Carnegie Mellon University has announced that its ChemCollective website has received the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE). The award, sponsored by Science magazine, recognises outstanding freely available online materials that enrich science education.
The ChemCollective website (www.chemcollective.org), developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, seeks to provide chemistry instructors with access to virtual lab and scenario-based learning activities. It gives introductory level chemistry students the opportunity to participate in activities that go beyond traditional textbook problems, allowing them to engage with chemistry in a way that more closely resembles the activities of practicing chemists.
Associate Professor of Chemistry David Yaron and his team, made up of software engineers, undergraduate programmers and educational consultants, began developing the resources used in the ChemCollective in 2000, and the site was launched in its current format in 2004. Last year, more than 100,000 experiments were performed on the website and the software was downloaded more than 25,000 times for use on local computers. Many instructors have submitted their own materials to the site to be shared among users. Of the 117 labs currently available on the site, 56 have been contributed by 11 different groups from the user community.
Science magazine announces one recipient of the SPORE award each month throughout the year, publishing an essay on each programme. The essay on the ChemCollective appears in the April 30 issue. Co-authors of the essay include Carnegie Mellon's David Yaron, Michael Karabinos and alumnus Donovan Lange, along with James G. Greeno and Gaea Leinhardt from the University of Pittsburgh.
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