Teaching material and energy balances on the internet

Strategies for designing effective multimedia educational materials for lessons that are delivered over the Internet will be illustrated using lessons developed for the sophomore-level chemical engineering course on material and energy balances. The advantages offered by the Internet may be exploited to create a valuable educational experience for the student that cannot be duplicated in the formal classroom. These advantages include: i) convenient access to the course from any location and on any schedule; ii) an added level of communication of the scientific concepts through well-designed audio-visual content (including voice, simulations, animations, pictures, and video); iii) the students' control of the pace of the course; and iv) the ability to easily integrate problem solving with the "lecture" component of each lesson. We have developed an Internet version of CHE 201: Material and Energy Balances that illustrates some of the potential for delivering college courses over the Internet. Features of this course include: i) hour-long lessons that are delivered using voice, text, pictures, simulations and animations; ii) sets of 10 to 20 short answer questions that the students encounter about every 20 minutes and are designed to reinforce the concepts that they just learned; iii) an electronic bulletin board (called the Web Talk discussion system) that everyone can access which includes student questions that are updated and answered daily; iv) weekly homework assignments (with posted solutions), and quizzes as well as regular exams that are administered by an approved proctor; v) a cooperative group project in which teams of students work together over the Internet; and vi) a hypertext glossary that can be accessed by clicking on the word to be defined or by moving to the glossary web page.