The end product will be a dynamic hyper-media publication consisting of text, graphics, calculations, animations and other visuals useful in any educational context and at any level in the undergraduate curriculum. The goal of this approach is to allow the learner control of the learning phenomenon as an active participant in creating and linking information rather than as just a consumer. In addition, it will promote a union of the factual, theoretical part of science erasing disciplinary lines and the experimental, procedural aspects of science so often missing in traditional courses. We ultimately envision a curriculum which unifies the sub-disciplines of chemistry and related components of the collateral sciences and mathematics.
The textual units will be designed in several formats to optimize learning for students with different learning styles (e.g. inductive or deductive presentations or formats fostering cooperative learning). Formal or self-evaluation would allow each student to select a personally optimal style. This flexibility would be desirable for our increasingly diverse student population.
Because multiple layers will be developed for each track, enabling varying degrees of depth of treatment for each topic, this process will ultimately lead to the incorporation of more advanced material within a specific heading that will be linked vertically to the basic material and linked in a second, higher horizontal dimension to other advanced topics that form the core of courses at other levels. Those elements of analytical chemistry presented in the introductory course (for example, acid-base titrations, equilibrium calculations, rudimentary spectroscopy) will be tied to advanced topics found in the analytical level (complexometric titrations, simultaneous equilibria, structure determination by spectroscopic analysis), thus enabling a beginning student seeking more information to browse ahead, or an upper level student who needs remedial help to step back. Content packages may be part of several horizontal groupings -- spectroscopy will appear in horizontal levels containing material associated with traditional organic, inorganic, physical, and analytical courses. Over time this will enable alternative clustering of topics thereby creating customized courses previously inhibited by the lack of a "suitable text." Tracks will be maintained in advance levels allowing reiteration of exemplars at greater depth as well as introduction of new exemplars. The full range of the experimental nature of chemistry will be integrated including exploratory and demonstrative hands-on and simulated laboratories and videotapes of experiments and industrial processes. This multimedia approach will increase safety awareness and pre-laboratory preparation and post-laboratory student understanding.
Because of the enormous amount of development time required for such a project and the necessity of authors to develop skills in design, in user-interfaces, in structuring and in maintenance of the documentation, the project will focus initially on producing an introductory course using an authoring language such as TOOLBOOK that allows editing text files and merging digitally encoded sound and video files. The total scope of this project is huge, and we do not intend to author and prepare all the supporting materials ourselves. An organization will be set up to explore methods to incorporate contributions developed elsewhere in the marketplace and community into this package.
From the outset the material will be used with network access by students in the participating institutions. By monitoring access, self-testing results, and test performance we will determine the effectiveness of the individual components of the growing system. We will make controlled comparisons with standard courses in terms of the impact of this presentation on skills acquired and attitudes toward chemistry and science. As a necessary bridge from the present operating mode and as a continuing option, we will include the capability of creating printed texts from ChemPRIME, with selection of material either done by the student or the instructor and perhaps involving a publisher who would create a text from selected options.
The Chemistry Department of Lehigh University will coordinate this plan. Six of the nine participating institutions are members of LVAIC, the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges. LVAIC has a proven record of cooperation among the member institutions in our region (Appendix B: p. 60-64). Faculty are from: Allentown College, a Catholic institution, and Cedar Crest College, a private four-year women's college, both serving a local constituency with large adult education components; Kutztown University, a state institution with a significant program in teacher education which held an NSF-sponsored workshop in 1993 for college faculty in computerized data acquisition in the freshman level laboratory (Appendix C: p. 65-67); Lafayette College, a private four-year college with a national and international clientele; Lincoln University, a historically black college; Moravian College and Muhlenberg College, private, four-year institutions attended by students primarily from the Middle Atlantic region; and Northampton County Community College, providing associate degrees and non-credit options for county residents.
The chemistry department at Lehigh has implemented an NSF-sponsored curriculum with strong industrial co-op component in Chemistry of Materials Synthesis and Processing (Appendix D: p. 68-73). Members of the Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Earth and Environmental Sciences Departments at Lehigh have collaborated on the design of a fully integrated, topics focused science course for non-science majors (Appendix E: p. 74-87). The Chemistry Department has been a beta test site for the thematically based ACS course "Chemistry in Context." A joint Education-Engineering team has designed a similar course for science educators (Appendix F: p. 88-101). For the last six summers we have received sponsorship from the NSF under the REU program (Appendix G: p. 102-111), also partially supported by industry. Lehigh is a leader in satellite chemical education (Appendix H: p. 112-117).
The interdisciplinary nature of the tracks and the need for breadth of topics will foster collaboration among individuals from the disparate disciplines involved. Research teams have long been confronting problems requiring a multidisciplinary approach; this project will catalyze a similar interaction in education. The four-year curriculum for chemistry majors will be unified and altered to present a relevant yet fundamental exposition of the field of chemistry. Majors in other fields will assimilate chemical fundamentals more easily because these fundamentals will be linked to topics of great interest to them. The faculty will experience a new flexibility in the material they present and in options for the instructional process.
We will be alert to the possibility that other non-traditional course offerings may grow from the novel clustering of exemplars/principles; chemistry and business and the international aspects of the chemical industry are two possibilities.