CASPiE the Friendly Ghost

The “Center for Authentic Science Practice in Education” (CASPiE), as a part of the NSF’s Undergraduate Research Centers efforts received a 4-year, 2.5 million dollar grant starting August 15th, 2004 to introduce research rich experiences to first and second year college students. As part of their dissemination requirements they are holding a series of workshops [...]

Barriers to Contributing to (& Benefiting From) Online Communities

For OChemOnline it is essential to increase the intersection between 1) People with internet skills able to perform simple internet tasks, 2) Organic Chemistry laboratory instructors and students, and 3) Individuals motivated to contribute to and benefit from an online community. Skills are important, but they do not seem to be the major obstacle. Everything [...]

Putting a Human Face on Electronic Social Networking

This week a number of electronic Social Networking chemists are traveling to New Orleans for the Spring 2008 American Chemical Society National Meeting. It seems ironic that eSocial Networkers perceive a need to promote their projects in a face-to-face Social Networking situation. I other words, no matter how prolific and how proficient you are at [...]

Chemist Seeking a Sustainable Community

Sophomore Organic Chemistry instructor seeks other SOC instructors and students. Objective: sharing informal knowledge and initiating collaborative experiments. I have spent the afternoon trolling the www for like-minded individuals. This has proved to be a little more difficult than it might seem. If there is a community of SOC instructors and students out there waiting [...]

Open Science in the Sophomore Organic Chemistry Laboratory

The Peer Developed Peer Led sophomore organic chemistry (SOC) laboratory experiment project is offered as an attempt at doing “open science” in the internet age. We are doing our best to document our process and relay the results to others who may be interested in either the process of developing SOC experiments or the experiments [...]

If you are not making mistakes, you are not learning

Making mistakes, as much as we don’t like to make them, are an integral part of the learning process. How much room for making mistakes must we allow for in Sophomore Organic Chemistry Lab? As an SOC lab instructor, I certainly don’t want to put students in a situation where innocent mistakes might put them [...]