EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT STRATEGIES FOR THE EFFECTIVE USE OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB IN THE LEARNING AND TEACHING OF UNIVERSITY LEVEL CHEMISTRY

Abstract

The potential of the World Wide Web for the presentation of chemical information has been developed and extended to a considerable degree, yet not fully exploited for educational purposes. Some of the reasons for this are the uneven coverage of all degree level topics, the difficulty of finding relevant material and doubts about the quality of some material. Three distinct strategies have started to emerge for the effective use of the World Wide Web in the study of chemistry at university level. The assessment of the use of home written courses in terms of their educational value and cost effectiveness has been determined by means of a questionnaire distributed to the authors of a number of stand-alone chemistry courses. The effectiveness of the use of peer reviewed chemistry resources on the Web has been assessed through personal experience of setting up one such review site through the Web Reviews project. A number of web site “evaluation tools” have been developed, and one of these has been evaluated by applying it to several periodic table sites. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. Eur.: 2000, 1, 129-133]