Expeditions to the Real World
of Chemistry and Polymers

Lon J. Mathias, School of Polymers and High Performance Materials University of Southern Mississippi

Abstract

This proposal addresses the need for material to augment science education at the kindergarten through 12th grade level, and at the same time provide training for K-12 teachers to develop their own supplemental material. The project will focus on virtual field trips that we will initially develop ourselves, and that will serve as examples and course supplement material for teacher training in how to develop this type of multimedia education material in a class or school project. The focus will be on real world examples of chemistry and polymer science. These will include, for example, industrial settings, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, museums and dumps/recycling facilities. The expeditions will include historical material, cultural connections, personal antidotes plus photography, illustrations, animations and video clips. Our expeditions will be made available for class augmentation free over the internet and on CD/ROM ($30 plus shipping). These materials will also serve as the basis for teacher training in how to develop similar materials at the teachers' home institutions. In addition to providing educational material of specific focus, but of broad interest, this project will also acquaint both teachers and students with the capabilities of multimedia education and the development of educational materials. The goal is to motivate the teachers and provide them with the knowledge and skills to assist their students in developing similar expeditions, as either in-class or out-of-class projects. We envision broad impact through teacher-training-teacher workshops that will be developed in collaboration with the Master Teachers trained in our program. That is, the teachers that we train will help train and assist other teachers in their home institutions to learn multimedia education and the development of multimedia education materials using materials that we provide them and show them how to use (free web development software, extensive examples and on-line tutorials). The overall budget includes @$12,000 for equipment to implement the graphics components of the expeditions; funds for the summer workshops to train 60 teachers ($33,000 including subsistence and stipends for student laboratory assistants); travel for three trainers to workshops and training sessions at nationals meetings ($9,000); and funds to reproduce and distribute the education materials including the expeditions and tutorials ($6,000 which includes the cost of CD/ROM reproduction, printed versions of appropriate sections of the multimedia material and tutorials, shipping and postage) for a total of $60,000 over two years.


Introduction

Several questions that you might ask about this project include:

From last to first, the answers are simple. Field trips are disappearing in American schools because of liability and expense. The possibility for replacing such field trips with virtual experiences that combine historical and contextual information along with the excitement of an out-of-class experience can be an extremely beneficial mode of supplementing traditional classroom teaching. Second, multimedia is fun and educational because it is multisensory and interactive. Finally, polymer science and chemistry provide real-world examples that students can relate to, both in terms of their daily lives and in the areas of health and medical fields which will become increasingly important as we learn more and more about how to control and improve our quality of life. Let's look at each one of the above questions in more detail to help clarify the project and its potential impact.

Supplemental Web-site

A site (www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/proposal/dreyfus/index.htm) has been set up for two purposes. First, to illustrate what we can do in terms of web-site development on short notice. Second, and more important, is the fact that you cannot adequately describe the impact and utility of multimedia with words. This is akin to asking a movie critic to write a polished and pointed review from the script and not the rendered audio-visual version. Not only would his version differ from everyone else's, but it would certainly miss the multisensory impact inherent in multimedia.

Why Chemistry and Polymer Science?

The questions dealing with subject focus and method of presentation are best addressed by looking at successful examples. The most widely used and highly acclaimed educational site in polymer science today is our "Macrogalleria," found at: www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/index.htm. This site was developed as part of an educational degree program and has grown to be the most widely used out-of-class offering in polymer education in the world. In addition to being incorporated as it currently exists into many high school classes through the United States, in Europe and Asia, this material is employed in industrial training of new hires as a stimulating and rapid introduction to the field of polymers. We recently received a quote from a viewer in Germany who made the statement that, "I planned on looking at your material for about an hour and ended up spending three hours on my first visit. Wonderful stuff! I am a dedicated fan."
      As you will see in looking through the "Macrogalleria", the presentation is based on real world examples of polymer applications. This provides the viewer with concrete and first hand experience with the subject matter. This makes the content more relevant to the viewer personally, and provides a level of importance and vitality that reinforces the higher level technical information that builds on the introductory material.
      It has been said that chemistry is the central science, meaning that it is the basis for many of the other sciences such as biology and biochemistry, for example. We view chemistry as the main focus for a series of expeditions that will encompass the breath of application of chemical knowledge in modern society. Many of these examples will be polymer based and will build on our existing resource in the "Macrogalleria". In addition, we will explore the pharmaceutical industry and the areas of biomaterials and biopolymers in addressing illnesses, physical impairments, bodily repairs and body-part replacement. Additional expeditions are briefly outlined below to illustrate the range of potential field trips that we, and our teachers in training, will develop. A primary goal of this project is to introduce the students to science role models. Few K-12 teachers are trained scientists who can share the excitement of discovery by "doing" science. A major part of each expedition will involve interviews and video clips of working scientists, ranging from those in college and graduate school to long-time practitioners in industrial and biomedical research institutions.
      We have initiated polymer field trips in several areas, two of which can be viewed at the supplemental site for this proposal: www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/proposal/dreyfus/index.htm. These two examples are preliminary but illustrate the different kinds of approaches that individuals take towards developing a field trip. The first is "The Story of Rubber" and deals with historical development of elastomeric materials leading to the broad range of uses in modern society. This material was developed by the original main author of the "Macrogalleria" who is now pursuing his educational efforts at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, which is a continuing collaborator on this and other educational projects. The second expedition, "Polymers from the Sea", was developed by an undergraduate work study student over two semesters working part-time. This initial offering is based on her interest in marine biology, and focuses on the combination of biological sources of natural polymers and some of their historical and modern applications. This is an excellent example of how an individual can be trained in both the development of multimedia material and in chemistry and polymer science. Based on the training materials that we have begun developing for use in this project, the author of this expedition learned how to program Basic HTML and then expand her basic knowledge to include specific higher level components such as implementation of a site-based search engine. Similarly, starting with no knowledge of polymers or polymeric materials, she quickly developed an understanding of the sources of many natural polymers from a variety of ocean-based sources and pursued both historical and current applications. While the site is clearly more of an amateur effort than the "Story of Rubber," it is nonetheless interesting and useful. We envision our high school teachers reaching a level of proficiency somewhere between these two during the course of their summer training sessions. The students' projects that will result from teachers pursuing similar activities in their home institutions should be on par with the two examples given. In fact, based on increasing awareness among students of multimedia and computer programming learned on their own, the students may develop materials which are as good as any developed at the college level.
      These virtual expeditions are fun, exciting and educational because the mode of presentation is dynamic, multi-sensory and interactive. Browser based multimedia is the method of choice for graphics-oriented educational material, such as was once addressed by the school field trip. The virtual field trips that we are developing, and will help teachers and their students develop, will be fun and educational to make and use. Key to long-term development of these materials will be the potential for growth: if each teacher we train develops only one expedition per year, we can expect hundreds of modules to available within a few years. These field trips will vary in depth and breadth of coverage, but like the material generally found on the internet, there should be "something for everyone" to excite and educate about chemistry and polymers.

Teacher Training

The website with supplemental material has detailed outlines of the sessions envisioned for teacher training: www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/proposal/dreyfus/index.htm. These will be given in three one-week blocks of four sessions each throughout the summer, allowing us to present each session more than once and in sequences that allows teachers to attend when their summer schedules allow. In addition, a major part of this project will be to develop the multimedia training materials that will serve as the basis for these sessions. These training modules will be made available to the teachers for use in training their students. Their active participation in helping us develop these tutorials, along with their use of the tutorials in the home institutions, will provide us with the kind of "beta testing" and feedback we will need to revise and extend the modules for broader use. This program thus contains the start of the long-term implementation of distance learning in the area of using multimedia in K-12 environments and developing in-house modules for specific programs and institutions.
      In addition to the summer session that will involve training teachers from this region (within ca. 200-300 miles), we will present a series of introductory workshops at national educational meetings. These will be designed to make available both the educational materials that we and our trained teachers develop, and the training modules for how to use and develop additional expeditions, to other teachers for use in their home institutions. The nature of multimedia materials for browser based presentation allows rapid iterative development. This means that our initial modules and expeditions will continually be improved through feedback and modification. Over the two-year period of the project, we expect to develop a series of modules that will provide extensive and detailed training for both teachers and students in the development of multimedia material. In addition, our efforts for developing expeditions as examples combined with the expeditions that our Master Teachers, their students and their teacher colleagues develop will be added to the library of material at our site and made available to all participants and through the Web and CD distribution channels.

Budget

The budget is described in more detail at the supplemental web-site under the budget category. It includes $12,000 for video equipment. This will be used to develop our example expeditions and for teachers to use during the summer sessions to obtain and edit video content for their own modules. The summer session budget (first summer of the project) and the budget for travel and distribution of materials during the second year encompass the remaining budget items which are detailed in the attached document and on the supplemental web-site.

Personnel

Funds are requested for summer stipends for two undergraduate student assistants and a graduate student in polymer and chemical education. These students will be trained in HTML, web design and video incorporation into web pages. They will serve as in-lab resource people to help the teachers learn and use these techniques. Gregory Brust, a BS USM graduate who was co-author of the Macrogalleria and who is now pursuing a doctoral degree in polymer education at USM, would be the recipient of the graduate summer stipend. Undergraduates would be selected from the sophomore and junior polymer science and chemistry programs, and would be trained extensively before the first summer session. Other personnel being funded through additional grants include the BFA graphic artist, multimedia, web design and education outreach specialist, Nancy Warren; the staff videographer and web development assistant, Virginia Smith, who has a BA degree from USM in radio, television and film and a masters degree in communication; and the administrative assistant and multimedia authoring assistant, Karie Sorrells. Graphical sketches for these individuals are all included in the supplemental web-site at (www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/proposal/dreyfus/index.htm).