Introduction for Instructors:

Using our activities

The ChemCollective has a variety of pre-written activities ready for you to use in your class. Activities are one of the following types:

• Virtual Lab Problems, which use a flexible simulation of a wet chemistry lab.
• Autograded Virtual Lab problems, which embed the virtual lab into a webpage that allows randomized generation of unknowns and automatically checking of student’s answers. (The completed activity can be printed and turned in as a graded homework assignment).
• Tutorials, which combine movies and text with interactive problems that serve as worked examples explaining stoichiometry, equilibrium and acid/base chemistry.
• Real-World Scenarios, wherein students apply chemistry concepts in a real-world situation.
• Online Courses, which provide comprehensive instruction through videos, text, virtual lab activities, practice tutors and assessments. The courses are developed with the Open Learning Initiative at CMU which provides tracking of student progress. Available courses include stoichiometry and a second semester chemistry video course.
• Particulate Level Visualizations, which connect the central ideas of chemistry to molecular motion and interactions. Concepts include chemical energy, equilibrium reactions, entropy and free energy.
• Simulations, which can be used for demonstrations, exploratory learning, or homework.
• Concept Tests, brief questions for use during class to see quickly how well students are getting a sense of the material.

Modifying, Contributing and Sharing your feedback

We believe that the best route to quality online resources is to involve instructors in all stages of activity development. We invite instructors to participate by:

• Using Materials in your Classroom. Our materials are free to use for educational purposes, please feel free to send your students to our website. Or we can create a custom page for your classroom.
• Modifying existing activities to fit different audiences or creating entirely new activities. Over half of our activities were developed in response to requests from our user community. (Our Virtual Lab activity authoring tool is currently being “revamped”. Until it’s completed, please feel free to contact us with your activity ideas, and we will be happy to create them for you).
• Sharing feedback and experiences with the activities. This is a great way to contribute to the community and find collaborators. (Soon we will provide the ability to comment on each activity using amazon style reviews, until then, please feel free to your feedback.)