Summary and Discussion

Based on our experience developing and testing this series of applets in a preliminary way, we have converged on some overall strategies for using simulations: 

Simulations help in lecture to keep students focused on the overall goal and qualitative issues and to prevent the chemically significant concepts from getting lost in calculations (as in the stoichiometry and color applets).
Simulations allow students to see concepts in meaningful contexts, thus providing motivation for the more abstract and complex material in introductory courses (as in the color and Everest applets).
Simulations enable students to first focus on each separate aspects of a complex phenomena, and then later assimilate these into an overall understanding (as in the color applet with delayed introduction to particle in a box).
Simulations allow students to interact with selected parts of a complex phenomena, while the computer handles those skills that are beyond the current level of the student (as in Everest).
Concept reinforcement and transfer between various portions of the course can be promoted by using a common simulation (such as the Virtual Lab), but allowing students to interact with different components at different times throughout the course.

As discussed earlier, Homework based on simulations can provide an ideal inroad to improving large lecture courses (as in both Everest and the Virtual Lab). It also may have a number of significant advantages over the most closely corresponding paper-and-pencil activities, as shown in the following table.

Challenges with traditional homework

Benefits of Simulation

Classic textbook problems may inadvertently overemphasize quantitative reasoning over qualitative and conceptual reasoning.

Simulations can focus students on observing and predicting key phenomena based on fundamental concepts, while potentially extending learning from calculation-based problems.

Introductory course material makes it difficult to develop problems involving more than a single step, and most real-world phenomena involve multiple concepts and time-dependence.

Simulations allow the computer to handle the topics that students aren’t ready for, and allow students to interact with just that portion they are currently studying.

Achieving realism often requires a complex cover story, but often the story can be ignored in solving the single-step problem embedded in it.

Allowing students to interact with different portions of the simulation at different points in the course may help them deal with realistic phenomena and integrate the material from different parts of the course in a meaningful context.  This benefit can be extended to cross-discipline simulations.

Our vision for the next stage in developing software for introductory chemistry that maximizes the learning benefits of simulations for a large number of students includes the following design principles:

Ø      The software should be both general and flexible so that it can be easily incorporated into existing lectures and laboratories at diverse institutions.  For instance, the Virtual Lab software can be used in a variety of ways to fit the educational goals and environment of a specific course and institution while remaining easy to work with for faculty who do not want to spend time programming.

Ø      The software should complement rather than attempt to replace the primary teaching materials in the course.  While multi-day modules allow for deep exploratory learning, smaller components are more easily integrated into courses with hundreds or thousands of students.

Ø       The software should empower large numbers of faculty by giving them tools to develop new teaching methods via low-risk incremental changes. Taking a curriculum development strategy which combines course modules[14] or applets on specific topics,[15] with a general laboratory simulation invites faculty to reflect on both broad course goals, such as teaching students to reason scientifically, and specific content, such as the behavior of weak acids and bases.

Ø      The design of the software should draw on teaching and learning research, such as that in technology-enhanced learning environments,[16] inquiry or discovery learning,[17] skill acquisition,[18] and motivation theory.[19] For instance, a core principle guiding our work is that to improve students’ conceptual understanding we must substantially change how students interact with the material and better facilitate their exploration of relationships between abstract theoretical concepts and observable  chemical processes.

Ø      The technical implementation of the software should be easy to deploy in a complex heterogeneous computing environments and minimize the logistics that can be especially time-consuming in large courses. Network computing technologies such as the Java computing language and networked databases have been used successfully in corporate information systems to tackle similar challenges. Our goal is to allow our software to be run from any computer with an Internet connection and a Java-enabled browser; however, the Virtual Lab uses Java-2 which currently requires that the user take the time to download the Java plug-in.

Ø      Finally, a practical feature of simulations that can have a substantial educational impact is integrating the software with the course structure and management so that it can be adopted in many courses. Since developing new assignments creates new grading demands and often requires the creation of new grading criteria, software must be able to support these important evaluation and feedback activities in order to be used widely. We are currently working on integrating our software with a database that collects assessment data on student activities and allows automatic grading of student assignments.

© 2000, David Yaron

Last Modified: 04.11.00