The interactive online network of inorganic chemists (IONiC): Inter-institutional grant writing, project planning, and community building using social networking tools

CHED 765

Hilary J. Eppley, heppley@depauw.edu, Department of Chemistry, DePauw University, 602 S. College Ave, Greencastle, IN 46135, Margret J. Geselbracht, mgeselbr@reed.edu, Department of Chemistry, Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR 97202, Adam R Johnson, Adam_Johnson@hmc.edu, Department of Chemistry, Harvey Mudd College, 301 E. 12th St, Claremont, CA 91711, Burke Scott Williams, swilliams@jsd.claremont.edu, Joint Science Department of the Claremont Colleges, 925 N. Mills Ave., Claremont, CA 91711, Barbara A. Reisner, reisneba@jmu.edu, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, James Madison University, MSC 4501, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, Lori A. Watson, watsolo@earlham.edu, Department of Chemistry, Earlham College, 801 National Road West, Richmond, IN 47374, and Joanne L. Stewart, stewart@hope.edu, Department of Chemistry, Hope College, 35 East 12th Street, Holland, MI 49422-9000.
The Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists (IONiC) brings together faculty from seven colleges in a collaborative effort to develop resources for teaching inorganic chemistry. Our goal is to create an intellectual community to share pedagogical tools and techniques. We have used a variety of online networking tools to facilitate our collaboration, including Moodle, Sakai, Skype, Marratech, conference calls, and traditional face-to-face meetings. Most of our actual work, in terms of writing, short-range planning and development of learning objects for our online library, takes place individually at our home campuses. We meet, virtually via Skype or Marratech, on almost a weekly basis to check in and move the project forward. We used a Moodle site to write a “Course Curriculum, and Laboratory Initiative” proposal to the National Science Foundation, but this also demonstrated the limitations of classroom management systems such as Moodle for non-classroom activities. To overcome those problems we are now building a custom webpage to facilitate future projects.
 

Using Social Networking Tools to Teach Chemistry
1:30 PM-4:55 PM, Monday, April 7, 2008 Hilton New Orleans Riverside -- Oak Alley, Oral

Division of Chemical Education

The 235th ACS National Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 6-10, 2008