Using the WWW for Teaching Chemistry

A demonstration poster for the Chemistry Webmasters meeting II

Paul May

As the Webmaster for the Chemistry Dept of the University of Bristol, I am interested in all aspects of the WWW, especially those concerned with using the Web to teach Chemistry. This can be done in a number of ways: passively or interactively. An example of the use of the WWW for passive information providing is that I have put all my lecture notes for the courses I teach on the WWW, so that they can be downloaded by students as and when required.

But the real excitement with the WWW is that it allows material to be be presented in an interactive format. In collaboration with the Bristol University Institute of Teaching and Learning Technology, I have written a multiple-choice tutorial including chemistry questions, graphics and equations. This tutorial uses a form of HTML compliant language called TML (Tutorial Mark-up Language), which is being developed by the ILRT specifically to allow such questions to be delivered remotely using the WWW. The demonstration question set has been designed to show some of the capabilities of using a system like this.

Teaching or Assessment?

1. Teaching mode: - Various web pages (which can contain small or very large amounts of text, images, diagrams, rotating molecules, etc) of information are presented to the student, who reads them and then answers a few simple MCQs as he/she progresses through the document(s). The questions are really there to act as self-directed learning aids, and the student's score is not important.
2. Assessment mode:- The text is short, and maybe only consists of the MCQs themselves. The marks are collated automatically by the computer.
3. A combination of the two: This may provide a template for possible future 'distance learning' projects.

Future Development

Try for Yourself...

I would be happy to receive any comments you have to make about it (paul.may@bris.ac.uk).

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