Information • Textbooks • Media • Resources
Using the World Wide Web in a Course in Physical Chemistry Joseph H. Noggle and Cecil R. Dybowski Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716
The recent flurry of activity with the World Wide Web has brought its advantages to the attention of many. In particular, articles in this Journal have indicated several uses of the Web in courses, such as presentation of in-depth files to elucidate and extend class notes (1) and as a vehicle for obtaining information from sources at remote sites (2). We have used the Web to alleviate certain mundane problems we’ve encountered in the traditional mode of operation of our physical chemistry course by replacing standard practices with Web-centered activities. The typical course in physical chemistry is a problemsolving exercise, and it is important for students to have convenient access to solutions and examples. For some time, we had provided homework answers, exam and quiz keys, and other materials to our large physical chemistry classes (80–90 students) by placing them in a folder on reserve in the library. This proved to be unsatisfactory because students removed pages to make copies, contents became disordered and ragged, and pages (and sometimes whole folders) disappeared at awkward times. An alternative is passing out handouts to all the students, but for a large class this is a substantial expense and a logistical problem. In the spring of 1996 we decided to use the World Wide Web to accomplish these important tasks. This experiment has succeeded beyond our expectations and is uniformly praised by students. From our point of view, its use eliminates the need to constantly monitor material in some central place. From the student’s point of view, it has the special benefit that information is readily available wherever and whenever he or she happens to be—in a study group during the day or alone in a dormitory room at 2 a.m., as long as the appropriate computer connection is available. Through the Internet we also provide copies of old exams, additional material, examples, and schedules that would previously have been provided as handouts in class. Important announcements often missed by many students when made in class are also available on the site. Despite our concern that all students might not have access to the information, the wide availability of communal computing sites and the generally widespread use of computers by our students of chemistry and engineering seems to have allowed every student access to the information we provide through the Web. Initially, because of the limitations of hypertext markup language (HTML), much of the material was provided as scanned graphics files in GIF format. Although the documents had limited resolution (we had to use 75 dpi to make them display and print correctly), being able to access such information through the Web was very popular with students. Besides the resolution, another problem with GIF files is that
each page is a document, so a five-page key becomes five documents in this presentation. This required creating HTML documents to combine them; the results were not always satisfactory and downloading multiple documents was awkward, at best. To resolve these problems we now use Adobe’s portable document format (PDF). With PDF, scanning can be done at 300 dpi and documents that are already digital (word processing files, spreadsheets, etc.) can be used directly. On the screen, documents are quite legible or can be made so by adjusting the zoom factor in the reader. When printed, the document has the same quality as the original, or as good as the user’s printer permits. PDF is available for PC/Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX platforms, so we need have no concern about the type of computer or printer our students are using. The program required to create PDF documents, Adobe Acrobat Exchange, is reasonably priced and easy to use. It effectively acts as a printer, and the procedure for creating a PDF document is the same as printing a document with a word processor. Multiple pages from different sources are easily combined into a single document, and you can create an index and links. The reader is free (but requires about 2 MB of disk space) and is available on the Adobe home page or ours (see below). Another advantage of Adobe PDF is that it makes possible two levels of security, with passwords for reading a file and for printing it. This solves a potential practical problem: since some institutions give substantial credit for homework, they may object if their students copy homework from our Web page, rather than doing their own work. A password can be provided to the class to give only students from our class access to homework solutions. We also prefer that students not print homework solutions because these are often used as a substitute for thought; if they copy it from the screen, at least it passed through their heads once. We have thus found that the Web can serve as an excellent substitute for some of the traditional operations of running this kind of class, providing the students with ready access to information and eliminating some of the annoyances caused by our past practices. In short, both students and professors benefit from this simple use of the World Wide Web. Those interested in our experiment should visit our Web site: http://www.udel.edu/pchem/C443/c443.htm (capitalization exactly as shown). Literature Cited 1. Tissue, B. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 65–68. 2. Monts, R. D. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 68–71.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 11 November 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education
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