Making Online Resources Cohesive in a Chemistry Course Justin Shorb Mike Hanson John Moore Chemistry Department

Questions If you had a system for providing rapid, individualized feedback to students in a class that enrolled 350, what kinds of assignments and feedback would you give? If you could construct an online textbook for your students, what components would it include? How would it differ from the typical printed textbook? How would you evaluate the success of your efforts?

Chemistry 109H, Fall 2009—95 Students Chemistry 104, Spring 2010—345 Students

Chem 104: Weekly homework with M-C questions and preprogrammed feedback Weekly quiz with some M-C and a challenging, open-ended question/problem

M-C questions are graded with preprogrammed feedback

Developing Challenge Problems Designed to incorporate multiple topics from multiple lectures Require thinking from the upper half of Bloom’s Taxonomy The solution is more about how the problem is solved than what the final answer is Applicable (somewhat) to real life

Point score

How others are using FM Weekly essay question for ¼ of lecture Students submit questions on what was confusing from lecture Online worksheets with pre-made tables Group work Thursday 9:45-10:45 Students Write to Learn: How Instructors are Engaging their Students through Online Quizzing, Writing, and Feedback

Back to the Links to the Online Textbook:

Chemical Education Digital Library

ChemPaths Offers: Navigation emphasizing constructivist pedagogy Chemistry Comes Alive! Videos of reactions, demos & molecular-scale animations Rotatable 3D models of molecules and their vibrations, orbitals & other molecular properties Pop-up Glossary In-text links to Periodic Table Live! pages Revisiting the same content within other contexts

ChemPaths Offers: Navigation emphasizing constructivist pedagogy Chemistry Comes Alive! Videos of reactions, demos & molecular-scale animations Rotatable 3D models of molecules and their vibrations, orbitals & other molecular properties Pop-up Glossary In-text links to Periodic Table Live! pages Revisiting the same content within other contexts

Summary Students receive preprogrammed feedback with directions for further study on multiple choice and short answer questions immediately upon submission of their weekly homework and quiz. Students receive personalized feedback on a more challenging question with essay answer in their quiz each week, utilizing the Moodle add-on ‘Feedback Manager’. Students have more chances to be engaged in the material, can address misconceptions quicker, and stay current in the course easier with timely feedback. Over 80% of students liked receiving feedback and felt it was helpful to their learning.* Over 90% of students agreed that personalized feedback is at least somewhat more useful than generalized feedback.* * Feedback Manager (Fall 09), Jeanne, Tong and Robertson

Summary ChemPaths is more than just a book online… Interactive 3D Molecule Viewers, animations & videos are embedded into the text. Relevant links to related material guide students to construct a connected view of Chemistry. Navigation emphasizes key relationships. Instructors can define their own “Paths.” Students are free to bookmark and take their own notes. At Home: Students study from the online textbook. In Lecture: Students see videos and molecules within their textbook. In Lab: Students can use laptops and SmartPhones to access their textbook. While Doing Homework: Students are directed back to their textbook for help. Individual feedback to encourage critical thinking, A cohesive collection of online materials to encourage conceptually-connected learning.

Acknowledgment We gratefully acknowledge support from Technology-Enhanced Learning project, Office of the Provost, UW-Madison. The National Science Foundation, grants DUE and DUE