On the Web The ChemCollective Digital Library David Yaron* and Michael Karabinos, Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213; *
[email protected] Jodi Davenport, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Gaea Leinhardt and James G. Greeno, Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Keywords: Audience: High School/Introductory Chemistry, FirstYear Undergraduate/General. Domain: Chemical Education Research, Curriculum. Pedagogy: Computer-Based Learning, Internet/Web-Based Learning, Multimedia-Based Learning. Topics: Acids/Bases, Aqueous Solution Chemistry, Equilibrium, Kinetics, pH, Stoichiometry, Thermodynamics. Article available at: http://www.jce.divched.org/JCEDLib/ ConfChem/200804/P03
The ChemCollective (http://www.chemcollective.org, accessed Nov 2008) is a digital library of activities for introductory college and high school chemistry. The collection includes virtual labs, scenario-based learning activities, and interactive tutorials. The virtual labs bridge the procedural knowledge of the course with authentic chemistry by, for instance, allowing students to perform experiments that test the results of their calculations or to use their procedural knowledge to design and carry out experiments. The scenario-based learning activities embed such authentic chemistry activities in real-world contexts that highlight the utility of chemistry to bigger problems in everyday science or the broader scientific enterprise. Examples include our Mixed Reception murder mystery activity and our Ozone activity for kinetics. The tutorials combine instruction on key concepts with practice problems that are scaffolded through hints and feedback on student responses. The tutorials are a relatively recent addition to the collection and currently cover topics in stoichiometry and chemical equilibrium.
The ChemCollective (http://www.chemcollective.org, accessed Nov 2008) provides virtual labs, scenario-based learning activities, and concepts tests that can be used in classes from high school through introductory college level courses.
The ChemCollective Digital Library supports instructors by providing a portal to the activities, along with user guides and training materials. A virtual lab authoring tool allows instructors to modify existing labs or create their own. Of our 85 virtual labs, over 40 were contributed by the chemistry community. We also report our initial work on a system, named EX2, that provides a more convenient means to create and modify online instructional explanations. The EX2 system was used to create the ChemCollective tutorials on chemical equilibrium. Assessment of the digital library addresses both learning and access. Results from past learning studies are briefly summarized, along with recent efforts to automate collections of data relevant to learning. This data includes log files of student interaction with the virtual labs and tutorials. Our efforts to evaluate the use of the collection focus on estimating the number of instructors who have seen the collection, the number that have chosen to use the collection, and the number that contribute to the collection. Community building and support, both through the Web portal and booths and workshops at chemical education conferences, are also discussed along with integration of the collection with the ChemEd DL and NSDL. Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge support for this work from the National Science Foundation (DUE-0443041 and DUE0333720), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 86 No. 1 January 2009 • Journal of Chemical Education
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