Abstract

Four web sites were developed for teaching four sections of freshman chemistry: two sites for science majors, and two sites for pre-nursing majors. The web sites are stand-alone sites linking to WebCT for online testing, bulletin boards discussions, email, and posting of grades. This paper briefly describes the web site development and some comparison of scores of students in two sections of the same science majors' course: one was taught totally online and one was taught totally on campus. Comparing test scores on proctored tests in the science majors' courses, the students in the on-campus course made better scores on the chapter testing than the students in the online course, but the students in the online course scored better on the final exam than the students in the on-campus course. However, the standard deviations of the exam scores of the courses only allows for a "no significant difference" conclusion on the proctored test scores. The two-semester American Chemical Society (ACS) standardized exam scores favored the online students.

Introduction

This paper will show some of the development process for the web sites and then show some of the results and comparisons with an on-campus class. The lab courses are separate courses and no attempt is made to teach them online. Our opinion is that science majors should take the general chemistry laboratories on campus to obtain the proper skills and safety knowledge to prepare them for upper division laboratories. Other educators have been examining various possibilities of web teaching of chemistry as indicated by a recent meeting¹. Banks² also recently published a paper concerning web-based tutorials. Robinson³ recently discussed the use of a web-based course to help teachers of AP chemistry. Since this is not a review article for web-based teaching, many authors are omitted and an apology is offered to the many such authors who have spent many hard hours working in this area. Readers are referred to CONFCHEM for many discussions on the use of computers and the web in chemistry education.

Web Course Development

Freshman chemistry has now been taught totally online for five years at KSU and four different web sites have been developed for these courses: General Chemistry I, General Chemistry II, Survey of Chemistry I, and Survey of Chemistry II. The General Chemistry courses are for science majors and the Survey of Chemistry courses are primarily intended for pre-nursing students. The web course design began by learning more about learner styles and the web components available for each learner style⁴, web design, instructional design elements, the many software packages available for developing web sites, java script, and the experience of others in teaching web courses. Table 1 shows the software used to develop the web sites.

At strategic pedagogical moments in the flow through a web site, the students should be referred to other sites for repetitive questioning such as from a site maintained by George Wiger⁷ on many different concepts in freshman chemistry. At other times, the students are referred to sites containing simulations and/or animations that allow them to enter data and see the result of the data entries. One of the best such sites for some items is one developed at the University of Colorado⁸. At other points in the web site, students use CHIME⁹ to aid them in understanding the three-dimensional nature of molecules. Online tests to allow students to judge their progress (not graded) were prepared with Hot Potatoe¹⁰. Online tests counting toward their grades were prepared in WebCT¹¹. The bulletin board, email, and grade postings were also done by linking to WebCT. A very important site called ChemNet was also created that has links to all the campus resources, links to all the web courses, and has practical information for the students on how to take a web course. The practical information has links to plugins needed, a link to a site to allow the students to determine their learning styles (required), and other practical information to help the students succeed.

The role of the teacher and the students change considerably in a web course, and these changes must be carefully understood. The teacher is now a tutor and a facilitator. The students are now independent learners preparing themselves for life-long learning. The teacher now must create the environment; guide the process, moderate the process; manage the content; and create the community of learners, which involves clearly establishing the ground rules and expectations. The teacher also should give a knowledge pre-test and post-test to help judge the course effectiveness, have a means for all learners to determine their learner styles, several times daily check the discussion forums, and provide student testing as often as feasible.

Course Grading

There are online tests at the end of each section of each chapter that allow the students to determine their degree of course mastery, but these tests don't count toward their grade. The students are advised that if they do not make at least 80 on a section test they should restudy that section. At the end of each chapter is an online test that does count as part of their grade. At the end of each chapter and at the end of the semester, proctored tests are given. The proctored tests can be taken at KSU, or given by a suitable proctor validated by the teacher, and these tests count the major portion of the students' grade. The homework problems use WebAssign¹² and they do count toward the final letter grade. The typical grading scheme for the web courses counts 4% for the online chapter tests, 4% for the homework, 8% for on-line discussions, and 84% for the average of all tests (7 or 8 chapter tests and one final exam).

Campus and Online Comparison Results

One semester two sections of General Chemistry I were taught by the same instructor. One section was taught totally on-campus and the other section was taught totally online. There were 30 students in the on-campus class and 12 in the online course. A questionnaire was given to students in both sections to determine demographics, personality types (The Kiersey Temperament Sorter¹³), and learning styles of the students. The statisticians assisting in the course evaluation (see Acknowledgement) determined that the personality types and demographics demonstrated no significant difference between the students in the two sections. The learner style test showed the following for the two classes (the highest possible score on each of the tests is 30). A student is declared to have strength in an area if the score in that area is at least 21. The last two columns below show the number in each section with strength in one of the three learning styles.

We also gave each section the American Chemical Society (ACS) California test as a pre-test and as a post-test with results as shown in Tables 6 and 7.

Many online teachers report a very high withdrawal rate in their classes. The percent W or WF in the two sections reported here were 23% for the on-campus class and 28% for the online class (percents rounded). We believe the reason for the low percentage of W's in the online class is that there was an on-campus meeting at the beginning of the semester to walk the students through the online material. When online courses were later taught without the on-campus meeting, the percentage of W grades increased significantly.

These two sections had eight proctored tests, all the same, and the same proctored final exam. The results are shown below:

Student Comments

Here are some comments from students in the online courses:

"As I have learned to almost teach myself, I remember the material much more readily."

"I have had to work very hard, but I have learned more in two semesters of chemistry than I have learned in all the other courses combined."

"What I like the most about this course is that I made myself learn and did not have to rely on a professor."

"For the first time in my life I learned that I could learn complicated material on my own. This has been an exhilarating experience that will change my attitude toward my education."

"Can't say enough how awesome the online stuff is. I know it took a lot of time by Dr. Combs to put that information together but I think that it is really beneficial to his students."

"The things that I liked most: the on-line text and the links for practice sites and other sites. Also, the learning links where we can type in questions that we have. The things that I liked least: That you're not teaching 1212 in the fall!"

"The things that I liked most: I like that this course was computer based and had a lot of information on the web sites."

"The things that I liked most: I really liked having the information and notes online. The links to other sites came in handy when I didn't understand something we were covering. Also, incorporating a web participation grade is pretty cool. I have been inspired to work harder and pay more attention to my study habits."

Conclusions

The on-campus section scored better on all chapter tests when comparing these two sections, but the online section scored better on the final exam than the on-campus course. However, when we consider the standard deviations, the conclusion is "no significant difference". However, the continuing data of many on-campus sections and online sections over the last few years shows that the ACS two-semester cumulative exam results favor the online learners. Following some of the students as they take organic chemistry also indicates that the online students tend to retain their knowledge of general chemistry better than most on-campus students do. Perhaps these two observations are linked, in that the online students do better than the on-campus students on the two-semester exam because they have more effectively retained the first-semester material. Unfortunately, this conclusion is subjective.

Our five-year experience indicates that, in general, women learn better than men in the online courses. In four online courses the percents are as follows: A for men is 22%, A for women is 78%, B for men is 14%, B for women is 86%. As we utilize the web sites in more courses, we will study this observation more thoroughly. In a thorough investigation of web-based tutorials, Donovan and Nakhleh¹⁴ also noted that women were more successful in using the web sites.

The online students were able to take their knowledge of chemistry from a very poor start to a respectable finish by learning on their own using the provided web material, and we believe that this is a very important outcome. All educators want their students to become effective life-long learners, and we would argue that a very effective way to help students achieve such a goal is by their participation in at least one online class. The subjective comments by the students as sampled above are some of the best reasons to keep developing more and better web-based courses. Students learn that they can learn complex material without a "teacher" in the traditional sense and such an experience improves their self confidence and their readiness of life-long learning.

Zare¹⁵ recently commented about some of the values of online learning and some of the disadvantages that mainly included the role of the teacher and the joy a teacher receives from the "ah-ha" moments in class. Certainly the teacher is an integral part of a class and even more so in an online class. As noted above, the role of the teacher changes, but the role is still crucial to the learning experience of the students. Online teachers also have the very rewarding "ah-ha" moments, but such occurs online. An important part of online learning is the assignment of problems and thought processes as bulletin board projects. It is crucial for the online teacher to monitor the bulletin board discussions of the students and to help them if they need help in solving problems and in developing their thought processes. Just recently, several students worked through the thought processes of solving a complicated problem on the bulletin board and what a joy it was to the teacher to see them reach the correct solution by the correct process. They figured it out themselves, and the teacher was able to "watch" this "ah-ha" event. I could not see their eyes, but I felt their excitement, and I felt my excitement from seeing them succeed on their own initiatives. There is still joy, but in a new format.

The results of this study support the "no significant difference" so often reported. We conclude after five years of teaching the online chemistry courses that those students with the proper self discipline can learn freshman chemistry as well by taking an online class as by taking an on-campus class. However, we believe that, at this point in the web era, the hybrid course is the course of choice. The hybrid course would be one that had a web course as a reference - such as the ones described here - and the class would meet with the teacher once per week to work on group assignments and mini lectures. The once per week meetings would be optional, but would certainly meet the needs of many students. Other educators have been studying this hybrid option also¹⁶, and we will initiate such a hybrid this fall with both General Chemistry I and Survey of Chemistry I.

Anyone interested in looking at the web sites we have developed can freely see them at ChemNet and anyone may use them in their courses as they wish. The Survey of Chemistry I site contains all of the web elements discussed in this paper and they are being added to the other sites.

Acknowledgement

I thank Dr. Jennifer Powers and Dr. Vicky Bevilacqua of the KSU Chemistry and Biochemistry Department for their contributions as content experts for the Survey of Chemistry II web site. I thank Dr. Anita VanBrackle and Dr. Lewis VanBrackle of the KSU Mathematics Department for their analysis of the student surveys.

  References

1. The ACS Division of Chemical Education sponsored a symposium on web-assisted learning in chemistry at its 221st national meeting in San Diego, CA April 1-5, 2001. The symposium included 25 papers delivered in three sessions over two days.
2. Banks, Richard C., "The Evolution of a Web-Based Chemistry Learning Site", The Chemical Educator, 6, 309-310, 2001.
3. Robinson, William R., "Design of an Asynchronous Internet-Based Course for Advanced Placement Chemistry Teachers", The Chemical Educator, 5, 246- 251, 2000.
4. Combs, Leon L., "The Design, Assessment, and Implementation of a Web-Based Course", Educational Technology Review, accepted for publication, 2002
5. Judd, Carolyn S., "News from Online: The Power of the Voice", J. Chem. Ed., 77, 299, 2000.
6. RealSlideshow Plus 2.0, Real Networks, Inc.
7. Wiger, George, Chemistry Department, California State University at Dominguez Hills, CA
8. Goldman, Martin, and many other contributors, University of Colorado Boulder, partially funded by the NSF
9. MDL Information Systems, Inc.
10. Arneil, Stewart, Holmes, Martin, Hot Potatoes, version 5.4, University of Victoria Humanities and Media Center
11. WebCT, Inc.
12. WebAssign
13. Keirsey, D & Bates, M., "Please Understand Me: Character & Temperament Types", Prometheue Nemesis Book Company, Del Mar, CA, 5th Ed, 1984
14. Donovan, William J., Nakhleh, Mary B., "Students' Use of Web-Based Tutorial Materials and Their Understanding of Chemistry Concepts", J. Chem. Ed., 78, 975, 2001.
15. Zare, Richare N., "On the Love of Teaching and the Challenge of Online Learning: A Few Reflections", J. Chem. Ed., 77, 1106, 2000.
16. Jeffrey R. Young, "'Hybrid' Teaching Seeks to End the Divide Between Traditional and Online Instruction", The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 22, 2002.