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New Tools, New Pedagogy, New Curricula
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John W. Moore
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1396 |
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This issue is out of print. |
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About two years ago I commented in an editorial (1) that our traditional teaching methods and curriculum can inhibit faculty from enabling students to use the latest, most up-to-date computer-based (or other) tools of the chemistry trade. Two recent experiences prompt me to explore that issue further here. I am an off-again, on-again peruser of Internet list servers, but I try to keep abreast of what is happening on CHEMED-L (2) , because it is a major forum for chemical education information. JCE: Software Technical Editor Nancy Gettys reads CHEMED-L, and she was instrumental in calling to my attention a recent discussion regarding calculators. As Yogi Berra once said, "It was deja vu all over again." The arguments against calculators went something like this: (1) students will solve problems by rote, will only punch buttons, will not be able to recognize egregiously wrong results, or will not understand what they are doing; (2) some students can afford the latest, most powerful calculators and some cannot, which provides an unfair advantage to those who can; (3) many students do not know what logarithms and exponentials are anymore, nor can they handle significant figures; (4) students need to do certain things by hand--automating mathematical manipulations takes away direct experience with numbers and calculations that is integral to learning; (5) we can now assign much more complicated problems than we could in the past--isn't this overloading the curriculum with even more material? The same arguments would also apply to computers, particularly to programs such as the ones in this issue. REACT contains a thermodynamic database, an equation balancer, and a solver of chemical equilibrium problems. It makes simple many of the calculations I slaved over for hours as an undergraduate, using a slide rule and log tables. X-ray Fluorescence Analysis Simulation readily generates simulated X-ray fluorescence spectra without requiring that students set up and carry out experimental measurements. Should we be publishing such software at all? Aren't we likely to be impeding, rather than aiding, students' development? My second experience was a demonstration by a colleague from the mechanical engineering department, Sanford Klein, of his program EES (Engineering Equation Solver, pronounced ease), which is being used in a variety of engineering courses on this campus. EES solves sets of simultaneous equations, plots and curve-fits data that students input, has a large database of thermodynamic information that can easily be looked up and incorporated into a problem solution, and can perform numerical integrations and lots of other useful mathematical tasks. I am considering introducing EES into our freshman laboratory program as a means for plotting and fitting the data that students collect from a variety of experiments. It does so more easily than a spreadsheet, and has the added advantage that many of my students will eventually use it in an engineering course. Many others would be able to make effective use of such a tool in later chemistry courses or in other disciplines, provided they practice enough to become comfortable with it. EES can be approached in much the same way as a full-featured word processor. A beginner will never even find all its features, but will be able to use it to write a paper. Later on, as the need arises, more complicated features will be learned, and the student will begin to recognize the power of a tool that originally seemed rather simple. Klein confirmed my conviction (1) that most of the anti-calculator arguments listed above are spurious, and for the same reason: they assume that we will continue teaching in the same way we always have, even though a new intellectual tool makes it possible for us to do things in completely different and much improved ways. The big problem is to imagine, try out, and refine new pedagogy, which can take years even for an enthusiastic convert. In the case of engineering on this campus, it has taken five or six years for a broad cross section of engineering faculty to adopt the new tool, and even Klein had some problems using it effectively early on. However, once in general use, the software empowers students to solve problems that are much more realistic and also much more interesting than they could address before. Until the faculty came up with such exercises, the program was much less popular and much less useful to students. The bottom line here is that new tools can lead us to new, better ways of teaching, if only we apply a modicum of creativity and common sense. In the process some of our cherished traditions will need to go, as will some of what we teach now. For example, an argument can be made that EES makes our traditional method of solving chemical equilibrium problems obsolete. Why bother calculating a standard free energy change, an equilibrium constant, and then doing algebra to obtain equilibrium concentrations, when a piece of software can simply minimize the total free energy of a reacting system, thereby obtaining the equilibrium concentrations without even having to know equations for all the equilibria involved? Obtaining the position of equilibrium by finding a minimum in free energy is fundamental to the problem. Calculations with equilibrium constants are much less so, but they were a means to an end in an era when databases were books and there were no computers to do iterative minimizations. One might ask whether Lewis and Randall would have done things as they did if they had had a powerful computer; or would they have invented a tool like REACT or EES? Of course we will never know, but I wonder...
Literature Cited
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Last Updated: April 26, 2001 Created: December 3, 1996 |
Created by: J. L. Holmes Comments to: jceonline@chem.wisc.edu |
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| © 1997 Division of Chemical Education, Inc., American Chemical Society. All rights reserved. | |