Proposal for Course Development
The second semester first year chemistry course, Chemistry 22, has made extensive use of the internet for course material. This is a proposal to expand this technology from a traditional representation of a course to a more interactive one. This will involve both the classroom and the internet. There are a number of fundamental questions that need to be answered and some of these are mentioned at the World Wide Web site used for development http://jcbmac.chem.brown.edu under Plus & minus using RealAudio and Adobe Acrobat. A view into the use of the internet last year for Chemistry 22 is found under Chem 22 at this address and a current use of audio, lecture notes and overheads is found under Chem 277 at the same address. To my way of thinking, technology is not an end in itself when it comes to teaching and research, but a tool used to make teaching and research more accessible, more interactive and more fun for everyone. It is not desirable to use computers to reduce human interaction, but to provide yet another channel for the flow, both ways, of information. There has been much research to show that students (and it is true of me too) grasp material better if they have an interaction with it. It is a challenge to have recently described classroom Concept Tests (as discussed by Eric Mazur of Harvard) and ``Tutorials" (described in a Brown physics colloquium by a faculty member from the University of Washington) in not only a classroom but also in an internet setting. This is part of what I propose to do. The following outline shows features that have been used and some which are proposed and shown at the jcbmac internet site.
There are two real problems with this. First, the questions must be challenging and not just "yes", "no" guesses, but stimulate discussion. It is time consuming to create such questions and no claim is made that the examples below satisfy this criteria. Second, there is a bit logistics problem in gathering and tabulating answers. Computers can take care of the internet portion of this, but class room questions to groups of students are another matter. The first such Concept Test asked four conceptual questions having to do with a chemical reaction. This was set up in words. Students then answered these multiple choice questions and also gave a reason for their answer. They had several days including a weekend to do this. I encourage group, or team effort, but some prefer to work alone. The following week the TA presented the chemical reaction in class. As an experiment I made hard copies of a second Internet Concept Test and handed out a limited number to the class. We asked them to answer the questions about the lecture demo working together in class and hand in one copy. The students were also asked to enter their answers by way of the internet. Currently, the time limit for answering the Internet Concept Tests is the first hour exam. The following links Netscape to a typical Interactive Concepts Test that has been administered over the internet.
In a recent Brown University Center for the Advancement of College Teaching publication the question was posed: "How do you know what your students are learning?" I think that these Internet Active Concept Tests along with the submitted reasons are an efficient and good way to answer this question. http://jcbmac.chem.brown.edu/myl/conceptest1.html
While Adobe Acrobat PDF files have great advantage a new product by Adobe called Adobe Amber allows streaming written material analogous to RealAudio. The advantage of this system is that a large file does not have to be downloaded, but only a URL linking the student's computer to the server. Streaming video may also be used when movies are useful. Streaming video is the video equivalent to Real Audio in that the user does not down load a very large video file, but a small URL linking the student to the server. The technology exists. It is true that video requires a very large amount of computer disk space. For example, the smaller of three movies I made to show the temperature dependence of an oscillating chemical reaction required 1MB for 60 seconds at 5 frames per second ( http://jcbmac.chem.brown.edu/scissorsHtml/circadian/Zabelusov/experiment2.html ). At a desired frame rate of 25 fps and running 10 minutes requires about 50MB of hard drive space. With streaming video, so that the user does not down load, and with the low cost of gigabyte hard drives this is practical. Note: it is not quite practical to video an entire lecture for display on the internet. 50 minutes requires about 250MB/lecture. Perhaps 10 gigabytes per semester per course at 25 fps. Typical closed circuit TV has a much larger bandwidth!
During the 1994-95 academic year extensive use was made of the internet in Chemistry 22. During the first semester of 95-96 an experiment using audio encoding of all lecture material in a graduate course was made. This experiment has shown what is required for audio-visual material to be used in this way. To date I have spent my own scarce personal funds and the chemistry department has spend a small sum. The upgrading to a newer Powermac at the end of last summer has meant that my own computer, an upgraded Mac II, can now reside at home for home work on this project. Funds are needed for more memory, for a good tape recorder and microphone, a teaching assistant, computer software for editing sound files and Real Audio server software.
During this academic year, 1995-96, the Webstar1.2.4 server software has been installed, a Marantz tape recorder and lavalier mike is now used for recording sound, SoundEdit16 is used to digitize and edit lectures, the RealAudio Encoder 2.0 is used for sound encoding (reducing HD requirement by a factor of 23) and the RealAudio server 1.0 for the Powermac is used to serve the audio lectures. Adobe Acrobat Exchange is used to produce PDF files for viewing everything from lecture notes to documents of special interest. Videos have been made of some lecture demos, but these files, 12MB, are too large to be practical without "streaming" video so that down loading is not necessary. A graduate student TA is responsible for lecture demonstrations, an undergraduate TA/programmer has adapted ROFM.acgi to take FORM inputs and place them in a FileMakerPro3.0 relational database for viewing, writing Apple Script to transfer this data to an existing Excel grade sheet and an undergraduate TA is responsible for commenting on Concept Tests, audio manipulation, and testing lecture demo video production.