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Enhancing Learning with Technology
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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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I have been interested in applications of computers and technology in chemical education for nearly 30 years. From the beginning my chief motivation was that technology provided a variety of opportunities to help students interact with and become involved in the content of a chemistry course. In other words, computers and technology had great potential for promoting active learning. That there are many ways to enhance active learning is illustrated by this issue. Microwave Spectroscopy Tutor provides students with results from many different ways of calculating spectra and permits physical chemistry students to learn a variety of spectral interpretation methods by working with simulated data instead of derived formulas. The printed documentation includes well-thought-out student exercises that require considerable thought and effort to complete. These exercises involve much the same kind of thinking that would be needed to deal with research problems in microwave spectroscopy. A similar observation applies to SIRS, which offer many opportunities for making even very large lecture sections much more interactive. Simulated data for topics such as titration, kinetics, equilibrium, gas laws, and many others make it possible to ask students questions in a much more realistic context than is possible in most lecture classes. With SIRs one can forget about problems of drawing adequate representations of experimental setups or industrial processes on a chalkboard. One can go beyond equations and formulas by generating simulated data, but one need not calculate single data sets for analysis and then control the analysis from the front of the room. Students can suggest changes in parameters and the entire class can see results almost immediately. SIRs can be combined with demonstrations so that a much broader range of experimental conditions can be explored by teacher and students together. SIRs also include animations of many nanoscale processes, which provides a view of the models chemists use to interpret macroscale observations. That such animations are successful in improving students' understanding of the particulate nature of matter has been confirmed experimentally (1). As with the macroscale simulations, material such as atomic orbitals and entropy as probability can be presented dynamically, without any need for a teacher to be an artist. I have recently begun using ConcepTests (2, 3) in my general chemistry classes. Developed and popularized by Eric Mazur, a physicist at Harvard University, ConcepTests are brief questions that are presented to a large lecture class. Each question is designed to find out whether each student in the class has a working understanding of a concept that has just been presented. Students select one of several choices by a show of hands (or electronically, if the classroom is appropriately wired), providing the lecturer with immediate feedback on how well the concept has been learned and what misconceptions are extant. Usually there are differences among student responses, and students are asked to discuss with other students why they chose a particular response. In the process of discussion, those who answered correctly learn by teaching others, and those who did not answer correctly learn by getting peer instruction. In many cases a student who has just learned a new concept can teach it much better than a faculty member who has known it for years. I find that ConcepTests are valuable, and students respond very well to them. The SIRs in this issue allow for an extension of the ConcepTest idea by providing a plethora of possible questions, data to interpret, or animations that visualize chemical models. Both ConcepTests and SIRs provide for much greater student involvement in learning, and both are very useful in helping students learn chemistry actively and effectively. I encourage readers to try them! 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. | |