Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Thinkwell’s Chemistry by Dean Harmon and Gordon Yee, with Tarek Sammakia Thinkwell: Austin, TX, 2001. Fall 2001. ISBN: 1-931381-13-5. $101 reviewed by Peter M. Smith
Thinkwell markets their products as “The NextGeneration Textbook” and they are certainly a step in that direction, but I believe they fall short of their goal. Thinkwell’s Chemistry is composed of tutorials on every topic commonly included in a general chemistry text, a custom Web site, custom reports and tracking, and a test bank with test generator. Each tutorial consists of a filmed lecture with accompanying graphics and animations, printable lecture notes, a transcript of the lecture, and Web-based exercises with custom feedback. The packing on the software claims that fundamentals of chemistry are explained “…in a clear, conversational manner.” I agree that the tutorials are conversational, in fact, they may be too conversational. The tutorials are essentially 10- to 15-minute videos of Harmon and Yee delivering standard lectures. Every cough, throat-clearing, and misstatement has been left in the videos. The tutorials do not appear to have been edited at all. Harmon and Yee do a wonderful job explaining the fundamentals of chemistry, and they appear to be very proficient lecturers. In a classroom, their coughs and misstatements are easily overlooked, but when students are asked to shell out $101 for chemistry tutorials, they will expect professionally produced videos. They will not get that with this product. During his discussion of the steady-state approximation, Yee uses the decomposition of N2O5 to give NO2 and O2 for his example. Unfortunately, he continually refers to the decomposition equation, which is not properly balanced. Apparently this error was caught during production because a graphic pops up that indicates that Yee is using an unbalanced equation and the graphic provides the correct equation. Why Thinkwell did not simply edit the video to include Yee using the correct equation is beyond me. The tutorials also strive to be conversational by using informal (some might say inappropriate) language. If you, or your students, find the terms “kick-ass”, “bad-ass”, or “hell of a lot” offensive, you should avoid this product. While Thinkwell’s Chemistry may be conversational, it is definitely not clear. The tutorial screens are divided into quadrants. The upper left quadrant contains the lecture video. The lower left quadrant contains biographical information about the lecturer and a very brief outline of the tutorial’s content. The upper and lower right quadrants contain continuously updated graphics and animations that accompany the lecture video. Needless to say, the screen is extremely busy. It is impossible to keep up with both the lecture and the graphics. I constantly found myself focusing solely on the video and ignoring the right half of the screen. I was also disappointed by the lack of an interactive aspect to the tutorials. The only interactive component I could find in the tutorials was a
clickable periodic table that provided the standard information on the elements. If Thinkwell wants this product to take off, they would do well by significantly upgrading the production quality of the lectures and introducing some interactive exercises into the tutorials. It is important to note that Thinkwell’s Chemistry is not all bad. There are certain aspects of it that are very good. The content of the tutorials is very comprehensive. There are more than 300 tutorials covering all of the traditional material from a general chemistry text plus more advanced topics such as radial and angular solutions to the Schrödinger equation, steady state kinetics, and ligand field theory. Interspersed throughout the tutorials are short laboratory demonstrations called “Chemistry in Action.” Most of the popular lab demos are represented: elephant snot, the electric pickle, the potato cannon, the thermite reaction, etc. The students will enjoy watching these demos and should find them useful in understanding the concepts addressed. The explanations and lecture styles used by Harmon and Yee are first rate (except the aforementioned lack of editing) and do a very good job of breaking down the fundamentals of chemistry to an understandable level. The software itself is very easy to install and operate. The installation follows a standard procedure and the tutorials are accessible from a main menu. The accompanying Web site available at www.thinkwell.com is also quite nice. Professors are able to customize the content delivery to suit the needs of their course. Student access to the Web site provides a checklist of assigned tutorials, a discussion board, interactive animations, a list of Web resources, a glossary, and customized exams. The discussion board can be set to allow open discussion or moderated discussions. The interactive animations that I saw were very well done. One such animation deals with colligative properties through the guise of chemical investigations into the doings of the nefarious Dr. Heath. Strange colored lights suddenly start appearing in Dr. Heath’s laboratory and the nearby villagers are alarmed. The following exercises are quite extensive and lead the student step-by-step through simulated lab experiments measuring the freezing point depression and boiling point elevation of an unknown nitrate salt. At the end, the animation leads the student through the analysis of the data and the students determine that Dr. Heath was using strontium nitrate to make fireworks to put on a show for the villagers. This animation is quite effective in reinforcing the concepts and calculations for colligative properties. The custom exams can be created from a test bank of thousands of multiple choice, short answer, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank type questions. All in all, the associated Web site presents a much better face for Thinkwell’s Chemistry than do the tutorials. One area where Thinkwell’s Chemistry might be useful is in a distance education course. Almost everything needed for a general chemistry course is included in the package. A professor could assign the appropriate tutorials and Web-based exercises and use the test bank and test generator to administer examinations. However, I don’t expect Thinkwell’s Chemistry to be widely used in traditional course settings. Peter M. Smith is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-2556;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 79 No. 7 July 2002 • Journal of Chemical Education
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