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Preface
The central premise of Christensen and Eyring’s 2011 book, The Innovative University, might have seemed like a jarring thunderclap to unprepared administrators or faculty. In it, the authors point out that online education and its accompanying digital technologies represent a heretofore-nonexistent form of disruptive innovation. They also predict that these new technologies will dramatically alter how we teach and may even imperil some postsecondary institutions that resist adjusting and integrating these new tools to their full advantage. Questions accordingly arise for us educators, such as: should I adapt and better incorporate online or other digital technologies into my teaching? If so, which ones should I use, and how can I best do that? If not, why not? And more forebodingly, is it possible, in an increasingly competitive global market of online educators, that those who resist new teaching tools may one day be replaced by those who do not? Sensitive to the possible future educational revolution that new online tools may portend, we organized a one-session symposium at the 252nd American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in Philadelphia, held on August 25, 2016. The session’s title was “Present & Future Impact of the Internet, Web Apps & High-Speed Networking Technology on Local & Global Chemistry Education.” Our symposium’s purpose was to share ways in which new technologies, such as collaborative web apps, podcasting, online videos, and social networking sites, are currently being used in the university classroom. There were additional discussions centered on questions like, “How are such technologies impacting our students and the global community?” And, “What will the future of chemistry education look like; as such tools become increasingly common?” The session featured talks by eight university educators with diverse expertise in employing online and other digital resources in their chemistry classrooms. The topic’s timeliness and interest level apparently made it well-suited for an ACS symposium series volume, as we received an invitation to assemble the book before our session had even transpired.
ix Christiansen and Weber; Teaching and the Internet: The Application of Web Apps, Networking, and Online Tech for ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
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Pleasingly, six of the original eight speakers (Professors Geyer, Deri, Jackson, Naik, McFarland, and Christiansen) agreed to author chapters for this work. To this roster, we also added Professor Fun Man Fung, a groundbreaking educator from the National University of Singapore. Professor Fung and his coauthors responsively contributed three additional chapters to this volume, giving it a broad, international coverage of diverse, high-impact, technology-centered topics in chemistry education. Our purpose in assembling this book is to expose educators to a wide array of online digital teaching tools and to increase awareness of how these tools are currently being used. We anticipate that such exposure will help savvy instructors employ these tools to provide students with the best learning opportunities possible. Moreover, despite being authored solely by postsecondary chemistry professors, we believe that this book addresses topics with broad enough applicability to extend far beyond chemistry, thus providing an effective starting point for interested teaching professionals in any discipline, at any institutional level. To this end, we organized this volume into four sections. Section 1 provides a broad and succinct introduction to social media, smartphone apps, and online review sessions. Section 2 covers internet videos and other methods in flipped and blended classrooms. Section 3 features highly-innovative means of enhancing students’ research experience in laboratory courses through two fascinating modern tools: the online Guiding Education through Novel Investigation (GENI) platform and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in teaching an analytical environmental chemistry lab. Lastly, Section 4 covers timeless teaching principles. This latter theme, authored by one of the book’s coeditors, may seem a strange addition to a volume about modern tech in education. However, its purpose is to bring to fore timeless teaching principles that transcend technology, with its main contention being that in the end, high-tech bells and whistles cannot compensate for poor teaching methods. In addressing such current and mercurial topics, we realize that some of the tools discussed in this book may be outdated shortly after release. This notwithstanding, we hope that at least one common theme will become apparent throughout this work: our authors’ dedication to and passion for seeking out and implementing the most effective means of teaching. We do not use technology simply to be trendy or popular, but to leverage whatever means are needed to afford our students the best educations we can. We accordingly hope that you will sense the authors’ commitment as you read this book, replete with our experiences in striving to pioneer new teaching methods that may one day become as common as the textbooks and blackboards of the past.
x Christiansen and Weber; Teaching and the Internet: The Application of Web Apps, Networking, and Online Tech for ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
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We conclude by expressing our gratitude to our authors for their amazing contributions, as well as to the numerous peer-reviewers, whose scrutiny and feedback immeasurably enhanced the final quality of this book. We further acknowledge the extensive help, guidance, and support of the ACS Books editorial staff, which include Zac Stelling, Elizabeth Hernandez, Tracey Glazener, and Bob Hauserman. Thank you, everyone. We could not have done this without you!
Dr. Michael A. Christiansen Associate Professor Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry Utah State University, Uintah Basin Campus 320 North Aggie Boulevard Vernal, Utah 84078, United States
Dr. John M. Weber Assistant Professor Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry Utah State University Eastern Campus 451 East 400 North Price, Utah 84501, United States
xi Christiansen and Weber; Teaching and the Internet: The Application of Web Apps, Networking, and Online Tech for ... ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.
