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1. Information • Textbooks • Media • Resources
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 12 December 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education 1653
The Internet and WWW connect people to each other and
to information with unprecedented speed and freedom from
geographical barriers. On the WWW one finds teaching and
learning projects ranging from placing grade books, quizzes, and
tutorials on the Web to the formation of learning communities
that erase the geographical isolation between teachers (1–3).
The chemistry community too participates in the WWW
growth explosion. The Division of Chemical Education sym-
posium “Chemistry and the World Wide Web” at the 213th
American Chemical Society National meeting contained 39
presentations. Many of these described projects that had an
impact on the students in a specific professor’s classroom—
electronic grade books, quizzes, and tutorials. In general, the
approach was to use the Internet as a repository of information
for students. Few presentations mentioned the potential
benefits of using the Web to connect students and professors
from diverse institutions to form a professional learning
community. This paper analyzes an attempt to engage students
and their faculty in just that type of collaboration.
To enhance the use of the Internet and the Web as
effective tools to support student learning, we need to care-
fully evaluate the course modules that are used for online
projects. The multidimensional nature of the WWW itself
requires that we build a multidimensional understanding of
the value of these innovations. We must dissect our activities
to discover strengths and weaknesses so that we can develop
instructional materials and WWW environments that lead
to more effective learning for students and faculty.
Our goal is to understand the principles of effective design
and implementation of successful WWW innovations. Since
students use these innovations, we need to understand their
perception of the Internet and computer-mediated instruction.
Using the “It’s a Gas” physical chemistry online activity, we
asked what are the perspectives of the students and faculty who
participated in an online physical chemistry activity?
Methodology
The Project
The project titled “It’s a Gas” is briefly summarized
here (4, 5). For this online module we set out to present a
chemistry problem in a nontraditional format—a play. As
the dialogue unfolds, two chemistry professors, Prof. Wall
and Dr. Redikong, discuss how students could evaluate three
different mathematical models of gas behavior (the ideal gas
equation, the Van der Waals equation, and the Redlich–
Kwong equation), at a specific temperature. Dr. Redikong’s
idea is to have the students do nonlinear curve fitting of these
three mathematical models via Mathcad (or other symbolic
mathematics software) and use sound statistical arguments
to choose the best model (6, 7).
The project was structured so that the students would
work in cooperative groups at their home institution, then work
collaboratively as a larger team on the Internet via a list
server. A cooperative approach was used because the faculty
in this project often use small-group activities in their own
classrooms and have found them to be a valuable method
for increasing students’ understanding. In addition, connecting
physical chemistry classes containing small numbers of students
(10 or fewer) via a list server gave students the opportunity
to discuss different approaches to problem-solving within a
larger interacting community. Zielinski facilitated the list
server and gave the students encouragement and clues (but
no outright answers) to help them solve the problem. Each
group of students was instructed to examine the pressure–
volume behavior of nitrogen at a fixed temperature by fitting
given data to three different mathematical models. The groups
analyzed the fitting parameters and shared their results with
students at other campuses via the list server. After exchanging
this information, the groups used statistical arguments to
choose the best mathematical model and reported their choice
and reasoning to the list server group. The results of the
project are detailed in Stout et al. (5).
An Assessment of a Physical Chemistry Online Activity
Marcy Hamby Towns and Kelley Kreke
Department of Chemistry, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306
Deborah Sauder
Department of Chemistry, Hood College, Frederick, MD 21701
Roland Stout
Department of Chemistry, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke NC 28372-1510
George Long
Department of Chemistry, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705-1090
Theresa Julia Zielinski
Department of Chemistry, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ 07764
*Corresponding author. Email: 00MHTowns@bsu.edu.
Chemical Education Research
edited by
Diane M. Bunce
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C. 20064

2. Information • Textbooks • Media • Resources
1654 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 12 December 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
Research Approach, Data Collection,
and Data Analysis
To gather information about the perspectives of the stu-
dents and the faculty who participated in the “It’s a Gas”
online project, we needed to use an approach that would help
us to understand their experiences. Thus, we used a qualita-
tive approach because it permitted us to obtain data that pro-
vided more depth and detail and it allowed us to investigate
the perspective of the students and faculty without using pre-
determined classifications.
To understand what the “It’s a Gas” online project
meant to the students and faculty and how we could
modify subsequent online projects, we directed the data
collection at capturing the student’s and faculty’s perceptions
of the activities. Archives of student email to the project
facilitator, faculty email, and the student and faculty responses
to an open-ended questionnaire comprised the data for this
study. The responses to the questionnaire were grouped by
question and analyzed to discover themes or patterns. Com-
ments from the email archives were used to check patterns
that emerged from the questionnaire data and to broaden the
way we described the perspective of students and faculty. The
final product of the analysis of the questionnaire transcript
and the email archives was three categories—strengths, weak-
nesses, and improvements, which helped us synthesize and
frame our findings.
Findings and Discussion
Table 1 displays our findings as three categories—
strengths, weaknesses, and improvements—and it serves as a
road map to guide the reader through the discussion. Each
category is presented with representative quotes from students
and faculty taken from the questionnaires and archived email
interactions. These quotations provide a framework for and
give context to the findings.
Strengths of the “It’s a Gas” Online Project
The strengths of the “It’s a Gas” project as described by
students and faculty were the interaction among students,
the use of Mathcad and modern technology, and the ex-
perience of authentic problem-solving.
Interactions among Students. The project was designed to
be a cooperative endeavor within the students’ own classroom
and on the list server. Thus, it was not too surprising that
more than half of the students found the interactions among
students to be a strength of the project. Lisa spoke for many
students when she wrote: “I think it’s good to interact with
other people when faced with a difficult problem.” More gen-
eral comments by Melissa and George—“The strength of the
project was the communication between students” (Melissa)
and “It made us communicate and think” (George)—voiced
an overall enjoyment of working with other students and the
building of relationships between students. Indeed, cooperative
learning as described by Johnson and Johnson is composed
of five essential components, two of which the students
referred to as strengths of the project: effective interpersonal
skills and positive interdependence (8, 9).
Faculty also found that the interaction among students
was a strength of the project. As Sauder wrote: “[the] students
had to work together” (10/7/96). The project was challeng-
ing, and students benefited from pooling their ideas to make
progress. Their reward, as Sauder noted, was “a great sense
of accomplishment once they got answers” (10/7/96).
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aQuotations are from students unless otherwise indicated in parentheses.

3. Information • Textbooks • Media • Resources
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 12 December 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education 1655
Use of Mathcad and Modern Technology. More than one-
third of the students commented that using Mathcad and
modern technology (i.e., the Web and the list server) were
key strengths of the project. For some students, this online
activity was their first experience using computer software
to analyze data. They discovered that these programs execute
mathematical calculations faster and more accurately, as Terry
stated: “It [Mathcad] has great potential for making tedious
calculations very accessible to the student.”
This remark, and others like it, indicate that if we want
students to use the computational tools that modern scien-
tists use and to recognize that they yield results more rapidly
and accurately than calculator or pencil and paper, then we
need to incorporate curve-fitting and statistical analysis into
the physical chemistry curriculum. However, it is not clear
that the students progressed to the point of being able to ex-
tract relevant statistical information using the software (5).
Most of them had only a rudimentary appreciation of the
application of statistics to data analysis. Developing and us-
ing sound statistical arguments involves risk-taking and re-
quires practice.
Other students focused their comments on the Web and
the list server. The nature of this project required the students
to use the Web to access the play and ancillary materials. The
“It’s a Gas” play included hot links to other Web sites that
contained useful, interesting, and humorous information.
Some students found using the Web to be the most enjoyable
and rewarding part of the project. For example, Mark found
that “the most rewarding aspect [of the project] for me was
using the Internet to get the information we needed to get
and complete the problem.” To complete the project we
required that the students use the list server to share problem-
solving information and to ask questions. The list server
promoted communication, collaboration, learning, and the
formation of an incipient learning community among the
students. As Al stated, “The main strength [of the project]
was the information posting, for it allowed other students to
see what ballpark there [sic] data was in.” Although we believe
that it is important for students to use technology to have
the opportunity to work with models, theories, and concepts,
we also view the formation of a larger learning community
as a key to helping the students construct meaning.
Authentic Problem-Solving. Although the study guide
identified the final goal of the project and some intermediate
goals, each group of students had to devise its own problem-
solving procedures. This project was not a cookbook lab, as
Ed noted when he wrote “I would say that [the strengths of
the lab were] learning to solve a problem on our own with-
out [a] cookbook.” However, other students struggled with
this instructional problem-solving milieu. One of the faculty’s
goals was to have students learn how to approach and solve
problems that were not from a textbook. Students are well
acquainted with problems that have “definite, deterministic
answers” (10). In essence, these are exercises for students, not
problems, which permit multiple approaches to a solution or
a variety of solutions. Real-world problems rarely present
themselves in clear and tidy packets, and interesting scien-
tific questions can be complex and complicated.
The faculty agreed that “the material was content
rich…[and] lent itself to open inquiry by the students” (Long,
10/9/96). Students need more experiences with these more
ill-defined or content-rich problems to change the expectation
that all problems are easily tractable and can be solved by a
defined algorithm. We need to challenge and nurture students
like Mark, who wrote that the most rewarding aspect of the
project was “solving a problem without looking at procedures.”
Weaknesses of the “It’s a Gas” Online Project
The weaknesses of the project as described by students
and faculty were the technological difficulties and the facili-
tation of interaction between students, and the use of ap-
propriate problem-solving strategies.
Technological Difficulties and the Facilitation of Interaction.
The week the “It’s a Gas” project began, hurricane Fran roared
into the North Carolina coast and the students at UNC at
Pembroke lost Internet communication with the other cam-
puses for more than one week. Simultaneously, the list server
did not function well. The students became frustrated with
their inability to send and receive messages. One student
wrote the following message to the facilitator: “Dear Dr. Z,
this operation is beginning to become frustrating. To date I
have not received any email messages from anyone. Would
[you] please see if there is any way that I can get these mes-
sages? Thank you.”
We realized that this frustration would appear on the
student questionnaire. When asked to write about the
weaknesses of the project Luke wrote: “The Internet com-
munication was down for most of the schools, hindering
interaction for the first couple of weeks of the project.” Although
the communication was not down for most schools, and
interaction was not hindered for a “couple of weeks”, this
quote illustrates the level of frustration that these problems
generated for the students.
The frustration extended to the faculty, who observed
student enthusiasm for using the Web and email waning as
the technological problems appeared. We all agreed that the
breakdown in communication was unfortunate. As Stout
aptly stated: “communications was a major flaw in this
experience…the problems we had with systems going down
or working unreliably was a major headache, but beyond our
control. I believe that it may be in part responsible for the
lack of student interaction on the net, and the small number
of questions or comments posted” (10/3/96).
Coupled to the breakdown in technology was an ensu-
ing lack of communication between the students at different
universities. Frannie wrote that the weakness of the project
was “not enough communication between students at differ-
ent schools.” The email that was shared among students from
different schools during the project was lacking in depth. As
Al wrote: “The main weakness was [that] the postings were
vague. They did not state how they attained the data nor why
their data was correct.” The faculty agreed that the students
needed to report their results in greater depth and with fuller
explanations.
Problem-Solving. The “It’s a Gas” project required that
the students stretch their problem-solving abilities. They had
to transform information in the play into discrete problems
that could be solved. The students became frustrated as
they realized that the project was a “problem” rather than an
“exercise”. Some students wanted precise procedures to follow;
as Ed wrote, “sometimes the lab was not clear enough on
how to go about finding the answer.” Faculty reported that
students were requesting precise directions on how to proceed,
which in accordance with the constraints of the project, they

4. Information • Textbooks • Media • Resources
1656 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 12 December 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
would not give. Despite encouragement to refer questions
to the list server group, the students did not ask students at
other universities what approaches they were using to solve
the problem. This made achieving the goals of the project a
difficult task, as Nancy and Jim indicated: “My main weak-
ness was that I didn’t clearly understand what exactly we were
trying to find. For example, after I found R [the gas con-
stant], I had no idea when the end was near” (Nancy); and
“Many times it seemed we would just sit and flounder for a
while, muster the courage to ask a question and then, not
being fully equipped to move on, move on and plunge into
the work. I did not fully understand the mechanics of how
to get the desired answer, how to ask the right questions”
(Jim, as communicated by Long on 10/4/96).
Jim articulated a pattern of behavior that all of the faculty
participating in the project observed. As Long expressed it:
“First I observed many of the same things that Roland [Stout]
and Debbie [Sauder] did. The students were often afraid to
ask questions” (10/4/96).
Wishing to change this behavior during the next online
physical chemistry event, we discussed why this happened.
We developed three explanations for the students’ inability
to ask questions, none of which are mutually exclusive. First,
it appeared that some students had no problem-solving
heuristics to invoke, and therefore had great difficulty just
asking questions that would help them proceed. If students
are unwilling to lose their “smartness ranking” among their
peers by asking questions (i.e., they must publicly show that
they do not know the answer), then the problem-solving
process can stall (11). Typically this culture flourishes in
disciplines that are competitive and where a cooperative
model is not often used. Second, we noted that the students
lacked experience in analyzing data and drawing reasonable
conclusions. Students were expected to fit mathematical
models, to alter parameters to better these fits, to recognize
that bad guesses yield results that are physically unreasonable,
and to draw reasonable conclusions using sound statistical
arguments. Nancy and Jim’s quotations illustrated the lack
of confidence many students had in their ability to analyze
data. Faculty observed that the students were not comfortable
taking the intellectual risks required to be successful. Third,
collaboration on the Web results in a type of cooperative
learning environment that is different from that found in a
classroom. The face-to-face and knee-to-knee interaction as
described by Johnson, Johnson, and Smith (9), cannot take
place if the participants are not in the same room. Computer-
mediated communication (CMC) is described as having a
“narrow bandwidth”—lacking the nonverbal information
(facial expressions, tone of voice, etc.) used to form impressions
of other people. Thus, we believe that CMC may slow col-
laboration among groups of students because they cannot
build a feeling of community in the usual way (5, 12, 13).
As we continue to develop our online activities we believe
we must structure interactions to help the students build this
feeling of community.
Improvements for the Next Iteration
Suggestions for improving the next online project were
aligned with the strengths and weaknesses reported by stu-
dents and faculty. Recommendations focused on facilitating
student interactions between universities, clarifying tasks and
goals, and implementing the online projects.
Facilitate Interuniversity Interactions among Students. The
students enjoyed interacting with each other and suggested
methods of facilitating the interaction between students at
different universities. Students proposed using other groups
to improve the depth and detail of messages. For example
Alice suggested “try[ing] to make the groups help one another
rather than having the groups appeal to the moderator.” Al
suggested “require[ing] groups to make a weekly posting and
analyze or criticize other groups findings.” Faculty involved
in the project believed that making the groups more interde-
pendent would encourage the students to interact with each
other’s messages. It could also enhance the level of detail and
the quality of analysis in the student messages. Facilitating
student interactions on the list server would maximize the
strength of the cooperative aspects of the project by helping
the students to form a cooperative learning community.
Clarify Tasks and Goals. Even though the students had
access to a study guide that delineated the goals of the project,
they suggested explaining the goals and tasks more clearly.
For example, Mindy, Melissa, and Julie all wanted clearly de-
fined questions: “Have clear directions and procedures”
(Julie); “Explain the questions a little more” (Mindy); “I
would express the questions of the problem more clearly”
(Melissa).
These recommendations may have sprung from the
laboratory experience of the students. If the students were
used to cookbook procedures, then laboratory assignments
that required them to develop their own procedures to find
solutions would make them uncomfortable.They may not have
known how to take an authentic problem that was sketched
out in broad strokes and translate it into recognizable solvable
“chunks” (14). However, Long (10/9/96), Stout (10/7/96),
and Sauder (10/3/96) reported that the students gained self-
confidence as a result of generating their own procedures for
solving problems. The students also gained an appreciation
for working together. In Sauder’s class it was the middle-ability
students who “came up with the breakthrough that allowed
my class to get as far as it did” (10/3/96, Sauder).
Implementation of Online Projects. Both students and
faculty expressed concern about when to run the online
activity during the fall semester. Learning a relatively new
software package took time, and the consensus among the
faculty was to have the students perform some computational
activities prior to the online activity. This would allow the
students either to learn enough about the course software to
be successful or to refresh their memory about the nuances of
Mathcad or other course-specific software. Accompanying the
idea of reacquainting the students with the software or helping
them learn a new software package was the recommendation
to initiate the online activity after the students have seen the
material in class. As Jenny wrote, “I would not have given this
project at the beginning of the semester, but more towards
the end, after the students got some background experience
of what P-Chem is about.” Another reason to use familiar
material was suggested by Long who wrote that material
familiar to the students could be used “as a hook to get
students interested in the project” (10/9/96).
Implications Part I: The Next Iteration
Armed with our evaluation, we crafted the next online
project, which focused on the spectroscopy and structure of
iodine—a topic covered in the second semester of physical

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JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 12 December 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education 1657
chemistry. We made two modifications designed to facilitate
student interaction and to divide the problem into more trac-
table tasks. To increase the number of messages and encour-
age interaction among groups of students, we included
prompts in the laboratory directions. For example, one of
the prompts read “Write a brief note to the listserv explain-
ing your understanding of what causes materials to be col-
ored.” We decided that the facilitator would be in charge of
asking probes for other groups to respond to if the students
did not take the responsibility upon themselves.
The structure of the iodine activity was like that of a
traditional laboratory exercise in that there were clearly defined
tasks for the students to accomplish. The iodine activity con-
sisted of 13 minimodules or steps designed so that the students
could not access the next module unless the current module
was completed. A report of this project is in press (15).
Beyond the iodine activity, we plan to structure future
projects so that groups of students at different universities
are responsible for specific tasks. This procedure is often used
in engineering laboratory courses where different groups are
responsible for specific design elements, which mesh together
to build a final product (for example, designing blades, a sup-
port structure, and the main assembly to ultimately construct
a windmill) (16 ). In the real world, industry also divides tasks
according to research groups, scientists, or subcontractors who
have expertise that can contribute to the quality and cost-
effectiveness of an overall project. This design reflects the im-
portance of working as a team to achieve goals in the real world.
Implications Part II: Unexpected Treasures—
Forging a Learning Community among Faculty
As the “It’s a Gas” project progressed, the faculty email
discussions widened to include discussions of pedagogy and
professional practices. We began sharing advice, for example
discussing how we taught different concepts and what concepts
we emphasized or omitted. We asked each other questions
and exchanged information. We brought different strengths—
Web management expertise, spectroscopy, computational
chemistry, assessment, writing skills, etc.—to each project and
we drew on each other’s strengths throughout each project. We
self-corrected and we grew. We developed into a professional
learning community that rendered our geographical isolation
null.
Our learning community allowed us to adopt new prac-
tices and to forge professional links. We have a synergetic
relationship that has increased our professional motivation
through working with colleagues who are interested in similar
teaching and learning issues. By the end of the “It’s a Gas”
project, team members began writing papers and generating
presentations. The more experienced members of our team
offered their classroom wisdom and have evolved into off-
campus mentors for the less experienced members of our
team. We all freely shared personal professional competencies.
Our professional learning community is the vehicle by which
we are transforming our classroom practices and enhancing
our professional development. This may be the unexpected
treasure of the project.
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