions tincluding sti~te-ut'-the-art graphiw VI.I a microprun:.;awhasPd terminal and flupp? diik cya!t.m. Programs written on the largr Contrul 1)nta ('urpor:itlou iliachine in ilrbnna can he trno4atrd and luuded onto the floppy~lkk.('A1 leswns may then be d6:livercd to studrnts 11y3 it;in(l-alone micrwmnputer that ct,stsunly sli~htlymcgre than tht. usual PI.A'I'O ~rrminal.Mureuv~~r, thr system reilx~ndatostudent acti~nis-ignificsntly faster than a I'I .AT0 terminal ronnccted to the I q c computer via n tt4t.phone line. Mirrowmputer graphics wad alsu the >ul~ject ot a poster ser_ ~ I O I Ipaper 11). S w t t O a r n 01' Atlanta IIn:versity (51. i.'iiny an I I umicrwomuuter and a roltrr TV monitor ~~fi-lhe-~h. ~.. l i A ole Owen demonstrated graphics programs involving mixing of particles, a two-step consecutwe reaction sequence, and Larmor precession. Another important apolication of microcomouters is in the laboratory. ~nkdditiont;demonstrating that his MITS Altair system was readily adaptahle to CAI when the SOL system a t the Programs for Learning booth went down temporarily, Mark Lyndrnp of Montclair State College (6)showed how the Altair could be used to control laboratory instruments, collect data, and improve signal-to-noise ratios. In a related poster-
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session paper Robert DeSieno of Westminster College (7) descrihed the experiences of faculty, and of students;n independent study projects, during the construction of a microcomputer from a kit and its hterfacing with laboratory instruments. Although the project required intensive involvement with the c o m ~ u t e rsometimes . a t the exnense of involvement with the chemistry, DeSieno has been p&,uaded that the . nroiect . was valuable and helned students to develon a more comprehensive understanding of experimental and theoretical chemistry. For those whose interest was piqued by the microcomputer-related papers listed above, Mark Lyndrup, Daniel Macero, and Fred Henneike of Georgia State University organized a birds-of-a-feather session titled, "So You Want to Build Ynur Own .Microcomputer." llere the numerws pitf;llls rhat accompany thr low cost ofmicn~omputerkits were discussed. and participants had a chance to recount their own experiences-good and had. Lest the reader he misled into believing that a segment of the 21st century was somehow dropped in Fort Collins, I should emphasize that plenty of more conventional computer applications in chemical education were descrihed in addition to the microcomputer papers. Gordon Barrow (8)demonstrated 84 BASIC programs designed to accompany 32 computer-based studies in physical chemistry, each of which resembles a lahoratory experiment but utiiizes data simulated by the computer. Barrow is exploring several means of marketing the detailed study guides that lead the student through the acquisition and treatment of the data for each comnuter-based studv. Enoueh tonics are covered so that the >omputer-based studies can he a regular part of the usual phvsical chemistry course.. onlv - modest comnutinr facilities i r e needed, and ihe programs are easily adaptable to the quirks of BASICS on different computers. Dorothy Bell of Simmons College (9)demonstrated an interactive BASIC program that used an nmr spin system as a model for introducing quantum mechanics. Like Barrow's programs Bell's was adaptable enough that it could be made to run on the Colorado State University computer without undue travail, despite the fact that it had been written for a completely different machine. Richard Gilliom of Southwestern a t Memphis (10) described a BASIC program for constructing HMO correlation diagrams that would be useful in an advanced-level course. Lewis Walker of Goucher College (11) presented a computer-managed instruction system, Jeanette Stoffan of Lansing Community College (12) indicated how computergenerated quizzes could aid a quantitative analysis course, and Ronald Johnson of Emory University (13) recounted six years' experience with c ~ m ~ & e r - ~ r a dopen e d , general chemistry lahoratory. There was even a lecture paper describing a comouter nroeram t h a t writes comnuter oroerams! PROBGEN;~an interactive FORTRAN program hevysed by Ronald Collins of Eastern Michiean Universitv. .(14). to allow chemistry teachers who have no programming ability to write programs that generate equipment, nun-identical test questions or problem sets. Such questions may then he used in a computer-generated repeatable testing. system such as the . Spanish-lnngt~u~~,one described in nmiuncricm uith a remedial prrsonali/ed system uf instructii~nprogrnm by 1l.1riel hluir of the Ui~;v~.rsity~,fPuert~, Riro tl.5). Another succe3sful use oflnrpc~-walecomputrrs in thr rhcmistry c.sssromn is the , l earhinr: lnimmatiun I'rt,cedsinr: S w e m (TII'S) rhat was drsrrihd hy H.iss;m Sh;tkhashiri and a dwrn rdleagues from diiierent campus,? of the I'niversity of'\Visconsin ( 1 6 ~ . Aloving in the opposite directiun frnm standard computers, a m w e r sescion hv Howard Williams of the l'nivrrsitv o f Snuthern Mississippi (17) concentrated on the instructional uses of pocket programmable calculators. For those who wanted to learn more about the mathematics behind many of the computer programs whose authors gave papers a t Fort Collins, a workshop session on numerical methods of analysis
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was conducted by K. Jeffrey Johnson of the University of Pittsburgh. some conference participants even had theopportunity to use a computer to learn some chemistry that they did not know before. Ronald Crain su~ervisedthose who took the course "Spectral Identification o i ~ r g a n i Compounds." c This is the first in a series of comnuter-augmented courses produced by the NSF-funded continuing ~ZucationDelivery Svstem (CEDS) nroiect of the ACS Department of Educat i k a l Activities bnier the direction uf ~ e n n r t hChapman. Returninr tu the contrast ulluded to in the herinning of this artivitiesat the ~ o & t hand report i~etw~encumput~~r-oriented Fit'th Riennial Conterencea, there is nodoubt that tremendous progress has been made. At Madison a few plenary lectures descrihed the future of computing inglowing terms and many computer systems were available fo; hands-on trial, but according to the conference report many participants did not go near the computer because they considered the cost factor to be prohibitive. Two years later a t least six poster session papers displayed systems whose cost was anything hut prohibitive (much less that of the average new car or research instrument). Institutions in all budget categories (including high schools) can now afford computers, as evidenced by the affiliations of the persons demonstrating microcomputerbased chemistry leisons, and a great many more chemistry teachers want and need information about computers and computer applications in chemical-education. A poster paper presented hy John Moore addressed this problem directly (18) and was in effect a renort bv the Committee on the Role Computers in chemical ~ d & a t i o n ,of which he has been chairman for the past three years. This committee was formed six years ago by the Division of Chemical Education with Ronald Collins as its chairman. It was charged with collecting, evaluating, and disseminating information on computer applications in chemical education. T h e poster session a t Fort Collins made available one- to three-page summaries of state-of-the-art information on each of the following topics: Microprocessors and microcomputers; simulation and-ga&ng; computer graphics; computer-assisted instruction; computer-assisted testing and computer-managed instruction; computer programming and numerical analysis; pocket calculators: and comnuters in hieh school chemistrv. Some conies of the cbmplete set of information sheets areWstillavailable from Moore a t the address eiven in the Bihlioeranhv: enclose a self-addressed envelope a t least 6 X 9 in. size-with 41d return postare. The E
