------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 06:11:54 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: Paper 3 - MLS & TJZ Response 1 Colleagues: In two messages you will receive our initial responses to the questions posed earlier in the session about our paper (#3) : What Every Chemist Should Know About Computers, II. Please note that in some instances Theresa and I do not agree. We have tried to make clear who "is talking", please forgive us if we confuse you. Mary L. Swift Theresa Julia Zielinski =================================================== Lynn Carlson asks who the "we" is in the 4th paragraph of our paper. The "we" is the authors (pardon the English), MLS and TJZ. We did not survey potential employers, rather we based our suggestions on the outcome of the 1993 ChemConf, our knowledge and experience, information obtained at meetings, and our view of the future relationship of chemistry and computing (where we were, where we are, and where we are going). Lynn, Scott Donnelly, Ian Newington and possibly others question the degree to which computers should be taught in chemistry classes. We think they should taught only to the degree needed to teach chemistry. In this regard our opinion is no different than the history of teaching chemistry: at one time we taught use of log tables and slide rules. Being university faculty we (MLS & TJZ) are fully aware of the crowded curriculum, and the fact that it is growing more so by the minute. We wrestle with this at least once a semester in faculty meetings and almost daily in our own teaching. Nevertheless, it is our belief that the demands of modern teaching/learning are the BEST arguments for adopting more IT. It is simply impossible to teach everything, the students must become autonomous learners to succeed and IT is an extremely powerful tool for this end. We (all conferees) seek out multiple information resources, evaluate, correlate, abstract, and synthesize new facts and ideas routinely in the conduct of our careers. What role does IT play in this? How has the library changed? Aren't we using the traditional library and new information resources to their fullest to maintain our professional standing? Why not move the new skills we have had to master into the curriculum? For after all these skills and intellectual approaches are the hallmark of professionals and we need to foster these in our students. Another aspect is evaluation, analysis of experimental data: data most likely collected electronically and certainly most efficiently reduced electronically. How could teaching the skills and technology basics to do these things be out of place in chemistry? Mike Epstein has tried using an electronic notebook and apparently has had to confront not only student understanding of the technology but also their lack of understanding of the ramifications of the technology (we look forward to Mike's report in the fall). What we (MLS & TJZ) are advocating is no different than the now common practice of teaching the fundamentals of instrumentation and since computers are standard equipment (to use a car industry phrase) how can we ignore computing? Is anyone out there arguing that the education they received is necessary and sufficient for today's student? The world has changed since we (all of us attending this conference) were in school. What and how we teach must change to address the current and future (at least what we can guess this will be like) reality. Back in the old days when TJZ was an undergraduate, polarimetry and bomb calorimetry were state of the art and glass blowing was a four hour lab session in physical chemistry and perhaps all physical chemistry laboratories included vapor pressure studies. From my perspective as a scientist and teacher, computational chemistry and spectroscopy now are state of the art. Others would add their own favorites. Of course certain skills are necessary but I won t ask my students to use a pycnometer or tensiometer just because density and surface tension are important physical properties. I only have 12 laboratory sessions per semester and I want to include in them experiences that are as modern as my limited budget will allow, pedagogically sound, that integrate several concepts, that and that foster reflection. Using computers does this for me and my students. Finally, the chapters in the forthcoming book "Using Computers in Chemistry and Chemical Education" describe CURRENT practice on a range of campuses, from major ^^^^^^^ research universities to community colleges. 'Everyone is doing it' is NOT our argument, but rather everyone who is NOT doing it is short changing their students. ******************************************************* Michael Vaksman wrote that only about 5% of his students worked on a computer project outside of formal class time. He thinks having the students work with computers could generate more "enthusiasm" for the work. I (MLS) concur. At Howard University I teach a class to beginning graduate students in the life sciences who are computer novices. The growth of the students during the semester is remarkable, from serious cyberphobia to serious, confident, swashbuckling computer users. I feel sure that the hands-on character of the course fosters this outcome. An added advantage of having access to the computers during class is that students are able to see that sooner or later everyone has problems: they are not alone. I try to have the students aid each other, removing the expert, authoritative role of the teacher in problem solving. Such an atmosphere more closely, in my opinion, mirrors actual work situations. I (TJZ) mirror Mary's observations above. Student growth in skills with computers and software always surpasses my expectations. They do this without formal instruction from me. I am around to help and debug when necessary but for the most part they want to do it themselves. It may seem slower especially in the beginning but they learn fast and soon teach me stuff. One of them amazed me with his skill at Mathcad. He obviously had put in a lot of time. The value of team work becomes very apparent as they consult with each other on lab reports and assignments. They bring various strengths and learn from each other this way. I must force myself into the background and keep quiet in order for them to gain strength by their own hand, through their own collegial interactions, and through their own experiences. One student remarked several years ago that he had learned more computer skills in pchem than in the computer course he took during the same semester. I add he did a lot of pchem too. The computer was the tool to do pchem. ******************************************************* John Mackin wrote that he wants to prepare his high school chemistry students for college in part by initiating them into the basics of computer use. By way of background, we note that high school use of computers is varied but in 1993 (Beaker, Comm. ACM 36:69 and Likte & Mourund, Comm. ACM 36:84) found that most high school students' computer experience centered on keyboarding, use of a word processor or general computer literacy. Very disappointingly word processing was the MOST common computer application taught in math and science classes. Only 1% of math and science teachers used a spreadsheet at any time during the school year. We suggest that at a minimum all reports be prepared using a word processor and the student be comfortable with basic spreadsheet operations: data entry, simple calculations, and graphing. Do not teach word processing, unless it is to discuss the equation editor or drawing functions. Strong emphasis should be placed on using the spreadsheet to handle calculations, formatting data/results correctly (significant figures, exponential format) and graphing to solve chemistry problems. The student will develop a good fundamental skill set that can be leveraged when s/he encounters equation engines in college math, physics and chemistry. The old viewpoint that at first graphs need to be done by hand does not hold up. In our opinion the same conceptual skills are learned when students use a pencil or a computer for creating a graph. With a computer the question of scaling the axes, placing a trend line, what kind of trend line etc. remain. Other issues such as the order of data in the sheet, size of the points, etc. come up too. The esthetics of using a spreadsheet or other software are important. There are no smudges due to erasing a misplaced point or misspelled title. The whole issue of esthetic appeal for the subject content presentation by the teacher or reports prepared by students cannot and should not be underestimated in the mix of tools that facilitate teaching and learning. ******************************************************* Ian Newington suggests that IT may not provide the best tools to teach all topics. We (MLS & TJZ) agree. It is incumbent for everyone to use the efficient and effective methods in their teaching.Make proper use of any tool you select! Ian states that "The issue that confronts the graduate (not just in science) entering the work force today is surely one of being ready to continuously learn to use new tools and techniques throughout their career." Precisely! And what better way to illustrate this than with computers, a technology that seems to change overnight! Use IT when it is appropriate and point out the ever changing landscape! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 06:13:07 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: Paper3 - MLS & TJZ Respnonse 2 Colleagues: Here is our second response to questions. Mary L. Swift Theresa Julia Zielinski ============================================= George Long wonders if there is a connection between student use of computers for tasks and computer usage for information delivery. He comments that many faculty still do their jobs with out IT, but "students clearly cannot". I asked George to expand on this a little and he wrote, "I was wondering if faculty computer use for tasks wouldn't encourage, and model the behavior (computer usage) for students. If faculty don't use computers for their work, why should students ? On the other hand, if the cost / effectiveness ratio is so low for multimedia presentations, doesn't the persuasiveness and necessity of IT suggest (or perhaps require) a change in teaching methodology." I (MLS) would suggest that the reason physical campuses are still attractive for education is that they constitute a learning community. Each campus has its own culture into which students are immersed. Passing this culture on is an important determinant of the quality of the education that the institution provides. (see Change, July/August 1996, Brown and Duguid page 11). If students observe faculty desultorily meeting their classes and then rushing off campus, they get one message. If on the other hand faculty meet classes with enthusiasm, the students are challenged, new technology is used, the students are engaged by the faculty inside and outside of class (intellectually and personally), faculty can be found in the library and laboratory, ... well you get the picture. Therefore, to come back to George's question, if students see the faculty making interesting use of IT then I'm sure that they will extend the applications! My (TJZ) observations of students on a small campus and a larger one indicate that students want and enjoy IT. The students in John Wright's physical chemistry class and my students too showed increased enthusiasm for learning concepts. IT was not the driving force with either groups of students but it played a significant role in their attitude and in their learning. Seeing QM concepts via on-line mathematical modeling in class made them all sit up and notice and learn. When they knew that they were to use the computers to solve QM problems they put in the time and worked on chemistry. So as I said in the paper the students are hungry for IT. Our goal as I see it is to provide it in forms that lead to learning and draw on students' natural tendencies to enjoy this. They were after all raised in a technological environment. I was not so it is harder for me. One goal I (TJZ) have is to make the materials just a bit more difficult than their skill level and provide support for the learning by setting up groups and providing traditional resources like books etc. in the vicinity of the computer. Another thing I am trying to do is to develop more open ended projects for them and integrate the project into both the laboratory and class portion of the physical chemistry course. The integration includes using computers as often as possible. I only spend a small portion of time in actual instruction about software. For example, I require spreadsheet usage in the laboratory so, instead of giving a class on spreadsheets, I give them a linear least squares laboratory activity that lets them prepare a calibration curve for a future experiment. They must use the spread sheet to do the least squares with the equations in the laboratory book and compare to the least squares tool in the spreadsheet. They learn a lot this way. Of course they help each other and things like trend lines and graphing are learned by doing, and they do quite well. Another example is linking computer work, spectroscopy, and computational chemistry. The traditional keto-enol experiment is transformed into an integrated package when the students do the measurements with the NMR, modeling with Spartan or HyperChem, and MO calculations with Spartan using the exercise in the Hehre text. It turns out that my students became better at using Spartan than I, but of course they used it more. They also were able to move from one software to another with out too much difficulty, some being more proficient than others. My efforts with limited resources show how much can be done by us in bringing IT into the learning arena. As to multimedia, I (MLS) am not a believer for many of the reasons others have already stated. But the effective use of computer tools in education does necessitate a change in how we do the job of education. I don't expect IT to reduce the cost of education, I expect that at best the cost will remain constant (ha!). In my experience teaching effectively with technology is and will continue to be more labor intensive than traditional lectures. And with that heresy let me end. Here MLS and I (TJZ) don't agree 100%. I think that multimedia (MM) has great potential and from what I have seen it can be used very effectively. I m a convert and if I had the facilities I would use a lot of it in all courses. Just now I am focusing on physical chemistry but I see clearly the need to put this into my courses for non-science majors. Now if I could find a few more hours per week, hmm, there goes some of that social time I gained by efficiencies in teaching. Of course one can overdo a good thing. There was a paper that showed that MM does increase understanding. The paper is Willamson and Abraham, "The Effects of Computer Animations on the Particulate Mental Models of College Chemistry Students" J. Res. in Sci. Teaching 1995, 32 521-534. One should also read the interesting article by J Casanova published in the 1996 issue of the Computers in Chemical Education Newsletter. The title is Computers in the Classroom - What works and What Doesn t." Casanova writes "the overall average in the course for students in the experimental [read multimedia] section was 44%, contrasted with the 63% for the control [read traditional] section." Clearly we need to do some assessment to learn what works, what doesn t, and why. On the other hand IT and MM can lead to the Feynman effect in chemical education that was discussed extensively on chemed-l. The key here is to assess what you are doing at every step and to use the assessment to guide changes and direct your improvements. We think that computer skills (separating IT and MM) need to be integrated into the curriculum seamlessly. They should be transparent like a calculator, volumetric flask or balance. You use it to do the job for which it was intended. You don't use it for everything. I (TJZ) don't have MM (well we do have video capability and I use that, no computer connections yet) in my classroom. It is not likely that I will in the near future. But I think I should make materials available to students as they can go to the computer labs to access them. Some of my non-science majors were already searching the web for material for their paper and the NU students did participate in the on-line course that will be described and discussed later in this conference. Although I have only limited MM I can and do use IT extensively in physical chemistry and through this give students a sweeping view of the possibilities. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 08:22:50 -0500 From: "Dr. David Ritter" Subject: Paper3; DR; Interfacing DAC I agree with paper 3 that there are a number of things that a chemist should know ABOUT, I cannot agree with their particular list. For example, I have been interfacing microprocessors and computers off and on for about 15 years now, and have NEVER used a digital-to-anaolog converter (DAC) to "collect data". I have used them on a number of occasions to send control signals out, but never to collect data. To link this with the previous threads on teaching, learning, and assessment, let me make a brash statement: one MUST augment the conceptual approach to teaching and learning with a very concrete content base. Without mastery of the particulars of the content, the skills will not be sufficient. David David Ritter Department of Chemistry Southeast Missouri State University c617scc@semovm.semo.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 09:38:07 -0400 From: "Timothy L. Pickering" Subject: Re: Assessment Barbara Murray wrote: > >All this talk about assessment is fascinating but no one seems to know >_how_ to assess whether the students are learning. I teach organic >chemistry and want to put more technology and multimedia in my class, >but _how_ does one really assess whether the students are learning more? >Better? Enjoying it more? Learning more thinking skills? We, I think, >can all agree that assessment is good, but _how_, other than hour exams, >does one assess progress? >-- After thinking about this issue for some time, I am coming to the view that meaningful, authentic assessment is a labor intensive process requiring a combination of skills that no single classroom teacher is likely to possess. I think it takes a combination of a subject matter expert and a social scientist, at a minimum, to design and carry out an assessment that can meet rigorous standards. Such an assessment would be a research project in itself, and be far more involved than the more typical add-on questionnaire or survey response given to the class at the end of the semester where "new methods" have been tried. (The respondents almost always give a positive evaluation, don't they.) The way forward, it seem to me, is for there to be a few well defined, controlled studies done in the professional manner I have described above. In the ideal world, the curriculum to used in the study would have well defined goals and learning objectives, as have been described by Theresa and others. Then, two methods of instruction would be selected for the test, say a high tech method and a low tech method. Two carefully selected and matched student groups would be used for the study, and at the end of the study period a common test would be administered that had independently been validated to probe the learning objectives in the curriculum that was used. If these conditions were met, it seems to me we could be fairly confident in accepting whatever result was obtained from the study. Furthermore, other faculty could use the results of such studies in making their own decisions about whether to adopt new technologies or new teaching methods. They would have solid studies and test results on which to base their selections. Unfortunately, I don't see any of this happening soon. For one thing, I don't think most example curricula or course syllabi I have seen have well defined learning goals and objectives and the corresponding tests that indicate whether the goals have been achieved. But, one's reach should always exceed one'e grasp.... Tim Pickering Virginia Tech ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 09:47:52 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: Paper3; JM; Interfacing DAC David Ritter said >I agree with paper 3 that there are a number of things that a chemist should >know ABOUT, I cannot agree with their particular list. > >For example, I have been interfacing microprocessors and computers off and >on for about 15 years now, and have NEVER used a digital-to-anaolog >converter (DAC) to "collect data". I have used them on a number of >occasions to send control signals out, but never to collect data. > Obviously one uses a ADC not a DAC to collect data into a computer unless it is already in a digital form in which case neither is needed. Students should understand DACs and ADCs and where and how they are used, they cannot avoid using them with modern instrumentation, but it is probably overkill to require an experiment with discrete ADC or DAC ICs unless you are also requiring a course in digital electronics. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/~chemweb/faculty/miller/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:56:31 -0400 From: Brian Tissue Subject: Re: Paper 3 - MLS & TJZ Response 1 MLS & TJZ wrote: >How could teaching the skills and technology basics to >do these things be out of place in chemistry? Mike Epstein >has tried using an electronic notebook and apparently has had >to confront not only student understanding of the technology >but also their lack of understanding of the ramifications >of the technology (we look forward to Mike's report in >the fall). What we (MLS & TJZ) are advocating is no >different than the now common practice of teaching the >fundamentals of instrumentation and since computers are >standard equipment (to use a car industry phrase) how >can we ignore computing? I don't think we can ignore computing for our students. I do wonder how to incorporate the different types of computing skills that students want or will need into my courses. A lot of students only care about the technical training that will allow them to get jobs. When I hear people talking about the greater diversity of our students, I prefer to think of the diversity of goals that students have for pursuing a degree. The "traditional" student population seeking a liberal arts education has expanded over the last few decades to also include 18 to 22 year-old students seeking vocational skills, and returning students seeking retraining, a new career, or a liberal-arts education. I think a lot of the complaints about the curriculum not preparing students for their jobs relates to the lack of specific technical training. Some computer skills that I don't teach are electronic notebooks, laboratory-information management systems, and groupware applications. I must admit that I'm not meeting the needs of many of my students, nor the expectations of their future employers. Brian ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 12:16:57 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: Paper 3 - MLS & TJZ Response 1 >MLS & TJZ wrote: >>How could teaching the skills and technology basics to >>do these things be out of place in chemistry? Mike Epstein >>has tried using an electronic notebook and apparently has had >>to confront not only student understanding of the technology >>but also their lack of understanding of the ramifications >>of the technology (we look forward to Mike's report in >>the fall). What we (MLS & TJZ) are advocating is no >>different than the now common practice of teaching the >>fundamentals of instrumentation and since computers are >>standard equipment (to use a car industry phrase) how >>can we ignore computing? > > I, together with a couple of students, did a survey of Chemistry students from year I through IV this year on their computer literacy, their perception of needs for the workplace and what they thought we should need. I append our report below. Interesting was an even split among students who thought their instructors could do with a greater level of computer comp[entancy. CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT STUDENT COMPUTER LITERACY QUESTIONAIRE In response to the request of Comiitee on Computing and Communication Policy of Senate for information on how the Department was to meet the goal of Brock that all graduates be computer literate by the year 2000, a questionaire designed with the aid of the students was circulated. 75 responses were received and the results are summarized below. Not all questions were answered by all, so numbers don't add up perfectly. 1. year I 37 year II 22 year III 11 year IV 3 2. Do you own a computer no 16 Mac 6 PC 23 386 6 486 13 pentium 11 3. Scale of computer comfort on a scale of 1-5. mean 3.25 4. Should computation and computer labs be incorporated into existing courses or should there be a specific course for chemists. Incorporate more computing 50 Not needed 22 (mostly year 1, often non-chemists, who feel Skill Builder is all they need). specific course 5 5. To the question of what costitutes "Computer Competancey in Chemistry" there were a wide variety of responses, with the first year students not having much to say here. Most commonly mentioned were: graphics, structural drawing, statistics, visualization, with also some support for knowledge of Operating Systems, Hardware, software and interfacing. There was no emphasis on computer languages. 6. Do any courses taken contribute to "Computer Competancy" No 12 yes a majority, with the following of our courses specified, Chem 330, 331 (molecular modeling), 340, 309, 203 and 351. Skill builder was mentioned by a few in first year. From other departments Bionet was mentioned, Physics courses and Cosc 190/191 and Math. Do you feel faculty need training in any areas of computing. Yes 20 No 20 no areas where mentioned. 8. Importance of familiarity with Chemical Computing Packages for future job prospects? Very important 50+ (some hate it but say it is important.) not important 5 somewhat important 4 CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT FACULTY/STAFF COMPUTER LITERACY QUESTIONAIRE I received 7 responses to my query to Faculty and Staff on wht constituted "Computer Competancy in Chemistry". Six provided specifics which I list below. * 1. Familiarity with the use of desk top computers, i.e. PC's and MACs -- 6 with most people implying that enough should be known about the opestem to load programs and configure machines. Familiarity with UNIX 3 1/2 * 2. Familiarity with Office type suites, i.e. Word Processing and spreadsheets 6 Plotting and stats 3 * 3. Chemical drawing (2D and 3D) programs 3 * 4. Molecular Modeling Packages with mechanics, semi-empirical and ab-initio 4 * 5. Internet, WEB and e-mail 4 * 6. Instrument-computer interfacing 2 * 7. programming languages 1 There is a feeling that all faculty should be broadly familiar with most of these areas though not necessarily fully conversant with all. Several see the need for additional training in various areas. Important for future job prospects of our graduates. 4 STUDENT COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATIONS BASED ON THE ABOVE SURVEYS 1. That the incorporation of more computing in existing courses be done by means of computer assignments in place of regular assigments and the possible replacement of some labs with computer experiments, not simply the addition of more work. 2. With the extra half course option in year 2, students are strongly urged to take one or more Computer Science half courses. 3. The addition of more computing experience will be especially important at the year 2 level. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/~chemweb/faculty/miller/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 13:22:34 -0500 From: Mike Epstein Subject: Re: Paper 3 - ME: Continuation of discussion MLS & TJZ Response 1 My comment on electronic reporting for an analytical chemistry class was mentioned along with an *anticipated* report by me in the fall conference. Unfortunately, that paper has been withdrawn since I won't be associated with Mount Saint Mary's after this August. Therefore, let me provide a brief summary of my experiences in the class. I decided to implement the electronic notebook for several reasons. (Actually, it should be called a supplementary electronic notebook, because a hardbound notebook was still necessary for collection of raw data from non-computerized experiments, or for making notes on experimental procedures during laboratory. The hardbound notebook had to make specific references to computer files (by name) and was signed by the lab instructor or assistant after completion of the experiment.) First, I wanted an archival record of student experimental reports and results that I could refer to in the future. Second, I wanted to make them familiar with modern methods of data recording, reporting, and archiving. The first problem I ran into was that half the class was Mac literate (and PC illiterate) and the other half was PC literate (and Mac illiterate). The campus computing facilities are split half and half. I decided to recommend WordPerfect and Excel and the *standards* and would accept other programs on a case by case basis (for example, I accepted ClarisWorks reports from one student). We also had some compatibility (Mac's not reading PC disks) problems as well as version problems (different versions of Excel on different computers on campus). It took a while but we finally got these problems resolved. All data and reports were turned in to me on disk either one or two weeks after the experiment. As I mentioned previously, the one hurdle the students had to overcome was to put away their hand calculators and use the Excel spreadsheet for the calculations. They learned this rapidly when they found (after I discovered the problem and warned them about it) that partial credit on incorrect experimental results would only be given if I could see the entire calculation process in the spreadsheet. If they used the spreadsheet only as a recording medium, without formulas and calculations, they received no credit. Every once it a while they would regress to old habits ... probably as a result of rushing to finish a lab report. They also learned, after one student lost his lab data and report, to always back up their data on a separate disk kept in a safe place (again, they had been warned previously about this, but it didn't sink in until someone actually had the disasterous experience). Some of the experiments (14 total during the semester) were standard quantitative analysis (gravimetry, titrimetry, absorption spectrophotometry), with the extra addition that the students were required to estimate errors for components of the experiment (weighing, reading the buret, drying, indicator error, etc.) and use the spreadsheet to combine the errors in an appropriate manner to provide a total estimated error ... and then compare that to their error determined from replicate analysis and discuss the findings. There were several non-standard experiments that were set up to use a discovery lab/cooperative learning approach. In one case, after they had done the standard acid-base (HCL-NaOH) titration experiment (KHP standardization of NaOH, unknown acid determination, acid content of wine), they were asked the next week to design an experiment to do the same titrations without volumetric glassware (no pipets, no buret). They were given a quick tour of available equipment (peristaltic pump, balances, density meter, probe colorimeter, computer data acquisition system), given textbook references to gravimetric titrations, and then given 2 hours to design and test the experiment, which they would do carefully in the second 3 hour lab session in the evening. Roles were assigned (recorder, captain, reporter, instumentation specialist). Data was recorded electronically (using the Vernier Software URL data acquisition system for the Mac). And after a couple of false starts (student's could *buy* help from me or the laboratory assistant, losing a point from their grade for questions), they did successfully complete the lab fairly well, making only a couple of minor errors that compromised their results slightly. The final exam also incorporated a portion dealing with spreadsheet use, where the students had to demonstrate their competance by solving a specific problem using the spreadsheet. As I said, this is just a brief summary of the experiences, both positive and negative. The compatibility problems (Mac vs. PC) were the biggest headache. In general, I was pleased with the result and would do it again. Mike E. At 12:16 PM 6/13/97 -0400, you wrote: >>MLS & TJZ wrote: >>>How could teaching the skills and technology basics to >>>do these things be out of place in chemistry? Mike Epstein >>>has tried using an electronic notebook and apparently has had >>>to confront not only student understanding of the technology >>>but also their lack of understanding of the ramifications >>>of the technology (we look forward to Mike's report in >>>the fall). What we (MLS & TJZ) are advocating is no >>>different than the now common practice of teaching the >>>fundamentals of instrumentation and since computers are >>>standard equipment (to use a car industry phrase) how >>>can we ignore computing? Mike Epstein Research Chemist, Analytical Chemistry Division National Institute of Standards and Technology Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899 USA [Opinions expressed are mine ... not necessarily theirs] PHONE: (301) 975-4114 FAX: (301) 869-0413 Michael.Epstein@nist.gov WWW Home Page: http://esther.la.asu.edu/sas/epstein/epstein.html ======================================================== "From tomorrow on, I shall be sad - from tomorrow on! Not today; no! Today I will be glad. And every day, no matter how bitter it be, I will say: From tomorrow on, I shall be sad, not today!" Motele - Theresienstadt ======================================================== ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:04:27 -0400 From: Michael Chejlava Subject: Paper 3 MJC -what every chemist should know about computers Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mary Swift said. >Nevertheless, it is our belief that the demands of >modern teaching/learning are the BEST arguments for >adopting more IT. It is simply impossible to teach >everything, the students must become autonomous >learners to succeed and IT is an extremely powerful >tool for this end. I agree that our students must be "computer literate" early in their career. The definition of "computer literate" has always been debated. My best definition of "computer literacy" is a good enough understanding of the operation of computers and experience with software so that the student can take a new piece of software and be able to quickly learn to use this program effectively on his or her own. (autonomous learner). Helping our students to become autonomous learners in all areas is one of our most important and most challenging tasks. I have found that weaning students from their comfortable, passive patterns is often very difficult. Even when performing research projects most students want to find someone to tell them what to do. They resist having to read books and journal articles to determine what to do. They need to gain the ability to critically think and determine if what they think or know is correct. Their self-evaluation skills are almost nonexistent. As to becoming computer literate there are several factors. The first is becoming confident enough to realize that they will not break the computer by normal input of typing and mouse use. At worst they will crash the machine or lose some files, but the computer will not be harmed. The second and most important is time on a computer. A confident person can learn far more by spending time with a computer than can ussually be taught to them. I am sure that most of you have had this experience. There are two factors working to limit the time spent. The first is the general lack of computers and the second is the natural desire to get instant answers and finish assignments as quickly as possible. If the students feel that there is an important need to learn about computers they will put in the effort. The availablility of computers is another problem since this means money. There is now one method that several schools are using and that I am trying to gt my school to adopt. This is the required purchase of laptop computers by students. There are about 20 universities and community colleges doing this now. This adds a fee of about $500 per semester, but this required fee is often covered by financial aid. One supprising fact is that the schools that are first adopters are not the expensive, private schools, but are small state universities and community colleges with tuitions less than $2,000/semester. There are many advantages to this method, too many to list here, but the main gain is 24 hour access to a computer. On the web there are many pages about this. There are even elementary schools going this route. Soon this is going to be the norm. Since the computers come with a standard set of software we would no longer have to take out time to teach spreadsheets and word processing in chemistry courses. There is also a real advantage when using multimedia in the classroom, and if others are interested I will add more comments later. One asside to new faculty. If you are just starting teaching I recommend that you go slowly on the development of new teaching methods. First, if you spend all of your time on teaching and do not do publishable research and research grant seeking you will limit your future career. I learned this the hard way after working on experiment development and getting money for teaching instrumentation for the first six years of my career I ran into a bean counting president who decided that we had too many chemists. He let me go through the process of tenure review, which I did successfully, but he had no intention of granting me tenure because of worry about possible future budget problems. At the next school I worked at new teaching techniques. Whenever you try anything that the students are not used to I can guarantee that you will get lower student evaluations. This second school valued student comfort over real education. My last job seach was much tougher since it seems that almost every school wants any new hire to bring in grant (and overhead) money. So be careful! -- Michael Chejlava Department of Chemistry & Environmental Science Lake Superior State University Sault Sainte Marie, MI ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 15:25:12 -0500 From: Sylvia Esjornson Subject: Re: paper# 2#3 SRE:Computer skills lead to assessment of higher order thinking My comments discuss why I think chemistry students should be able to use a speadsheet program and how I build on the use of the spreadsheet to enhance learning and aid in assessment of higher order thinking skills. I must declare that I distribute a version of Process Verbs For Stating Learning Objectives (according to Bloom- could use others, this one was convenient for me.) on the first day of class. And-- I project letter grades according to the categories given there. If a student works at the knowledge level (for example, student defines, lists, labels correctly) or at the comprehension level (student recognizes, describes, identifies correctly) that is a C. To earn higher grades they must make them selves the subjects in sentences with action words such as translate, interpret, distinguish, and differentiate. How can I report that students are doing this? An easy way to incorporate asessment of higher order thinking skills by using computer workstation technology in the general chemistry lab is to require student to write "synthetical" titles for their graphs. A program like Excel's chart wizard will prompt them to provide x axis and y axis labels. I declare that it is only a 'B' student's title that says "here is a graph of x versus y" To get a better grade they must claim more. An example: students plot change in freezing point versus molality. Although many of us are familiar with the freezing depression activity, the students are not. The "A' student's title reads something like this: Experimental Determination of the Molal Freezing Point Depression Constant for Cyclohexane. The phenomenon becomes a named concept when a series of paired measurements are plotted and analyzed. When I ask the students to give the slope a special name, I find that students are expressing in their own words just what the experiment was about. This activity prompts an Aha! kind of learning. To get at students acting to words like differentiate, ask them why they did the experiment twice, and how come the axes are labelled differently the second time. And does the slope have the same meaning? If not what is it good for? The highest thinking order achievers will propose that the slopes are related and go on to formulate a new plug and chug expression for molecular weight based on these slopes. This formula is not in their textbook. On the practical side, I have the luxury of being in a classroom with 22-24 computer workstations and my lab section alone. I can monitor their brainstorming and encourage them to revise their answers because changes are so easy to make in chart wizard. I might also add that I use the applied graphical analysis aspects of lab (such as this) for formative assessment. When students ask what they should put for the title, I counter by asking what grade they want. Since I do not permit a grab your data and go lab session, most of them know they'll be staying the full time anyway so they might as well try to write a good title and be known as a student trying to get an A. Thus, our students are instructed to turn in spreadsheets and graphs with the equations displayed on the charts. They do several activites in Chem I in which they see that slopes arise from plots of paired measurements. (I'm sticking with linear relationships here for simplicity.) Students rehearse What does the slope mean? the intercept? should it be zero?, and so on, as they make side by side comparisons of two parts of an experiment. Here, the spreadsheet technology allows us to get past data acquisition and on to data interpretation quickly. In my evaluative assessment (for the grade) I present two sets of data (I,II) from related experiments and ask for a prediction about a third secenario (III). My criteria for evidence of higher order thinking skills (or lack thereof) are these: the C borderline F students can't tell the one set from the other. The low B students can state the difference in terms given in the data set, the high B can point out both differences and similarities , and the A students do all of the preceding plus make a prediction for the new scenario. In a multiple choice question version, partial credit can be given for correct --but not best-- repsonses, and the"no prediction" response can be used as a distractor. The grading burden is not too bad. For seventy students, the grading of the structured responses took four hours (if I remember correctly). I used structured response here instead of free response because I aim to teach science process while I teach content, and so I discuss openly the evaluation of evidence, interpreation of data, etc. in the presentation phase of instruction. Sylvia Esjornson, Ph.D. Chemist Assistant Professor of Chemistry Southwestern Oklahoma State University 100 Campus Drive, Weatherford OK 73096 esjorns@swosu.edu (405) 774-7032 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 23:38:22 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: Paper3: discussion Please accept my apology for these delayed responses to your thoughtful comments today. Despite the best of intentions, unexpected demands on my time have precluded earlier and more timely communications. I am checking on one of our messages the conference. It appears to have escaped into the ether. If I find that you have not received it I shall try to re-send it. Theresa is in transit to Madison and will (she expects) be with us again on Monday. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Thanks to Mike Epstein for the synopsis of his experiences with electronic notebooks. I too have found that if one student suffers a major disaster in the computer laboratory the others suddenly start taking the precautions suggested. Somehow the work is not real to them until it is ruined: then the value of time and effort becomes crystal! This is another example of the students themselves, their actual or observed experiences being the best teaching tools. A question to Mike and Sylvia Esjornson: Did the students interact in the computer laboratory, teaching others or reminding each other how to do things? If a new function was required to solve a problem did they work on it collaboratively? If so what is your evaluation of these types of interactions? I too have faced software version incompatibility problems and sadly virus infections. I solved both mainly by a time consuming (my time) strategy: I extended the open hours of my computer laboratory. ----------------------------------------------------- Brian Tissue comments on meeting the future needs of many of his students. This morning I attended an industry-education round- table discussion where these and other issues arose. For highly specialized applications, industry is willing to do in house training; they appear to be willing "to partner" as it was put this morning, with higher educational institutions to establish even an entry-level skill set which undefined this morning. Overall I got the impression that industry wants people who can, and are willing to learn new skills. Since we can t teach everything and certainly not all of the specific software even one large company might use, I suggest we teach what we can, do it well, and try to, at least, get the students to suspect that the universe of chemistry software is great and expanding. BTW the panel consisted of deans, academic program managers and two college presidents, and only one person in the room (an industry type) gave voice to the value of education in contradistinction to training. (hmmm) ----------------------------------------------------- I think Sylvia Esjornson s general chemistry usage of computers models a wonderful use of computers to teach chemistry, higher order thinking skills and links these to language skills by making the students write, even short titles as described. How many of us have gotten the idea across to our students that their success will be in large measure tied to how well they communicate, especially how well they write? Sylvia describes a teaching methodology based on sound pedagogical philosophy that is facilitated by computer technology. She also describes her mechanism for encouraging independent thinking " ... only a B student s title says that" or you name the axis and so forth. Using the computer the student can easily refine his/her work after reflection and when s/he is done the product is legible! I know the students understand grades and they are carrots but I wish we could motivate then some other way. Another age old problem (sigh). Sylvia s experience seems to confirm the ideas that teaching with technology is more, not less, labor intensive. What has been the experience of others in this regard? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 23:39:12 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: Paper3: discussion cont Our thanks to Jack Martin Miller for sharing his survey. It appears that his students too are excited by computer technology and what to sue it to learn to solve chemical problems - a phenomenon reported by others in this conference. Could you describe Skill Builder? Did the students mention the WWW and / or e-mail? What uses, if any, are made on your campus of these in chemistry teaching? On the scale of comfort, is 5 high or low? -------------------------------------------------- Michael Chejlava relates experiences teaching with computers that many of us have faced. I too have found students will make a sincere effort to learn what they find of value. Perhaps Michael will share how he has used computers to teach chemistry. The question of the best use of junior faculty time is extremely important. Several of us asked Scott Van Bramer how long it took him to develop his presentations. My motivation for asking this question was to point out that producing even just an acceptable piece of software is a time consuming task (for stand alone interactive software it is estimated that 150 to 250 hours of time is required for every hour of expected student use). Every faculty member must be aware of the reward system and adjust his/her efforts to allow for attaining their career goals. If you younger colleagues will forgive a gray head , given the situation at most institutions I would never encourage a junior faculty member to devote him or herself to developing novel teaching strategies. The reward structure is skewed against this, and in actual fact you will be penalized. Reform efforts for tenure and promotion criteria have not had much impact most places. This is a dire statement for the advancement of teaching as it should be the younger generation s job to believe things can be better and then go show the older generation that they are right about this. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 09:46:55 -0400 From: Mike Epstein Subject: Paper3 - ME - Discussion - Student interactions Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT All but one of the computer-related analytical chemistry laboratory experiments were intented as cooperative learning experiences, so interaction was intended and in fact required for success of the group. The one computer-based experiment that was individualized was based on several modules from Tom O'Haver's collection of WingZ simulations, and even then there were interactions between the students. Since roles were assigned and rotated for different cooperative-learning experiments, even those students who normally would not interact strongly in a group were forced to do so in order to successfully complete the experiment. I should note that my use of the discovery lab/cooperative learning approach came about as a result of a one-day seminar given at the beginning of the semester by Dan Apple of Pacific Crest Software. I liked the concepts he presented and decided to apply some of them in the analytical chemistry lab. I was happy with the result and based on evaluation comments from the students (in the lab reports), they liked this format as well. One problem however was that there had to be a limit to collaboration in the preparation of the laboratory reports. Outside of class they had to prepare the reports individually. I suppose I could have allowed research "groups" to submit a report, but I could not have assured equal contributions from the students to the report ... as I could in the lab by assigning roles. I felt it was important for each student to develop data reporting and evaluation skills, particularly since several were weak in that area. I did not think that the cooperative learning approach would work for developing individual skills in data reporting and evaluation. Mike E. >Mary Swift asks: >A question to Mike and Sylvia Esjornson: Did the >students interact in the computer laboratory, >teaching others or reminding each other how to do >things? If a new function was required to solve a >problem did they work on it collaboratively? If so >what is your evaluation of these types of >interactions? > Mike Epstein Research Chemist National Institute of Standards and Technology Michael.Epstein@nist.gov http://esther.la.asu.edu/sas/epstein/epstein.html .................................................... From tomorrow on, I shall be sad - from tomorrow on! Not today; no! Today I will be glad. And every day, no matter how bitter it be, I will say: From tomorrow on, I shall be sad, not today!" Motele - Theresienstadt .................................................... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 10:12:16 -0400 From: "Harry E. Pence" Subject: Re: Paper3: discussion cont Mary Swift says (in part) >..given the situation at most institutions I would >never encourage a junior faculty member to devote >him or herself to developing novel teaching >strategies. The reward structure is skewed >against this, and in actual fact you will be >penalized. Reform efforts for tenure and promotion >criteria have not had much impact most places. >This is a dire statement for the advancement of >teaching ....... I couldn't agree more with Mary's comment. When I first started using multimedia, I asked a table of experienced mulltimedia professionals what was the most important single piece of advice they could give someone who was thinking of working in this area. After a few moments discussion, they unanimously agreed on one statement, "Don't try this unless you have tenure." Not too long ago, I had a friend who was up for the tenure decision. She was told in no uncertain terms that she shouldn't assume that her work in instructional technology would be given serious consideration by the tenure committee. She took the advice and emphasized her publications that dealt with more traditional research. The irony was that her academic field was instructional technology, and she had been hired to teach in that area. This leads to a thought that may not be directly germane to the current topic, but since this is "open discussion"......;-) Arguments for tenure are usually based on the need for academic freedom. I believe that a second, equally important, benefit of tenure is the freedom it gives faculty to attempt new teaching methods with minimal risk of penalty. There is always a risk when trying new things, but in order for real change to begin to permeate the system, we must find ways that faculty can try new methods without much more risk than the unescapable possibility that you will look like a fool in the eyes of your colleagues and students. If you want progress, you must create an environment where everyone is encouraged to take changes and the risks of failure are kept within reason. Harry ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | Harry E. Pence INTERNET: PENCEHE@ONEONTA.EDU | | Professor of Chemistry PHONE: 607-436-3179 | | SUNY Oneonta OFFICE: 607-436-3193 | | Oneonta, NY 13820 FAX: 607-436-2654 | | http://snyoneab.oneonta.edu/~pencehe/ | | \\\//// | | (0 0) | |_______________OOO__(oo)__OOO____________________________| ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 10:19:51 -0400 From: "Harry E. Pence" Subject: Re: Paper3: discussion cont I didn't have a chance to ask this question during the regular discussion, so I'll float it out now. How important is it for us to teach chemistry majors a programming language? Some arguments for: Good mental discipline. If you learn one language, the second is always easier. .... arguments against: Students are more likely to use software packages than to write their own code. Most of our students will never write a single line of code as chemical professionals. The language of choice changes so fast that their experience is unlikely to be useful. Teaching a language is a waste of time, unless the students will immediately use that knowledge for course work. .... I tend to lean towards telling students who want to learn a language to take a comp. sci course, rather than use time in my course, but I'm not totally convinced about that. Any comments? Harry ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | Harry E. Pence INTERNET: PENCEHE@ONEONTA.EDU | | Professor of Chemistry PHONE: 607-436-3179 | | SUNY Oneonta OFFICE: 607-436-3193 | | Oneonta, NY 13820 FAX: 607-436-2654 | | http://snyoneab.oneonta.edu/~pencehe/ | | \\\//// | | (0 0) | |_______________OOO__(oo)__OOO____________________________| ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 09:23:12 -0500 From: sc18 Subject: Re: Paper3: discussion cont Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Harry E. Pence wrote: > Mary Swift says (in part) > > >..given the situation at most institutions I would > >never encourage a junior faculty member to devote > >him or herself to developing novel teaching > >strategies. The reward structure is skewed > >against this, and in actual fact you will be > >penalized. Reform efforts for tenure and promotion > >criteria have not had much impact most places. > >This is a dire statement for the advancement of > >teaching ....... > > I couldn't agree more with Mary's comment. When I first > started using multimedia, I asked a table of experienced > mulltimedia professionals what was the most important single > piece of advice they could give someone who was thinking of > working in this area. After a few moments discussion, they > unanimously agreed on one statement, "Don't try this unless > you have tenure." > > Not too long ago, I had a friend who was up for the tenure > decision. She was told in no uncertain terms that she shouldn't > assume that her work in instructional technology would be given > serious consideration by the tenure committee. She took the advice > and emphasized her publications that dealt with more traditional > research. The irony was that her academic field was instructional > technology, and she had been hired to teach in that area. > > This leads to a thought that may not be directly germane to the > current topic, but since this is "open discussion"......;-) > > Arguments for tenure are usually based on the need for academic > freedom. I believe that a second, equally important, benefit > of tenure is the freedom it gives faculty to attempt new teaching > methods with minimal risk of penalty. There is > always a risk when trying new things, but in order for real change > to begin to permeate the system, we must find ways that faculty > can try new methods without much more risk than the unescapable > possibility that you will look like a fool in the eyes of your > colleagues and students. > > If you want progress, you must create an environment where everyone > is encouraged to take changes and the risks of failure are kept > within reason. > Harry > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > | Harry E. Pence INTERNET: PENCEHE@ONEONTA.EDU | > | Professor of Chemistry PHONE: 607-436-3179 | > | SUNY Oneonta OFFICE: 607-436-3193 | > | Oneonta, NY 13820 FAX: 607-436-2654 | > | http://snyoneab.oneonta.edu/~pencehe/ | > | \\\//// | > | (0 0) | > |_______________OOO__(oo)__OOO____________________________| Hi All, I can remark on this point from having been the chairman of our science division tenure committee for two years. The key thing for our committee was to ascertain how well people used their stateup money for research. If you were hired to do research and actually did something else, this was very negative. However, the adminstrator in charge was very inconsistent with application of this principle. One person, who was no liked much in the ranks of division administration, and also did not do any research with his startup money was let go. Another person, a year later, although they got twice the dollar figure for research, and likewise did nothing, got tenure on the basis of popularity with faculty and students. This was over a quite unfavorable recommendation by the committee. There really is nothing preventing a faculty at our school from doing whatever she/he wants regardless of initial committments, provided you don't anger the "people in charge". Sincerely, Ken Fountain ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:27:27 -0500 From: George Long Subject: GRL - Tenure and IT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Regardless, I think tenure decisions will always be fickle to some degree. this is largely due to the fact that decisions are subjective, and the goals of universities are rarely clearly defined. If the goal of a department is to produce high level research programs, then of course, using IT in education will not be a factor. However, if the universities primary mission is education, then being involved in developing IT innovations will be a positive thing. The difficulty is that no one has any real experience with evaluating these innovations. Add to that the fact that many universities want it both ways, high caliber research programs and high quality education. then, the decisions get very political. Many hard core research faculty have little respect for educational innovators, and efficiency to them is "how little time must I spend teaching". They will not look favorably on something like what Scott did .in paper 1, because it will represent a further time commitment for them - its much easier to do a chalk talk. On the other hand, right now there is a technology boom, so someone in IT can be valued by administrators, who can point to select faculty, and tell the board of govenors, "see we are into technology and education". Lastly, tenured or not, working with IT, or just being an educational innovator, is a passion, not a economic decision. Despite the supposed protection that tenure provides, there doesn't seem to be a rash of tenured full professors rushing out to start innovating. And there are a substantial number of untenured people innovating and pushing the educational envelope. I hope untenured faculty will continue to be involved in IT, and won't be driven off by the threat of the neo-luddites currently inhabiting a portion of the academic landscape (BTW, I'm not refering to our listmembers (I hope)) George Long IUP ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:31:55 -0400 From: Mike Epstein Subject: Paper3: ME - discussion cont Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT There are a *few* advantages to being an adjunct professor. Being able to innovate without any concern for administrative issues, making student learning the primary goal, and not worrying about who you offend in the hierarchy, does somewhat (but not quite) make up for some of the disadvantages. However, I would add that my observations of other faculty members and the tenure process at Mount Saint Mary's indicate that teaching innovation is respected and encouraged there. As an example of the college's administrative viewpoint, I would point to the latest issue of the Mountaineer Briefing, which features as the cover article (and cover picture) innovation in teaching ("Elvis in the Classroom - The Challenge of Teaching the MTV Generation). I guess that this is an advantage of teaching at a small liberal arts college. Mike E. At 10:12 AM 6/14/97 -0400, you wrote: >Mary Swift says (in part) > >>..given the situation at most institutions I would >>never encourage a junior faculty member to devote >>him or herself to developing novel teaching >>strategies. The reward structure is skewed >>against this, and in actual fact you will be >>penalized. Reform efforts for tenure and promotion >>criteria have not had much impact most places. >>This is a dire statement for the advancement of >>teaching ....... > >I couldn't agree more with Mary's comment. When I first >started using multimedia, I asked a table of experienced >mulltimedia professionals what was the most important single >piece of advice they could give someone who was thinking of >working in this area. After a few moments discussion, they >unanimously agreed on one statement, "Don't try this unless >you have tenure." > Mike Epstein Research Chemist National Institute of Standards and Technology Michael.Epstein@nist.gov http://esther.la.asu.edu/sas/epstein/epstein.html .................................................... From tomorrow on, I shall be sad - from tomorrow on! Not today; no! Today I will be glad. And every day, no matter how bitter it be, I will say: From tomorrow on, I shall be sad, not today!" Motele - Theresienstadt .................................................... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:41:19 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: gen dis: programming Harry asks about programming languages. If the student wants to learn to program I think too that they should be encouraged to learn from a professional. The chemical applications for which new code is needed are quite sophisticated and good tight structured programming is required. We might be able to teach this skill, but it is not our strength, chemistry is! We now have so many tools at our disposal that at the undergraduate level programming per se does not find much application, btw these new tools are relatively inexpensive and many require disciplined thought to be used properly so many pedagogical advantages of programming can be worked in to chemistry by 'pushing' the envelop, ie getting students to try advanced uses of the software. Mary Mary L. Swift Voice: 202-806-6289 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Fax : 202-806-5784 College of Medicine Howard University E-mail: mswift@umd5.umd.edu Washington DC 20059-0001 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:45:14 EST5EDT4,M4.1.0,M10.5.0 From: "Lanzafame, Frank" Subject: Re: Paper3: FML Programming Language Harry Pence writes (in part): >How important is it for us to teach chemistry majors a programming >language? This is something I've been giving some thought to and am conflicted about. I have been teaching a problem solving with computers course for our Chemical Technology students for a number of years. Similar to the Fortran for Engineers course except using QuickBasic but insisting on good principles of structured programming. >Some arguments for: >Good mental discipline. >If you learn one language, the second is always easier. Our reasonings were similar, including students encountering robots on the job would have some ideas of principles of loops and decisions etc. It is clear from having taught this for a number of years, that all too often students don't have the linear logic we might expect. We felt that the course provided some useful educational component and were not thinking we were producing "computer programmers". More of the mental discipline cited above. >arguments against: >Students are more likely to use software packages than to write their own code. >Most of our students will never write a single line of code as > chemical professionals. >Teaching a language is a waste of time, unless the students > will immediately use that knowledge for course work. We have been re-examining our thinking in light of some of the arguments against. The sophistication of some of the software tools such as Excel and Mathcad have made the software argument much stronger. We recently had some informal discussions with a couple of members of the Mechanical Engineering faculty at a neighboring college regarding Fortran versus software and are leaning more toward the software approach. Their experiences as well as our own have been that students do not use the programming skills to solve problems outside of the programming course. They do however continue to use the software skills they acquired without being prodded to do so; that is, they see the software as a useful tool and do not view programming skills the same way. Consequently, I'm currently in the process of retooling to teach the course using Excel next spring. I plan to do a little programming, but will do so using Visual Basic for Applications which is a part of Excel. In this way, we will first provide the useful software tools, but then show student how they can enhance the tools with a little macro programming. I hope to provide some of the educational benefits, but in a more useful context. At this point, it is not clear whether or not there will be time for Mathcad, but it is something I find to be a powerful software tool and would like to provide some introduction for students. The strongest applications for Mathcad which our students will encounter is in our Analytical Chemistry course. It is clearly a powerful tool for Physical Chemistry as indicated by the fine paper by Theresa Zielinski and Mary Swift. Regards, Frank :-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-) :-) :-) :-) Frank M. Lanzafame Department of Chemistry :-) :-) Monroe Community College 1000 East Henrietta Rd. :-) :-) Rochester, NY 14623 (716) 292-2396 :-) :-) Internet: flanzafame@monroecc.edu :-) :-) :-) :-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:01:36 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: gen. dis. On-line testing Previously I posed questions about on-line testing. Being in a medical school I may have some different experiences than many of colleagues in this conference. This week I have tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain the guidelines for the on-line versions of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBE) tests. I am going to relate some of what I remember from a meeting in January about these, please forgive if my memory proves to be faulty. No US medical school will host the computerized examinations, the Sylvan Learning Centers have been contracted to administer the examinations. the NBE has sent forth strict guidelines on the layout of the rooms, criteria for entry to these rooms, the installation of security cameras, the number of sweeps per minute that these cameras must make, the position of the proctors in the room, the condition of the hard drives PRIOR to loading the software, the network conditions, certification of the network administrator and other stuff I cannot remember. Is it no wonder that medical education is expensive? and our students graduate deeply in debt, and then we as patients pay high fees? but I digress. If this much security is required then maybe on-line testing is simply not feasible. Mary Mary L. Swift Voice: 202-806-6289 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Fax : 202-806-5784 College of Medicine Howard University E-mail: mswift@umd5.umd.edu Washington DC 20059-0001 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 13:04:24 -0700 From: Jim Diamond Subject: Re: Paper3: discussion cont On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Harry E. Pence wrote: > How important is it for us to teach chemistry majors a programming > language? I don't think that learning a programming language per se is crucial, because I'm willing to bet that in twenty years that programming in a compiled language (take your favorite: F77,Pascal,C++) will be about as common as punching out a paper tape of machine code is today. But I think that it is very important for students to understand the underlying logical structure of computer programs. I teach our chemistry students several different kinds of "programming languages" which still require a careful analysis of the chemical problem under consideration and precise mathematical formulation of the problem in the "language." Here's what we do, in several "research method" courses, andalytical, and physical chemistry: (1) A self-guided tutorial on Fortran progamming in a workstation environment. (2) Macro programming within a spreadsheet, emphasizing graphics, data import and export, control statements, loop structures, and table functions (within Quattro 7.0). (3) Programming within a symbolic math environment (Mathematica 3.0), emphasizing numerical methods, graphics, animation, with a particular emphasis on quantum chemistry. (4) Data acquisition in the laboratory. We've been using Vernier's MPLI in the PChem lab, and have decided to computerize both the General Chemistry and Physical Chemistry labs using Labworks, which has its own internal programming language (its very easy to learn). In my opinion, I think we're serving our science students better by presenting these "programming languages" within a chemical context, rather than shipping them off to the CS department. I also think that a student who has mastered these skills at a moderate level will quickly learn a new programming language if that specialized need arises, as it might, if they were to go on to a career in, say, computational chemistry, for example. Best Wishes, Jim Diamond, chair Chemistry Department Linfield College jimd@calvin.linfield.edu McMinnville OR 97128 (503)-434-2471 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 20:45:14 -0400 From: "Richard O. Pendarvis" Subject: Re: Paper3: discussion cont On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Jim Diamond wrote: > On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Harry E. Pence wrote: > > > How important is it for us to teach chemistry majors a programming > > language? > > I don't think that learning a programming language per se is > crucial, because I'm willing to bet that in twenty years that programming > in a compiled language (take your favorite: F77,Pascal,C++) will be about > as common as punching out a paper tape of machine code is today. > > But I think that it is very important for students to understand > the underlying logical structure of computer programs. I teach our > chemistry students several different kinds of "programming languages" > which still require a careful analysis of the chemical problem under > consideration and precise mathematical formulation of the problem in the > "language." > > Here's what we do, in several "research method" courses, > andalytical, and physical chemistry: > > (1) A self-guided tutorial on Fortran progamming in a workstation > environment. > > (2) Macro programming within a spreadsheet, emphasizing graphics, data > import and export, control statements, loop structures, and table > functions (within Quattro 7.0). > > (3) Programming within a symbolic math environment (Mathematica 3.0), > emphasizing numerical methods, graphics, animation, with a particular > emphasis on quantum chemistry. > > (4) Data acquisition in the laboratory. We've been using Vernier's MPLI in > the PChem lab, and have decided to computerize both the General Chemistry > and Physical Chemistry labs using Labworks, which has its own internal > programming language (its very easy to learn). > I agree with Jim's idea of a variety of experiences in computer literacy. I do feel that a beginning programing course should be required of ALL college students. It should be a block structured language with strong type checking. Pascal is probably the best choice currently (ADA compilers are not very efficient or economical). C and cousin C++ are too cryptic for the beginner and involve some knowledge of computer physiology. Prolog might be a good choice as well. APL is to difficult in symbolism for most undergraduates but would be good for math majors. I think that BASIC and FORTRAN tend to reinforce poor programming and thinking habits. I remember being required to take FORTRAN as a graduate student 25 years ago. As a synthetic organic type, I was horrified. I was sufficiently bitten by the bug to take 33 hours of CS courses. There is so much in theoretical computer science that is thpught prevoking and good for mental process. /* Richard */ #include - - ____ | | _ | | Organic Chemistry / \ |_| | | || CAI Programming / \ | | / \ || Pizza / \ / \ | | _||_ Star Trek (_________) (_____) |______| _/____\_ Doberman Pinschers --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Richard Pendarvis, Ph.D. 3001 W. College Road | | Associate Professor of Chemistry Ocala, FL 32608 | | Central Florida Community College EMAIL: afn02809@afn.org | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 00:01:21 EDT From: "George I. Loeb" Subject: Re: gen. dis. On-line testing Mary Swift relates the lengths to which the medical exams adminustrators are bu rdened with security conditions. However, this is not as relevant to the normal college exams: the stakes are much higher. How many college exams have the same security concerns and precautions as the old-fashioned pen and paper medical board or bar exams had? Not many, I bet. If accreditation rquirements for the A CS or the other undergraduate and graduate course accreditation groups would go for it, the security could be comparable to what we use now in ordinary cours es. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 06:49:00 EDT From: to2 Subject: Administrative notes Just some administrative notes from your friendly conference operator, especially for the benefit of those who have recently registered. 1. If you find the volume of email too much to keep up with, here are some things you can do: a. Turn off the mail: Send the command SET CHEMCONF NOMAIL to: listserv@umdd.umd.edu To turn the mail back on. Send the command SET CHEMCONF MAIL to: listserv@umdd.umd.edu b. Switch to DIGEST mode. Send the command SET CHEMCONF DIGEST to: listserv@umdd.umd.edu This will cause all the ChemConf mail for each day to be combined into a single large message that is delivered to you the next morning. c. Sign off (cancel your registration) from the conference: Send the command SIGNOFF CHEMCONF to listserv@umdd.umd.edu ----------------- 2. Edited archives of the ChemConf discussions are available from the Schedule section of the conference Web page: http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Topic/Chemistry/ChemConference/ChemConf97 of via FTP from inform.umd.edu, in the path: /info/ftp/inforM/EdRes/Topic/Chemistry/ChemConference/ChemConf97/ The archives are collected by paper number and are updated each morning. ---------------- 3. I have been forced to delete over 100 subscribers from the conference because messages to their addresses were "bouncing". (I get an error message in my maibox for every message that bounces from any subscriber. I'm sure you can appreciate that, with an average of about 30 messages per day, it takes only a few "bad" addresses to generate a lot of error messages to clog up the works). Obviously, if their addresses don't work, I can't contact the deleted subscribers to explain. So if you or anyone you know have been deleted form the conference listserv, know that it is only for technical, and not for political, reasons. ;0) ---------------- 4. If you have problems accessing any of the papers, please contact the authors of the paper or me (at to2@umail.umd.edu). Unless you think your problems will be of general interest to all ChemConf participants, please do not send such comments to the entire list. ---------- I hope you all will enjoy the remainder of the conference. Tom ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom O'Haver Professor of Analytical Chemistry University of Maryland Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry College Park, MD 20742 Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation (301) 405-1831 to2@umail.umd.edu FAX: (301) 314-9121 http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 15:09:04 -0400 From: Bill Vining Subject: Programming Languages I would like to put in a word of support for Visual Basic as a good, useful programming language. Although the term "Basic" makes folks think of poor structure and lack of sophistication, Visual Basic is a professional level language and has been chosen as the underlying scripting language for the suite of Office 97 programs. It is possible to make very sophisticated programs in VB (Windows only) and do so in a very efficient manner. Students in my lab can be taught enough to get going in a couple of days and can be producing useful programs almost immediately. Examples of our Chemland and Chromatography software are examples of what can be done in VB and are available at our site http://soulcatcher.chem.umass.edu. Both are not quite complete, but you can get the idea. Also, Director is very versatile, cross-latform, and it's difficulty is overrated. Bill Bill Vining Associate Professor of Chemical Education and Director of General Chemistry Lederle Graduate Research Tower University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003-4510 413-545-2352 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 15:48:40 -0400 From: Bill Vining Subject: Tenure and Educational Innovation Having spent 8 years at a liberal arts college and now being at a research university, I find it surprising HOW interested those at the university are in the undergraduate program in general and educational innovation in particular. Maybe my institution is an anomaly, but I just don't see the complete lack of concern for education that is expected of large schools. The faculty do care and do put substantial energy and time into their courses. The real difference comes in the concern shown individual students- there is little or no personal connection at the university that one finds at a small school. I find myself disturbed by the general acceptance that untenured faculty should stay away from educational innovations. They certainly want to get their research going and get good teaching reviews, but the idea that our most energetic, open-minded faculty should delay doing so much good for their students for a period of YEARS does everyone a disservice. It is part of our jobs to "sell" what we do with our time to our colleagues. If, after a few years of doing what one thinks of as the best job they can do, the tenure committee does not agree, then move on to another job. I find that the yes/no severity of the tenure decision makes everyone much more security conscious than seems warranted. This attitude probably seems unwise to most, I know. One should not think that tenure gives us any real academic freedom. The research we do is dependent on resources and the direction of our work is controlled quite well by the funding agencies and by our institutions. NSF is making a greater effort to have research faculty link their research and educational efforts, which is beginning to create some friutful collaborations. If we want to make a difference, we can best do so by helping these shifts in attitudes and resources. Bill Bill Vining Associate Professor of Chemical Education and Director of General Chemistry Lederle Graduate Research Tower University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003-4510 413-545-2352 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 17:54:56 -0400 From: "L. Peter Gold" Subject: Re: DR: Organizing Messages >Re: ORGANIZING CHEMCONF MESSAGES > >Michael Chejlava wrote: >> Does anyone have a good way of organizing the 100+ e-mail messages? When my e-mail load reached the 80-100 message/day level I decided to switch to a mail client that has the option to filter messages into different mailboxes. For instance, messages (incoming or outgoing) that contain "chemconf" in the header are automatically directed to my chemconf mailbox. If I am teaching, say, Chem 451 (our first-semester p. chem course) I tell the students in that course to include "Chem 451" in the subject field of any message they send me and their messages go into a separate mailbox. This makes it much easier and faster to deal with the mail and helps insure that important messages don't get lost among the unimportant ones. I use Eudora Pro; it has a street price of about $60 but is well worth it. It is available for both Mac and Windows systems (I use both). There are other POP mail clients with similar capabilities. ------------------------------------------------------------------- L. Peter Gold (814) 865-7694 Department of Chemistry fax (814) 865-3314 Penn State University internet lpg@psu.edu 152 Davey Laboratory University Park, PA 16802 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 17:55:03 -0400 From: "L. Peter Gold" Subject: using the www Much of the discussion so far has centered on the use by students of the WWW and other Internet facilities. I have concerns about the degree to which we can expect our students to be able to use these facilities in practice. The issues are what computer they use and how they connect to the Internet. Penn State, like many other schools, provide student computer labs on campus. These labs provide reasonably up-to-date equipment and high-speed access to the Internet. But as useage increases there will certainly come a time--probably within a few years--when so many students are doing so much on the Internet that we simply will be unable to provide enough computers in such labs. At that point we will probably have to require students to provide their own computers. But how will the students connect to the Internet? We are in the process of wiring our residence halls with direct connections to the campus backbone. However, less than half of our students live on campus. Most of them live off-campus and can only connect by modem. Even at 28.8 kb/s it is difficult or impossible to deal with the large files that are demanded by animations and other complex graphics materials and with three or four students sharing a phone line extensive browsing of even regular web materials is difficult. It does not appear that faster technologies will be widely available soon at a reasonable price. Another widely-proposed solution (that has turned up in these discussions also) is to require that students have laptop computers. They can then bring them to campus labs which provide high-speed connections. But this requires them to buy computers that are far more expensive than desktops. I would argue that students must at minimum have computers with CD-ROM capability; laptops so equipped are currently extremely expensive. A common response to this kind of "negative thinking" is, "Don't worry. New technologies to overcome these problems will come along in plenty of time to aviod problems." I am not optimistic that either the phone companies or the cable companies will be providing us with reliable and affordable new Internet access technologies anytime soon. [For a particularly amusing, irreverent, and pessimistic view of this see "The Dilbert Future" by Scott Adams.] Comments? Do others share this feeling that access to the Internet will limit the extent to which our students will be able to use it? ------------------------------------------------------------------- L. Peter Gold (814) 865-7694 Department of Chemistry fax (814) 865-3314 Penn State University internet lpg@psu.edu 152 Davey Laboratory University Park, PA 16802 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 17:43:21 -0700 From: "Pastorek, Christine" Subject: Re: computers and software I'm only concerned about the chemistry majors, not the entire university, so I see some of the concerns listed by Peter Gold as manageable. For the past two years all OSU students pay $50/term into a Technology fund. This pays mainly for centralized email for 15,500 students. A small amount of funds are available for faculty development projects. We received some of this money to upgrade our chemistry PC lab for undergraduates last year. Our departmental system administrator provides service for teaching and research and takes care of all the installation and maintenance of hardware and of software in our department. A local computer lab supported by the department also makes sense if you want to require the use of specialized software for modern chemistry instruction (MathCad, modeling software, instrument software, etc.). The department can afford to offer this software on a few computers made available to students but probably couldn't do it for a large computer lab. Requiring students to buy it on their own would be an unreasonable burden (full blown HyperChem, for example, is about $1300). If we want to require that our students use scientific software, we need to make it accessible to them. It is also more convenient for students to ask for help and to receive it in a prompt manner if they are working nearby the faculty. Another important function of computers is that they provide nucleation sites for the formation of peer groups. Our sophomores can get keys and night passes to our local PC lab. This gives students a place to "hang-out" and work on homework, reports, surf the Web, etc. When I visit the lab I hear a lot of conversation between students (a lot to do with chemistry, too!) and see students working independently and in groups-it's great. We wouldn't get the camaraderie that we get now if our students had to go to the main campus computer labs or work at home. We took this into account when we started spending money on a student computer lab about five years ago. --------------------------------------- Dr. Christine Pastorek Department of Chemistry Oregon State University Gilbert Hall 153 Corvallis, OR 97331-4003 Voice: (541) 737-6732 FAX: (541) 737-2062 internet: pastorekc@chem.orst.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 23:28:14 -0500 From: Theresa Julia Zielinski Subject: TJZ - paper3- remarks Dear Colleagues After a smooth and pleasant drive to Madison WI I am here to enjoy your conversation today. Your remarks and discussion on Friday made several points. Perhaps the most important was the importance of integrating computer usage into our courses as tools not as the subject of the course. Coupled to that was an explicit connection to developing the intellectual skills of our students in a context rich fashion. Integral to the whole process is the assessment of student progress in thinking and doing science. During the drive to Madison I heard some radio news shows. One was a lecture and the speaker was addressing the use of the internet for the future of education and information transfer. The goal was to have every citizen have free access to the WWW at least through visits to public libraries. It was in the speakers opinion that access to information was an important goal for the nation. Things may or may not move as fast as the speaker thought and access may or may not be as free as we all wish, but one thing is for sure, those without access to information will be left behind. Given this it is extremely important that we provide our students with as much as possible in terms of the means to get, assess, and use information. Beyond that we need to give them the freedom of spirit to feel that they can work with computers and use them to learn and do chemistry or work in any field that they may pursue after completing a chemistry degree. Another thing that I did this weekend was to read the article entitled "Taking Computers to Task" in Scientific American - July 1997. The cost of IT as reported here is staggering. For 1996 the cost is estimated to be $500 billion. This included hardware, software, networks and human support. This is quite a staggering amount of investment in one year and the article goes on to discuss the disappointing outcome of that investment. I was forced to think of us and our work in chemical education. We are investing huge amounts of money, time and energy. Many times the students resist our efforts to include IT into their courses. It means more work for them and more for us to get them to use this tool. At the end we are not sure of the outcome. Are they learning more, or learning differently perhaps, hopefully, deeper and with more understanding? Further, are we using the tools in the best way possible? I don't think we can answer this question easily and certainly not yet. Surely just feeling good about it or doing it because we know it is necessary is not enough. We must have clear goals and focus our shiny new tool on those goals to obtain measurable objectives. The information superhighway needs information to fulfill its definition and reason for existence. We must actively contribute to the load and provide the best information that is possible. Next must come the ability to assess and utilize that information effectively. As teachers this is an important skill we must transmit to our students. Open dialog is part of that assessment of information and is characteristic of science. Another aspect of this is the collection, reduction, and interpretation of data within the context of scientific investigation. Our students need to be able to do this and computers enable them to do more than I ever imagined as a student or even a scientist only a few years ago. I look forward to your additional comments and ideas on using computers with students as we prepare them for careers in a world that will be more different than we can imagine. I understand some of your frustrations as you struggle with limited budgets or unresponsive administrations and lack of recognition for your efforts. The internet itself provides a vehicle for channeling creative energies and finding collegial support. It makes geographic boundaries null. Mary and I would never have met were it not for the first ChemConf in 1993. Many other collaborations and collegial interactions are due to web connectivity. Perhaps some of the quiet participants would share some of their experiences with using computers and IT in their courses. Your colleagues may be able to use your experiences to do something new in their own classes. Collegially yours Theresa Theresa Julia Zielinski theresaz@localnet.com http://www.niagara.edu/~tjz -------------------------------- Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 23:09:20 -0700 From: "Pastorek, Christine" Subject: use of computational chemistry at the undergraduate level > At Oregon State Chemistry, the Integrated Lab faculty have added > molecular modeling and computational chemistry exercises to three of > our six Integrated Lab courses > for undergraduate majors. One only need see the cover of C&E News to > get a flavor of how pervasive this technology is in the real chemistry > world. It is hard to deny that this is an important area and one that > our majors should be introduced to. > > We have been using HyperChem and Gaussian here and there in teaching > for about three years now-first as optional exercises, now some as > required exercises. I first "heard" about HC during the first > ChemConference! Joe Nibler on our faculty was the driving force for > a recent upgrade of our undergraduate computer lab and we now have 6 > pentium pro's-this makes a big difference in how much we can expect > students to do with these programs. Each class in which computational > chemistry assignments are required is first scheduled into the PC lab > so that all the students get to try it out in the presence of the > instructor. Usually students go back later and refine their attempts. > Each class can have 10-20 students-so students have to share computers > during class . Before this upgrade we were using 486's. Optimization > and the calculation of the IR spectrum for a large molecule (e.g., > C13H10O) took a couple of hours each; on the PPro's, they take about > 10 minutes each. This makes it much more feasible to require this > sort of experimentation during classtime. > > Paul Dobosh at Mount Holyoke College as part of a PEW project > http://aug3.augsburg.edu/pkal/pew/issue_9/chemistry/macromol.html. , > very graciously passed along some exercises that he was preparing for > publication. One of the most useful procedures detailed how to use > the molecular dynamics option in HC to make reaction movies. After > reading the directions he wrote for his students-I could see that it > is really straight forward (I didn't get this from the software > manual!). I haven't incorporated this into a course yet, but it sure > provides a beautiful way to display reaction profiles. HyperChem Lite > can re-play the MD animations made with the full version and the > newest full version 5.01 offers .avi file format for MD playback. > > Chris Pastorek > Department of Chemistry > Oregon State University > Corvallis, OR > internet: PastorekC@chem.orst.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:00:43 -0400 From: "Timothy L. Pickering" Subject: Re: using the www Peter Gold writes: > >But how will the students connect to the Internet? We are in the process >of wiring our residence halls with direct connections to the campus >backbone. However, less than half of our students live on campus. Most of >them live off-campus and can only connect by modem. Even at 28.8 kb/s it >is difficult or impossible to deal with the large files that are demanded >by animations and other complex graphics materials and with three or four >students sharing a phone line extensive browsing of even regular web >materials is difficult. It does not appear that faster technologies will >be widely available soon at a reasonable price. > A VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE, AND ONE THAT IS TOO OFTEN OVERLOOKED, PARTICULARLY BY THOSE THAT INSIST ON USING LARGE GRAPHICS FILES, ANIMATIONS, ETC. THE BANDWIDTH IS SIMPLY NOT THERE FOR THOSE THAT MUST CONNECT VIA TELEPHONE LINES. AT OUR INSTITUTION, MORE THAN HALF OF THE STUDENTS LIVE IN OFF-CAMPUS HOUSING, AND THIS IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE IN MY LIFETIME. > >A common response to this kind of "negative thinking" is, "Don't worry. >New technologies to overcome these problems will come along in plenty of >time to aviod problems." I am not optimistic that either the phone >companies or the cable companies will be providing us with reliable and >affordable new Internet access technologies anytime soon. AGREED. AND EVEN IF IT DOES BECOME AVAILABLE, WILL OUR INSTITUTIONS BE ABLE TO AFFORD IT? Tim Pickering Viriginia Tech ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:03:00 EDT From: to2 Subject: Paper 3: TOH, Re: using the www Peter Gold wrote: >Comments? Do others share this feeling that access to the Internet >will limit the extent to which our students will be able to use it? I require Internet access in various classes from non-science major introductory chemistry for elementary education majors to graduate chemistry courses. Our set-up is similar to that described by Christine Pastorek at Oregon State University: departmental computer lab with chemistry-specific software; large gereral-purpose labs; and some connections in dorm rooms. As on Peter Gold's campus, less than half of our students live on campus, so modems are unavoidable. More and more families are getting accounts with commercial ISPs that our students can use from their homes. My students seldom complain that Internet access is a serious problem - if they do, I'll let them use my office computer. In general, I don't see modem connections as being a tremendous hardship. That's all I have at home presently. When I'm working from home, I find the (V.32bis) modem quite acceptable for most things. Obvioulsy, for downloading very large files, the 200 Kbytes/sec speed I can get in my office beats the 2 - 3 Kbyes/sec I get at home, but it is surprising how seldom this is a big inconcenience. (The 18 Mbyte quicktime movie on Paper 5's "Psychic Chemistry" page is a perfect example of a file that I wouldn't try to download at home). Moreover, many times general network congestion and overloaded servers reduce the speed advantage of my office connection. Not that I wouldn't welcome a high-speed cable or wireless data service at home, if they were more reasonably priced. Tom ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom O'Haver Professor of Analytical Chemistry University of Maryland Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry College Park, MD 20742 Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation (301) 405-1831 to2@umail.umd.edu FAX: (301) 314-9121 http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:14:27 -0400 From: "L. Peter Gold" Subject: Re: computers and software At 05:43 PM 6/15/97 -0700, Pastorek, Christine wrote: > I'm only concerned about the chemistry majors, not the entire >university, so I see some of the concerns listed by Peter Gold as >manageable. This is more or less what we have done also and we have ended up following a path remarkably similar to that taken by Oregon State and with the same good results. We have a small specialized computer lab that provides software (e.g. MacSpartan) and hardware not otherwise available to most students. We also observe the "nucleation site" and "hang-out" effects that Pastorek reports. Our computer lab is part of an undergraduate instrument room complex and it is exciting to see and hear there the same good things that she does: students discussing chemistry, working together, and helping each other. But the chemistry majors are only a tiny fraction of the students in our large introductory courses and they are even a minority in many of our advanced undergraduate courses. If all of the large introductory courses on this campus (chem, bio, psych, soc, econ, etc.) began requiring all of their students -- not just the chemistry majors -- to use the web extensively we would create chaos in the student computer labs. (In the fall we will have about 2,000 students in the first-semester general chemistry course alone). And the on-campus computer labs don't adequately address the problem on campuses (including several other Penn State locations) that serve mainly non-traditional and/or commuting students. I still suggest that widespread use of the web by students in courses will not be practical at most schools until there becomes available a fast, ubiquitous, and inexpensive way of connecting to the Internet from off-campus and I don't see that happening anytime soon. Pastorek's point remains a good one, however: Universities and colleges should be putting more of their undergraduate computing resources into departmental facilities. ------------------------------------------------------ L. Peter Gold phone (814) 865-7694 Professor of Chemistry fax (814) 865-3314 Penn State University 152 Davey Lab Internet: LPG@PSU.EDU University Park PA 16802 ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:37:00 EDT From: to2 Subject: Paper3: TOH Re: Programming Language I think its useful to distinguish different kinds of programming. I agree with Mary Swift that students should learn professional tools from professional programmers if they are going to be developing commercial-quality programs for a living, but surely this will be a very small fraction of our chemistry graduates. More common will be those who need to develop in-house software solutions using spreadsheets, Director, Toolbook, database development systems, Matlab, Mathematica, LabView etc. You'll never know which one you need 'til you get there, so the important thing is not the specifics of any one system, but rather the general concepts of application construction and the strengths and limitations of the various approaches (learning curve, memory and disk overhead, ability to create stand-alones, multi-platform transportability, execution speed, development speed, etc). Otherwise one might speed weeks writing a program in C++ to solve a problem that could be finished in days with one of the above systems. Most common will be those who must use and understand commercial software, e.g. an instrument data system, without writing any new code. Even then, scripting and automation of repetitive operations may be involved, so some familiarity with programming may even be useful there. Tom ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom O'Haver Professor of Analytical Chemistry University of Maryland Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry College Park, MD 20742 Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation (301) 405-1831 to2@umail.umd.edu FAX: (301) 314-9121 http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:48:16 -0500 From: George Long Subject: GRL: Re: TJZ - paper3- remarks >Another thing that I did this weekend was to read the article entitled >"Taking Computers to Task" in Scientific American - July 1997. The cost of >IT as reported here is staggering. For 1996 the cost is estimated to be >$500 billion. This included hardware, software, networks and human support. >This is quite a staggering amount of investment in one year and the article >goes on to discuss the disappointing outcome of that investment. I was >forced to think of us and our work in chemical education. We are investing >huge amounts of money, time and energy. Many times the students resist our >efforts to include IT into their courses. It means more work for them and >more for us to get them to use this tool. At the end we are not sure of the >outcome. Are they learning more, or learning differently perhaps, >hopefully, deeper and with more understanding? Further, are we using the >tools in the best way possible? I don't think we can answer this question >easily and certainly not yet. Surely just feeling good about it or doing it >because we know it is necessary is not enough. We must have clear goals and >focus our shiny new tool on those goals to obtain measurable objectives. > Judging the impact of an information technology on business is difficult, Judging the impact on education is next to impossible. The traditional industrial age scale of productivity uses simple factors that view quality as either acceptable/unacceptable. However, the quality of work done by individuals is significantly improved by IT. IT will increase the quality of workers interaction, the quality of internal documents, and improve the access to information. Perhaps there will not be any more widgets produced per unit time, but the quality of the widgets improves, etc. In education we are faced with a harder job. Again, industrial age models are not relavent. We need to consider things like access to education, and the ability to integrate knowledge to acheive goals. Perhaps the student educated per dollar is not a fair measure of the impact of IT. Theresa has pointed to the fact that we need clear goals in order to assess what we are doing. Very true, But just what is our goal for IT in education ? more and easier access for students? Students with deeper understanding? A reduction in Faculty time (don't laugh, this results in a reduction of faculty, and thus $$) ? More satisfied students ? Better scores on standardized tests ? Some combination of the above depending on . . . ?? **************************************************************************** George R Long, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA 15705 grlong@grove.iup.edu, http://www.iup.edu/~grlong/ Technology has made the world a neighborhood, now it is up to us to make it a brotherhood - Dr. M.L. King **************************************************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:02:29 -0400 From: Michael A Vaksman Subject: Paper 3 - programming languages? << Subject: Re: GRL: Re: TJZ - paper3- remarks At 09:48 AM 6/16/97 -0500, George Long wrote: >Judging the impact of an information technology on business is difficult, >Judging the impact on education is next to impossible. The traditional >industrial age scale of productivity uses simple factors that view quality >as either acceptable/unacceptable. However, the quality of work done by >individuals is significantly improved by IT. IT will increase the quality >of workers interaction, the quality of internal documents, and improve the >access to information. Perhaps there will not be any more widgets produced >per unit time, but the quality of the widgets improves, etc. There were several good examples of using IT to increase productivity in the Scientific American article. The key seemed to lie in specialized software. George is also correct about measuring impact and productivity. Assessment in industry about the effect of IT is difficult because of the measurement tools and their focus on older methods of production. Quality is an important factor too. >In education we are faced with a harder job. Again, industrial age models >are not relavent. We need to consider things like access to education, and >the ability to integrate knowledge to acheive goals. Perhaps the student >educated per dollar is not a fair measure of the impact of IT. > >Theresa has pointed to the fact that we need clear goals in order to assess >what we are doing. Very true, But just what is our goal for IT in education >? more and easier access for students? Students with deeper understanding? >A reduction in Faculty time (don't laugh, this results in a reduction of >faculty, and thus $$) ? More satisfied students ? Better scores on >standardized tests ? Some combination of the above depending on . . . ?? What is our goal in using IT and what are our goals in teaching a particular course? Let me suggest an answer and see what you all think. A goal in my course is to provide context rich experiences in physical chemistry. Providing a survey of the entire discipline is not my goal. A goal for IT is to increase student abilities to work with richer sources of data and to manipulate that data to probe scientific models. Providing more content is not a goal for IT. A goal in teaching is to increase critical thinking for myself and my students. Providing more graded homework is not a goal for my teaching. I think I need to sit down and articulate my goals in writing They should be few in number but should enable me to write specific assessable objectives for my course materials. What do you all think?. Theresa Julia Zielinski Professor of Chemistry, Niagara University Visiting Professor of Chemistry, U. Wisconsin - Madison ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 12:26:25 -0400 From: "Richard O. Pendarvis" Subject: Re: using the www On Sun, 15 Jun 1997, L. Peter Gold wrote: > Much of the discussion so far has centered on the use by students of the > WWW and other Internet facilities. I have concerns about the degree to > which we can expect our students to be able to use these facilities in > practice. The issues are what computer they use and how they connect to > the Internet. > > Penn State, like many other schools, provide student computer labs on > campus. These labs provide reasonably up-to-date equipment and high-speed > access to the Internet. But as useage increases there will certainly come > a time--probably within a few years--when so many students are doing so > much on the Internet that we simply will be unable to provide enough > computers in such labs. At that point we will probably have to require > students to provide their own computers. Schools without strong financial support (like where I teach) have long since reached this point. To make matters worse most of our students simply cannot afford their own equipment etc. Using the internet then becomes an economically discriminating factor. I do not expect any solution. For most administrators, the internet is just a buzzword. If we have any hookups available that is enough to say we have it. >From a CAI point of view, it is more efficient to have the programs stored on a LAN or even standalone computers. /* Richard */ #include - - ____ | | _ | | Organic Chemistry / \ |_| | | || CAI Programming / \ | | / \ || Pizza / \ / \ | | _||_ Star Trek (_________) (_____) |______| _/____\_ Doberman Pinschers --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Richard Pendarvis, Ph.D. 3001 W. College Road | | Associate Professor of Chemistry Ocala, FL 32608 | | Central Florida Community College EMAIL: afn02809@afn.org | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 10:10:43 -0700 From: Jaqueline E Madison Subject: Re: Papers 1-BMM-plug-ins The three plug ins I've installed are: Adobe Acrobat for text material RealAudio for voice applications Shockwave for the multi-media These have worked fine for me so far, but I know that I'll eventually have to install others. Jackie Madison Battelle PNNL je_madison@pnl.gov ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Papers 1-BMM-plug-ins Author: Barbara Murray at -SMTPLink Date: 6/6/97 1:14 PM This is a general question for all who are more internet-able. What do you that are the minimum plug-ins that one should have? I am always running into some site that needs a plug-in that I don't have. But downloading the plug-in at the time seems like too much trouble. So, now that it is summer and I have more free time, I want to go to netscape's plug-in site and download many of them and get them working. Could people give us new techs a list, please? -- *********************************************************************** Barbara Murray bmurray@uor.edu Chemistry Department 909-793-2121 ext 2374 University of Redlands FAX 909-793-2029 1200 E Colton, PO Box 3080 Redlands, CA 92373-0999 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:39:04 MDT From: Reed Howald Subject: Re: Paper 3: RAH programming language I am not sure whether we should teach chemistry majors a programming language. But I strongly disagree with the comment that they should take a programming course in a computer science department. Grade inflation is bad enough in chemistry, an area with almost 200 years of tradition behind the content. It is completely out of hand in the computer science departments I know much about. Students will learn three to tem times more per credit hour in a chemistry course. The real question is how much programming belongs in the freshman college chemistry course. Definitely not any particular computer language for itself. But in a freshman chemistry laboratory all the students, not just chemistry majors, need computers to analyze data and to write reports. I believe it is also important for them to use computers for data collection, and if they do this some conputer programming is essential. Here at Montana State University we have developed and used a set of control files to control each experiment. These files are constructed and revised using selections from standard menus, thus avoiding the very frustrating syntax errors of most programming. In one quarter of chemistry laboratory (10 three hour periods) beginning students learn enough programming to design an experiment of their own. It works! Reed Howald uchrh@earth.oscs.montana.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 12:13:10 -0700 From: Walter Volland Subject: Re: TJZ - paper3- remarks George gives a good list of questions regarding IT in education. The goal of some people is " more bang for the buck". They equate students processed through the system with successful education. One of the major pitfalls that IT brings into the system is the assumption that efficiency goes up and fewer faculty are needed when IT is instituted. A great fear is that there will be a reduction of faculty with an increase in students. This kind of scenario seems to be playing out where internet courses are established using a central site and "assistants" at remote sites. This model administration and state legislatures see a savings in the system because there are fewer faculty salaries. Walt Volland Bellevue Community College wvolland@bcc.ctc.edu voice 425-641-2467 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 15:58:45 -0400 From: "Harry E. Pence" Subject: Re: GRL: Re: TJZ - paper3- remarks Theresa suggested several goals for IT. I tried to come up with my own goals and I think we're on the same wavelength. Theresa said: >Let me suggest an answer and see what you all think. >A goal in my course is to provide context rich experiences in physical >chemistry. >A goal for IT is to increase student abilities to work with richer >sources of data and to manipulate that data to probe scientific models. >A goal in teaching is to increase critical thinking for myself and my >students. My goal is to help students understand material rather than just memorize isolated facts and equations. My goal is to create an image-rich mental picture that will enable my students to "see" chemistry, not just mathematical calculations. My goal is to help students learn to observe what is happening, organize their observations, and explain these observations in terms of scientific generalizations (i.e. laws, theories, etc.) My goal is to prepare students to predict what will happen when they encounter a case that they have not previously seen. I can never teach everything that my students should know, so I hope to give them with a set of mental tools so that they can deal with situations that they have not previously seen. Mathematics provides some powerful tools for organizing scientific observations. I don't teach math; I teach chemistry. I believe that the math should be in a strong supportive role, but if my students begin to believe that I'm teach a math course, I've probably lost track of what I was supposed to be doing. Phys. Chemists, especially, may not agree with this goal. I don't teach physical chemistry, but if I did, I would try to emulate a professor I met who started each p chem lecture with a simple demonstration, then the lecture was based on explaining the demo. There was a lot of math, but the focus was on explaining the observations from the demonstration. I think that the way that Theresa uses cooperative exercises accomplishes this goal, but I'll let Theresa comment on that. Cordially, Harry ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | Harry E. Pence INTERNET: PENCEHE@ONEONTA.EDU | | Professor of Chemistry PHONE: 607-436-3179 | | SUNY Oneonta OFFICE: 607-436-3193 | | Oneonta, NY 13820 FAX: 607-436-2654 | | http://snyoneab.oneonta.edu/~pencehe/ | | \\\//// | | (0 0) | |_______________OOO__(oo)__OOO____________________________| ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:02:55 -0400 From: John Woolcock Subject: Re: GRL: Re: TJZ - paper3- remarks I like both Harry and Teresa list of overall educational goals. The only ones I would add would be: 1) One of my goals is to present the minimum number of concepts that I think students will likely need in their next chemistry or other science course. 2) Try to educate them on the place (and impact) science and technology has in (on) our culture. *************************************** John Woolcock Chemistry Dept. Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA 15705 Email: woolcock@grove.iup.edu Phone: (412) 357-4828 FAX: (412) 357-5700 http://www.iup.edu/ch *************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 16:06:29 -0500 From: Theresa Julia Zielinski Subject: Re: TJZ - paper3- remarks At 12:13 PM 6/16/97 -0700, Walt wrote: >A great fear is that there will be a reduction of faculty with an >increase in students. This kind of scenario seems to be playing out >where internet courses are established using a central site and >"assistants" at remote sites. This model administration and state >legislatures see a savings in the system because there are fewer faculty >salaries. If my memory serves me well the example in the Scientific American article was hospital administration, patient load, and IT. It seems that administrative costs have risen dramatically and patient load dropped substantially with the advent of computers in hospital administration. By proper focus on the goal in the Goal the manager discovered that cutting overtime and staff on the floor of the plant did not improve productivity or the bottom line - the profits. Better goals helped the manager to locate where real efficiencies could be obtained and greater output realized to yield higher profits.Perhaps in education we need better goals. Then we might be able to handle greater through put of students, optimize information flow to increase learning and increase the bottom line - student growth and intellectual preparedness for a variety of careers - wwithout faculty reductions. Is it possible that by clearly identifying our goals so that we can write the best learning objectives we may discover bottlenecks to learning that we can analyze and use to create better learning tools for the student. Hmm... Theresa Julia Zielinski Professor of Chemistry, Niagara University Visiting Professor of Chemistry, U. Wisconsin - Madison ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 16:19:46 -0500 From: Theresa Julia Zielinski Subject: Re: GRL: Re: TJZ - paper3- remarks At 03:58 PM 6/16/97 -0400, Harry wrote: >I don't teach physical chemistry, but if I did, I would try to emulate a >professor I met who started each p chem lecture with a simple >demonstration, then the lecture was based on explaining the demo. There >was a lot of math, but the focus was on explaining the observations from >the demonstration. I think that the way that Theresa uses cooperative >exercises accomplishes this goal, but I'll let Theresa comment on that. I am not too good at using demos. I can deal with them in general chemistry and the non-science students courses but I have little experience with them in the pchem course. Of course I have heard others talk about doing this I just haven't done it myself. But what I do is as follows. I give the students guides to reading the chapter for the lesson for the day. This they do before coming to class. In class we discuss the material, well rather they discuss the material and help each other understand it and I act as the expert learner and helper in really difficult situations. We sometime spend class time at a computer. We often use the over head projector, well they do. We always talk and we always ask lots of questions of each other. We don't do lots of derivations. We try to get to the core concept. We do try to interpret every graph and equation and its physical significance. It is not enough to push partial derivatives at them. What is the significance of the partial? What physical phenomenon does it represent? Derivations get a bit more frequent toward the end of the semester. Essentially I try to make the student do what I would do to learn a topic. They are very good at probing the details in the text once the know that they are expected to do this and that they have the freedom to ask and probe with impunity on their grade. In class the probing counts, not the content of the probe. Assessment focuses on mastery at different degrees. Some is just handing in an annotated graph prepared for homework, others are similar calculations, and some are more original and focus on how the students adapt what they have learned to a new situation. Others teachers may find other techniques more suitable for their students and courses. I like hearing about these other approaches and find them stimulating. So much creative energy exists among us that it is hard to imagine students not learning and liking chemistry. Oh, I'm wearing those rose colored glasses again. Cheers Theresa Theresa Julia Zielinski Professor of Chemistry, Niagara University Visiting Professor of Chemistry, U. Wisconsin - Madison ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 23:05:40 -0400 From: Michael Epstein Subject: Paper #5 - ME: Preliminary announcement for Thurs/Fri discussion Since the discussion period on paper 5 is coming up later this week, I wanted to let everyone know that I added a detailed reference page with a comprehensive listing of *chemistry-related* pseudoscience and claimed anomalies, including a couple of new ones (Brown's gas and red mercury) that I had not previously listed, and some URLs for WWW searching on the topics. The added page is at: http://esther.la.asu.edu/sas/epstein/ref.html ME > ======================================================== < > Mike Epstein < > Adjunct Professor, Department of Science < > Mount Saint Mary's College, Emmitsburg, MD < > [Opinions expressed are mine ... not necessarily theirs] < > PHONE: (301) 447-5376 FAX: (301) 447-5755 < > epstein@msmary.edu mse@enh.nist.gov < > WWW Home Page: http://esther.la.asu.edu/sas/epstein/epstein.html < > ======================================================== < > "From tomorrow on, I shall be sad - from tomorrow on! < > Not today; no! Today I will be glad. < > And every day, no matter how bitter it be, I will say: < > From tomorrow on, I shall be sad, not today!" < > Motele - Theresienstadt < > ======================================================== < ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 10:36:09 -0400 From: "Harry E. Pence" Subject: Re: GRL: Re: TJZ - paper3- remarks Theresa says: >I am not too good at using demos. ............. I don't think she is giving herself enough credit. Several years ago I learned that the important thing is not doing a demo, but how you use the demo to accomplish the educational goals of the course. It's easy to do a demo that has little real educational value but does look cute. This may help to keep the students attention, but it isn't otherwise very useful educationally. Theresa describes a wonderful strategy that keeps the concept before the students, instead of losing the concept in the forest of math. Even without the physical demo, she's already doing much of what demos should accomplish in another way (which is what I suspected). Cordially, Harry ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | Harry E. Pence INTERNET: PENCEHE@ONEONTA.EDU | | Professor of Chemistry PHONE: 607-436-3179 | | SUNY Oneonta OFFICE: 607-436-3193 | | Oneonta, NY 13820 FAX: 607-436-2654 | | http://snyoneab.oneonta.edu/~pencehe/ | | \\\//// | | (0 0) | |_______________OOO__(oo)__OOO____________________________| ------------------------------