Contributing Author Mechanism/Information

A multi-author project will require several components to allow successful integration. These will be as follows.

1. A detailed structural outline of the chemical principles and their sequence with the corresponding exemplars in each track (as seen in minimal detail in the planning grant proposal) will be made available. A specification system has been developed to define the location of material being designed in the course/curriculum structure (see below). These outlines will be based on the traditional courses. Links between courses to create an integrated curriculum will be developed continuously. This will allow the contributing author to know the prior knowledge status of the student and the learning outcomes goals of the section will be defined. The contributed material may be text, multi-media, or mixed. It may be exemplars and/or principles and/or questions/problems for student mastery or evaluation of student learning. The intention is to have principles segments as well as multi-media components on which the authors of exemplar segments can draw. Thus these components can be authored independently if desired.

2.The contributed material will be evaluated for suitability and any necessary editorial modification. Addition of the material to the growing curriculum will be on a experimental basis. During the experimental period (for that component) the pedagogical effectiveness will be evaluated as will the student interest in that exemplar. Segments may be modified and updated on a continuing basis.

3. The growing curriculum will be available to authors to enhance the understanding of the context of the component being created.

We do not invite contributions at this time. We do wish interested people to indicate their interest for two reasons: 1) this will indicate to NSF the broader interest in this Project, and 2) this will facilitate our keeping in touch with you as the project develops.

Component specification and course structure.

The structure of the database is defined by the following path specification. These specified components define the data base from which the document will be drawn. The proposed path is specified as follows:

course/topic/exemplar_track/exemplar_sub-track/principle/learning _style/exemplar/level.type/

An example taken from the Demonstration Project being developed is as follows:

introductory/kinetics/biological/alcohol use/rates of reaction/experiential/alcohol_metabolism/easy.text

These components are defined as follows:

• course- the classical courses of the curriculum. Additionally, new customized courses which draw on the database may be created. These may require course specific components and appropriate identifiers.
• topic- classically called chapters
• exemplar_track- biological, materials, environmental, consumer, engineering applications, standard chemistry (termed fundamental in this database), etc. This is an open-ended category although this list is where we are initiating the work.
• exemplar_sub-track- multiple examples under the rubric of a given exemplar track are possible
• principle- the fundamental sub-topic that is being discussed, classically a chapter sub-heading
• learning style- a subset of learning style formats for the material
• exemplar- variations on the exemplar subtrack
• level.type
  -level choices are:
  • easy-an overview which is non-quantitative and would be used for non-science majors in an introductory course and perhaps as the lead-in section of the science/engineering majors course material
  • difficult- the science/engineering material that is exemplar specific (fundamental principles specific material will be under the fundamental track)
  • laboratory- the integrated laboratories will be linked to the exemplar and principle topics (more than one laboratory can be available)
  -type choices are: text, video, audio, image, application, message, or multipart, following the MIME formalism with the addition of chemical as suggested by Casher, et al (look under "hyperactive molecules" and "published") which has recently been adopted by NIH.