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By Jean-Claude Bradley | March 26th 2007 11:38 AM | 10 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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About Jean-Claude Bradley

Jean-Claude Bradley is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and the E-Learning Coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.

He teaches organic


... Full Bio

Yesterday, I gave my first talk at the March07 ACS meeting on Teaching Organic Chemistry with Blogs and Wikis. The screencast is now available.

It was part of a symposium on Using Social Networking Tools to Teach Chemistry organized by Harry Pence and Andrea Gay. Joanna Scott gave a most interesting talk about Nature's experimentation with Second Life and the great possibilities for communicating research work. Harry is also involved with Second Life. Indeed I met him in world by accident a few days ago!

Largely because of Beth Ritter-Guth's tireless dedication to implementing educational opportunities in Second Life, I am finally coming around and seeing the potential for teaching and research. With the help of Eloise Pasteur (SL name), Beth has created an adaptation of the EduFrag quizzes for second life.

The rules are the same but the interface is very different from Unreal Tournament. Click on the obelisk to get the quiz started. Four images will appear and only one will be correct. Click on the correct one to go to the next set. Clicking on an incorrect image will make you start over. If you make it past the 20th room you will be a rewarded with a picture of my cat yawning.

The material in the current quiz is on introductory organic chemistry (Lewis structures, Newman projections, nomenclature, etc.) and I will make good use of it in the class I am teaching next week.

Give it a try and let me know how it works. The quiz is located in the Open Notebook Science building on Eduisland (slurl). We'll be adding more material related to UsefulChem there shortly (thus the use of the Blue Obelisk).



Comments

Hank's picture
That's brilliant! Kids won't ever be able to escape homework, even during video games!

Sounds pretty cool, but how do plan on keeping students from cheating. I mean after all, now it will be twice as easy to talk to your neighbor, if you are using an independent communication program, like AIM ro Gtalk. This only really matters, if you take things like acredidation seriouslly, which I don't, but you know, most people do.

jcbradley's picture
Albert,
These quizzes are just for practice, as an alternative to WebCT and Unreal Tournament. We'll see how it goes...

Actually, I want to apologize.  I sorta wrote that in the heat of the moment, and it did not come out the way I wanted it to, and I didn't mean to put off an attitude.  In all honesty I think what you are doing is really cool and innovative, and please allow me to explain why. The point that I wanted to make that I now realize I didn't up making at all, is the following.    What your very interesting chemistry second life game does is allow students to learn in an online format using motivational methods alternative to the the traditional grading system that of course ties into the whole acrediation system.   I think that's great!  To me it sounds like a much better way to learn than by essentially threatening students with lifelong failure if they don't keep up with their studies.  In my own personal opinoin, I have always seen the acredidation system as a necessary evil, but maybe with enough creative innovations like what you have done in SL, it may be possible to at least partially do away with the acredidation system as a way to motivate learning.    

jcbradley's picture
Albert,
It didn't come off negatively to me. The idea of using Second Life to test for points is in the back of my mind but I have not seen enough yet. I usually run races in my class for prizes using Unreal Tournament (educational version) on my students' laptops. I think it would be better in Second Life because students could come in remotely from anywhere.

Hank's picture
I don't know why this Chemistry teaching in Second Life isn't on the CBS Evening News. I think it is a terrific idea.

P.S. You're both at ACS so you should grab a coffee.

jcbradley's picture
Oh that would have been good but I'm leaving in the morning :(
Next time...

Hank's picture
I forget that not everyone drinks coffee at night. I own more coffee makers than I own pairs of pants.

Yah, I've already left the ACS too.  I would have loved to stay longer, but I got three homework assignments backed up, plus a test on friday.  But let's not forget, kittlings, that we don't need to be in the same room anymore to hook up and communicate.  :) 

Kittlings is a reference to a book by Jeff Noon called Vurt.  I highly recommend it if you are into fantasy/sci-fi.

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