Introduction

Because introductory chemistry is abstract and often seems distant from students’ experiences, instructors find it difficult to bridge the gap between theory and real chemical processes in a way that promotes interest in the subject, and thus an intuitive understanding and long-term retention of the material. Our starting point is that paper-and-pencil homework is simply not well suited to this goal and, while hands-on laboratory activities are important, they are typically limited in number and flexibility due to time, cost and safety constraints. Furthermore, introductory chemistry courses are typically large courses that are often viewed as essential to the department and university’s mission, and therefore not to be experimented with lightly. In this paper, we outline our strategy for designing simulations and integrating them smoothly into currently existing introductory courses, in order to gradually improve student learning.

Current computer-based instructional support in chemistry addresses some of the teaching/learning difficulties by relating concepts to meaningful and motivating contexts, by making them more concrete and visual, and by promoting active learning. For instance, by coupling acid-base chemistry to n-type and p-type doping of semiconductors, students can be given a broader view of the nature of thermal equilibrium.^[1]  A number of curricula are evolving to make stronger connections to real-world contexts via case studies from environmental studies and materials science.^[2],[3]  Our group has also created software that contextualizes introductory chemical concepts, including our “Acclimatizing on Everest” and “Internal Combustion Engine” applets^[4], in order to supplement homework on topics such as equilibrium and thermodynamics.   In addition, a wide variety of tools are available to improve visualization at the atomic and molecular levels, and to expand active learning. Software is also available for simulated laboratories on specific topics like kinetics and thermodynamics,^[5],[6] demonstrations of kinetics, ^[7] and exploratory data analysis.^[8] 

In this paper, we describe some of the Java applets we have developed and used in teaching introductory chemistry.  In the following sections, we give a tour of some of our applets, and discuss their design, and their uses in lecture and homework.  For each applet, we’ll highlight the motivation for the topics or contexts we have selected and address questions such as:

This paper is a progress report and current thoughts on our work in progress as well as our preliminary experience with using the software in introductory chemistry at Carnegie Mellon (http://ir.chem.cmu.edu/chem106/). We will present a number of Java applets that illustrate various uses and design approaches. We will close by discussing our plan for integrating these approaches, and present a proposed development environment to maximize the benefits of simulations in curriculum development.