Beginning in about 1994, I wanted to augment my senior level instrumental analysis course with a data set extensive enough that it would, unfortunately, be too onerous for my students to type in from a paper handout. Passing around floppy disks was possible but this process had its own drawbacks. An alternative was for students to download an ascii file from our university server using FTP (file transfer protocol). The exercise involved logging in to a directory on our UNIX server from a network prompt, locating the file in a sub directory, initiating and completing the download, saving the file on a floppy or hard drive, and then importing the file into Microsoft Excel^®. I assigned this "experimentally" at first.

Once I realized that the students were enjoying the quick, always available, anytime nature of the assignment, I started to increase the kinds of things we made available online. Soon we were offering a copy of the course syllabus, detailed instructions for the laboratory reports, and other data files. We were moving to the e-education or computer aided teaching support of a traditional chemistry course in a relatively natural and obvious manner.

Soon my students were accessing the files in our FTP directories using a browser (Mosaic^® then Netscape^®) and then we started to worry about formatting documents in HTML, providing images of instrumentation, and arcane aspects about how cutting and pasting data columns into Excel are effected by differences between Macs and PCs, etc. Soon last minute changes in our lab procedures were posted as HTML documents the week before the lab. These were often last minute changes necessitated by the TA herself who discovered that reagent volumes or identities needed to be changed from what we had used in the previously "published" procedure as she prepared the experiment for the next week.

Soon my university had a chance to get in on the beginnings of a "software Package" aimed at universities, and we began to use Web Course in a Box^® (WCB). This collection of server-based files used what I still consider some innovative HTML and javascript coding by programmers originally at Virginia Commonwealth University, Sue Polyson and Bob Godwin-Jones.

I still constructed content such as instrument schematics for my instrumental course and animations using drawing programs, GIF animators, and QuickTime^® (see here) but I could then easily make it available in different courses using links on course pages, course pages inside an online course environment that students in each class logged into. Also, cosmetically, WCB created a consistent look across pages inside the same course and among different courses. In this way, navigation became substantially more systematized and easier for students to use in different WCB-augmented courses.
 

A few years ago WCB was absorbed by Blackboard^®. Fortunately importation of WCB-based courses pages was supported (rumor was again Sue and Bob were working hard) and so we became a Blackboard-based university. Now I use Blackboard-based course work in my courses from freshman though graduate classes.

So there you have the history of how I got into "e-education." Now all my courses have some on-line content. And although we do offer a completely on-line freshman chemistry course (sans lab) the courses described here only fit what Walt Vollard would probably termed "server-supported."

Pretty mundane? In my experience this is a relatively common manner of adopting teaching tools: we choose the tools that we see can provide a benefit. We try lots, discard lots, and keep some. I don't use overhead transparencies in my classes but find use for computer-based PowerPoint^® and QuickTime^® displayed via a laptop and a projector. E-mail has proven to be something almost indispensable in my teaching...a high speed streaming video server has yet to prove its worth to me in my course work (and I'm the heaviest user of computer animations and video in my department). 

I rely heavily on Server-based forums (or discussion groups) in all but my freshman and graduate courses, but so-called virtual chat rooms or white boards just don't find a place in my courses  even though these are part of the Blackboard package. Finally, I use white chalk but find the texture and consistency of color chalk decidedly unappealing and frankly hard to use, so I don't.
blackboard as a platform for network-based course material
The following is a short listing of how I use online computer- and network-based support of courses at each undergraduate level that I routinely teach. The benefit to me and my students at each level and course is slightly different and, I think, useful to highlight here. I've divided each level up and will describe each separately. (If you'd like to view some of the Blackboard-based course work, you'll need to turn on cookies in your browser. The most recent release of Blackboard is heavily dependent upon cookies to help its pages and (I guess) data base access and display.)

Freshman Chemistry

A qualifying exam is an effort to help these students avoid significant surprises. I require these students to take the online qualifying five days before each test to help them prepare for the test. The qualifying exams are multiple choice, ordering, and true and false and graded immediately automatically. Blackboard records the result of the exam and both the student and I can see the score. All the practice quizzes and qualifying exams scores can be accessed online.
qualifying exams as a teaching tool for freshman

At this point I'm not requiring a specific score on the qualifying exam to take the in-class lecture exam but instead merely require a recorded score before the in-class test can be taken. And no, I have not statistically evaluated the relationship between scores on these quizzes and qualifying exams and the associated tests or course grades (correlated? anti correlated?). I'm still experimenting with this teaching tool. The purpose in my eyes is to help students--who are often poor judges of how that can do on an in-class exam--get feedback of their progress before it "counts against them."

 The result is ultimately a totally (student-completed) worked-out problem set for each test and, in all fairness and support of these hard working students, some of each in-class test's material comes from these problems.
url links to material on the web

• Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission's Ozone Animation Page
• NASA's Ozone and the Atmosphere's Page
• NASA's Ozone (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) Multimedia Page
• MSIS-E-90 Atmospheric Model Page
• Internal Combustion Engine animations (How Stuff Works) Page

These assignment forum posts are also augmented/formatted by the students in a manner that makes use of simple HTML coding. The students are given a short HTML primer (at this SHSU primer site then click preview) for coding that works inside Blackboard's forums, and told that they must format at least two items in each of their posts using HTML. The student in the adjacent figure used the HTML-based temperature degree signs and a bit of color. Surprisingly students have taken to this additional forum posting requirement easily. I think many of these students, who as a group are very computer- and web-savy, are interested in HTML code because they have seen so much flashy content on the web. The red Xs in the adjacent image (as I recall) were links to a GIF image of the molecules he had chosen for his assignment. This student also included a link to a digital attempt at arguably Eric Clapton's most famous song, again using HTML code to insert the link. Students' interesting in writing in chemistry, I think, helps them understand more of what they read and write. And who can disparage interest in Eric Clapton's lead guitar!

Finally these students are exposed to animations to teach selected instrumental methods, but that was covered elsewhere.

On-line Bibliography
www.blackboard.com commercial site
Blackboard courses discussed above:
    Freshman Chemistry, CHM 138 (then click the little preview button)
    Quantitative Analysis, CHM 241 (then click the little preview button)
    Environmental Chemistry, CHM 368 (then click the little preview button)
    Instrumental Analysis, CHM 440 (then click the little preview button)
Casanova, R.S.; "Student Performance in an Online General College Chemistry Course"; CONFCHEM Fall 2001.
Chasteen, T.G.; "Animations in an Instrumental Methods Chemistry Class?"; CCE Fall 2001 Newsletter.
Clapton, E.; Gordon, J.; Layla from Album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" by Derek and the Dominoes; Polydor Records; 1970.
Combs, L. L.; "Web Courses in Freshman Chemistry"; CCE Fall 2002 Newsletter.
McGoldrick, B; "The Genesis of an Online Chemistry Course";  CCE Fall 2000 Newsletter.
Parrill, A.L.: "Everyday Chemical Reactions: Promoting Interest and Learning Through Relevant Writing Assignments"; CONFCHEM Fall 1998.
Smith, S; Stoval, I.; "Networked Instructional Chemistry"; ONNFCHEM Summer 1996.
Voland, Walt; "Why add an on-line course to the curriculum?"; CCE Fall 2000 Newsletter.