Application Software


Interactive, digital video lessons replace up to half the traditional laboratory work for the first semester non-major general chemistry course. Students spend the alternate weeks doing wet laboratory experiments.

Computers are also used to enhance wet laboratory experiments by allowing students to collect data on-line, store it on the server, and review it later. Each group of students has a location on the server to store its data. No group can see or change another group's data. After leaving the lab, individual students can access and analyze their data from other computers on the network.

Multimedia technology is extended into the discussion classroom by equipping small classrooms with networked computers and large screen monitors. Small lecture-discussion sections with around thirty students per section are taught by teaching assistants who augment the traditional blackboard and chalk presentations with multimedia which includes both still and full motion video images of chemical reactions, demonstrations and example problems.

Weekly quizzes on the computer allow students to take the quiz at a time convenient to them. In addition, the quiz is graded immediately and students can see both thir answers and the right answers within a time frame when such feedback is educationally effective. The Chemistry Quizzing System runs both on the Internet, and on the local area network in the Chemistry Learning Center. The same quiz can be given on both the Internet and the LAN, or on either one.

Networked lessons are also used as electronic homework. In organic chemistry this takes the form of tutorial lessons with extensive practice problems.

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