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Online Courses and Online Tools for Chemical Education Downloaded by 80.82.77.83 on October 29, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): October 26, 2017 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2017-1261.ch001
Pia M. Sörensen*,1 and Dorian A. Canelas2 1Harvard
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States 2Department of Chemistry, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, United States *E-mail:
[email protected]. E-mail:
[email protected].
This introductory chapter provides current context for the state of the art and practice in online tools and experiments in chemical education. In addition to providing an overview of the specific work detailed in the chapters of this volume, some important net neutrality trends laffecting world wide access to high quality educational information are briefly discussed. We conclude with a call to action for science educators.
Introduction The world wide web has been in existence for just over twenty-five years, but already its potential for impacting education appears to be infinite. Online platforms provide increasingly sophisticated tools for the mass dissemination of knowledge and sharing of ideas. These platforms can currently be accessed by the more than half of the people on Earth who have access to the internet in 2017 (1), and the infrastructure for the internet continues to expand rapidly into developing global locations. Today, online learning is an important current topic for contemporary educators in diverse fields. The chapters in this book address these topics specifically for the field of chemistry, giving overviews of existing work as well as “snapshot in time” examples of the work being conducted in this area. The purpose of the book is to examine the relevant successes, challenges, research findings, and practical examples in online approaches to chemistry education. © 2017 American Chemical Society Sörensen and Canelas; Online Approaches to Chemical Education ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
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Overview of the Organization of This Volume The chapters in this volume are loosely based on contributions to various symposia in online chemical education which were organized by the editors. The symposia primarily took place at the national meetings for the American Chemical Society in spring 2016 and 2017 — an earlier ACS symposium in 2015 has been summarized in a previous symposium series volume (2). Our efforts to organize these symposia stem from our own work in this rapidly expanding field. In the process of our work teaching and learning with online tools, we recognized that this relatively new, borderless education venue would benefit from the building of a community of scholarship among chemical educators. In response to this need, we began organization efforts at the national level to assemble a forum for exchanging ideas among the faculty who are pioneers in adopting online chemical teaching technology. The community that has since emerged is comprised of a diverse group of educators. Their many insights, informed by the trials and tribulations of early adoption and invention, give life to the contents of this volume. In this book, we bring together authors who are chemistry instructors and course developers currently practicing with online methods in their online or on-campus classrooms. They come from diverse institutions of higher education: international and domestic, liberal arts colleges, research institutions, community colleges, and historically black colleges and universities. The courses described range from introductory general and organic chemistry courses to intermediate and advanced courses in biochemistry, synthesis, spectroscopy, and bio-organic chemistry intended for undergraduate science majors. As a collection, the chapters offer a powerful perspective on the current state of online learning in higher chemistry education. The book is organized to present contributions in two main categories: Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 describe the development of, and research on, online courses as considered in their entirety. Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 focus on the use of various online tools in either online or on-campus settings. Both categories include carefully researched topics as well as instructors’ and course developers’ general narratives detailing the successes and challenges in their chemical education experiments. Within each of the two categories, we have interspersed reviews of specific areas important to the field of online chemistry learning. These reviews (Chapters 4, 8 and 9) consider and discuss current knowledge about the use of online videos, online homework systems, and motivational strategies in the context of online course development. Throughout the book, authors address important questions such as: •
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What pedagogical opportunities and challenges arise from the current trend toward more online learning? How do these pertain specifically to chemistry education? What online materials and software can be incorporated into online and on-campus classes, and how is this incorporation most successfully done at the college level? How do students interact and learn in these new pedagogical settings? 2 Sörensen and Canelas; Online Approaches to Chemical Education ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
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How can many of the lab exercises that are typically performed in a brickand-mortar classroom be successfully transferred to the homes of online students? How can online courses be used to better prepare students for their future chemistry classes in college?
The chapters are briefly summarized below: In the Chapter 2, immediately following this introductory chapter, Dockter and colleagues present their research on how an online summer course can help prepare incoming freshmen for college level general chemistry. The chapter offers compelling research showing that preparatory summer courses can increase student performance and persistence in general chemistry and other STEM courses during their first year of college at a large institution in the University of California system. In the Chapter 3, Li reviews what is currently known about the use of motivational design strategies in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). A common theme of online course design is how best to address the fact that attrition in online courses is typically high compared to that in on-campus courses. This is true even when full tuition is paid for the course and formal course credit is at stake, and the situation is bleaker when the online offering is available for free or at a reduced rate. Online course developers endeavor to increase retention in a variety of ways, but the effectiveness of the different motivational strategies that are typically used for these purposes are not well understood. Li surveys the current state of this field, while also adding to the current body of knowledge by sharing results on the effect of incorporating motivational strategies into two general chemistry MOOCs. Staying within the general topic of how to increase student motivation in MOOCs, Chapter 4 focuses on student engagement. The author, Stevens, presents convincing data on how the introduction of virtual laboratory exercises in a medicinal chemistry MOOC significantly boosted student engagement on the course’s discussion forum. Interestingly, the effect was primarily seen in students who passed the course, as opposed to in the broader enrolled population, suggesting that there are ways to increase engagement even among students who are part of the “retained” student population. Hands-on and experimental learning are a crucial components of chemistry education in the on-campus classroom, so it is not surprising that chemistry educators have tried hard to find effective ways of incorporating them in online courses as well. Virtual labs, as presented by Stevens and colleagues, is one solution. Other solutions include lab exercises that use materials and ingredients that are common in the typical home, or laboratory kits supplied by vendors or college campuses. Little has been written on this topic. In Chapter 5, Burchett and Hayes, describes the development and use of an in-house laboratory kit for an online general chemistry course at a community college in Missouri. Chapters 6 and 7 offer important instructor perspectives about the successes and challenges that arise when developing online courses. Noble describes the process of developing an online general chemistry course at Messiah College, a primarily undergraduate institution. Gerald-Goins describes the development of 3 Sörensen and Canelas; Online Approaches to Chemical Education ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
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an online biochemistry course at North Carolina Central University, one of the first Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The authors describe how quality instructional design principles were given serious consideration throughout the development of these courses. Campus-based instructors interested in adapting a course to a fully online setting can benefit from their insights. The latter half of this volume describes the second category of contributions: the use of online tools for on-campus and/or blended learning. This begins with Mosley reviewing the current state of content transmission via lecture video in Chapter 8. Lecture video technology is one of the most prevalent tools employed in both completely online courses and campus-based courses which have moved to flipped, hybrid, or blended pedagogies. In 9, Wilson and Kennedy provide an extensive review of commercially-available online homework platforms. Significantly, they analyze the current platforms’ capabilities in the context of cognitive science principles. They detail and discuss the available design options in each platform as well as the impacts of various design choices on student and instructor learning opportunities. Most educators now recognize that peer interaction does not need to be face-to-face in order for it to result in meaningful discourse and learning. An excellent example is the contribution by Tartaro, Goess, and Miller, who describe their innovative work in the realm of “flipped textbooks”, also known as student generated wiki textbooks, in Chapter 10. Their collective experiences on the project over a number of years have led them to generate a series of guidelines for instructors interested in having learners endeavor to create their own learning materials. Importantly, they also present evidence that the language chosen by student writers can lead to improved learning outcomes for subsequent students who read a flipped textbook – a fascinating example of trans-class, multi-year interactive learning. Another innovative cloud-based tool for collaborative learning and peer-to-peer discourse is detailed by Wachter in Chapter 11. Wachter describes her work implementing the Voicethread platform for asynchronous collaborative learning among participants in an organic chemistry course. Finally, Chapters 12, 13, and 14 offer additional instructor insights into tailoring online course components to serve large and diverse audiences in Canada, rural Montana, and Singapore, respectively. Flynn describes comparisons of different types of blended courses in Canada. For example, flipped courses that have substantial online components are compared to courses that have in-class lecture and active learning components. Significantly, lower failure and withdrawal rates were observed in the flipped classes. Alexander and Wenz developed a very large number of video lectures using lightboard technology for their blended and online courses with the aim of reaching a diffuse population of students in a very large area of rural Montana. Their students, many of whom would not have been able to attend daily classes at a brick-and-mortar location, were interested in filling sorely needed rural health care professional positions, and the chemistry courses offered gateways to training for those jobs. An intensive “lab weekend” was offered in order to provide hands-on training and establish a community of scholarship among peers. The students then completed the remaining labs at home with a lab kit. This last group of chapters is rounded out by the insights of Bates, who discusses his experiences in balancing 4 Sörensen and Canelas; Online Approaches to Chemical Education ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
traditional pedagogies with new technology in a variety of courses over many years. He grapples with issues such as adapting good assessments to technology and leading an effective, credit-bearing, blended course with an enrollment of 1700 students (in a single section!).
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Global Trends with Implications for the Future of Online Chemical Education Molecules and atoms do not join political parties or vote in elections, and they do not recognize geopolitical boundaries, so chemistry education should not need to be a political topic. Indeed, the many educators who believe that chemical knowledge should not be the exclusive domain of governments and the wealthy elite continue to make efforts to keep access to public science knowledge free and open, rather than blocked entirely or locked behind paywalls. Nonetheless, it is important to always bear in mind that internet access with the full and free flow of scientific information and ideas is not actually available in many regions of the world due to censorship (3). Equally concerning, the current trend in this area is negative: “Internet freedom around the world declined in 2016 for the sixth consecutive year (4).” While the government of the United States, for example, would be considered a leading advocate for internet freedom in many contexts (5, 6), it is important to note that tides can rapidly change because individual viewpoints (7) and societal norms in the arena of censorship evolve over time. Indeed, “people’s attitudes toward Internet freedom and censorship is more complicated and nuanced than assumed (8).” As educators, we must look outward from our ivory towers and remain vigilantly aware of the initiatives in our own countries to either further undermine net neutrality or otherwise censor the flow of new discoveries and basic, fact-based scientific information. Free educational online resources and websites geared at expanding knowledge of, and appreciation for, chemistry appeared early in the history of the internet with the development of websites such as Molecule of the Month (9, 10). The presence of reliable chemistry information on the internet became reinforced over time with the later emergence of sites such as Wikipedia, e-resources such as spectroscopic repositories (11), and platforms for interactive visualizations of chemical phenomena (12). Four important areas continue to grow over time: (1) the sheer volume of accurate scientific information housed online, (2) the availability of user-friendly, open-source tools for hosting and sharing new information such as scientific breakthroughs at minimal cost, (3) technical capabilities for searching, and (4) platforms for developing online learning tools and open courseware. In the chapters comprising this volume, several of the authors describe their own efforts to improve the state of affordable chemical education for large and/or geographically remote audiences using online tools or platforms. In light of the current trends towards more censorship and less internet information freedom, the questions then become: Will free public access to these education resources endure and continue to expand? Or will the future bring erosion to available information and resources due to economic or political pressures? We certainly cannot answer 5 Sörensen and Canelas; Online Approaches to Chemical Education ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
these questions in this volume, but we urge our readers to keep these important education questions in mind when forming and refining opinions about the function and utility of online tools in chemical education.
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Acknowledgments We thank Anderson Marsh and Layne Morsch for co-organizing national symposia on this important topic with us, and we acknowledge the ACS Division of Chemical Education for sponsoring these symposia. We also express our gratitude to the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering, HarvardX and Duke University’s Center for Instructional Technology for funding and their ongoing support of the use of technology in educational endeavors. Cover image credit: Miguel Bordo.
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