USING the INTRANET in Che INSTRUCTION
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(.3.. 5-3._c_l_a_s_s_r_o_o_m __________ ) USING THE INTRANET IN ChE INSTRUCTION D AVID w. M. M ARR, J. D OUGLAS W AY Colorado School of Mines • Golden, CO 80401-1887 eflecting an overall information revolution, commu for browsing through the Internet are not only capable of nication across the Internet has evolved rapidly in surfing the net but also of distributing information within a R the past few years, from primarily text-based (e corporation, a university, or even within the classroom in a mail) information to graphically oriented material. This has similarly convenient fashion. In the same manner that these been due to the amazing growth of the World Wide Web browsers and the Internet have made accessing information (WWW) and the development of web browsers, beginning across the world nearly instantaneous and interesting, the with NCSA Mosaic but now including Microsoft's Internet intranet can be used to assist instruction and information Explorer (based on Mosaic) and the current market-dominat distribution within the classroom. 111 ing Netscape. The academic community has, for a number Wouldn' t it be nice to of years, been fervent in its use of the Internet (how long could we survive without e-mail?) and has expanded its use • Improve your undergraduate courses with your exist as the Internet has grown. The desire to remain at the fore ing campus network? front of information technology has led to significant aca • Improve communication with your students and col demic discussion concerning the use of the WWW and the leagues? Internet in undergraduate and graduate education _l2-4J • Save resources (such as paper) by publishing assign Much of the discussion about using the Internet has con ments, solutions, course syllabi, exams, and quizzes on cerned incorporation of the vast amount of information avail the WWW? able across the Web into the curriculum. Given a Universal • Publish grades and scores on the intranet while pro Resource Locator (URL-basically a web address), one can tecting students' security? immediately travel throughout the world and obtain infor mation (text, images, files, programs, etc.) that have been • Provide assistance to students outside of the classroom posted on the Internet. The tools that have been developed or office hours? • Provide student access to course materials twenty-four David W.M. Marr is Assistant Professor of chemi cal engineering and petroleum refining at the hours a day ( and thereby eliminate a host of common Colorado School of Mines. He received his BS excuses)? from the University of California, Berkeley (1988) and his PhD from Stanford (1993). His research • Obtain truly anonymous feedback from students? interests include interfacial phenomena, complex fluids, semicrystalline polymer blends and com • Advertise your course to a broader audience both on posites, and scattering techniques. campus and outside your school? The goal of this article is to describe our efforts to incorpo J. Douglas Way is Associate Professor of chemi rate the intranet into the instruction of an undergraduate cal engineering and petroleum refining at the Colo chemical engineering course and to relay those aspects of rado School of Mines. He received his BS, MS, and PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder. the incorporation that appeared to be most useful. We will His research interests include novel separation also give some tips for developing Web-based materials, processes, membranes, catalytic membrane re actors, and biopolymer adsorbents for heavy metal including a discussion of the current status of Web standard ...._...._.-L..--.......1 remediation of ground and surface water. development and the various tools available to aid in Web © Copyright ChE Division of ASEE 1997 110 Chemical Engineering Education page construction. In our own experience, some of the things ability to incorporate supplemental course materials such as we have attempted have worked quite well, while others pictures, diagrams, videos, and even links to other informa have been less successful. We hope that those who attempt tion sources across the Internet. Having the course home to duplicate our efforts in their own department at some time page also provides a ready means of communicating with in the future can benefit from this discussion. the class outside of the lecture, thereby giving the instructor some flexibility in the course outline. In COMPUTER INTEGRATION AT general, though, and especially in this COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES The tools that have been initial incorporation of the Web into our At the Colorado School of Mines (CSM), developed for browsing course, we hoped that making class ma terials readily accessible to students out we are well poised for incorporating the through the Internet are Web into undergraduate chemical engineer side of the classroom would aid in their ing instruction. This is due to a large dona not only capable of surfing assimilation of the subject matter. tion and the construction of the Bernard th e net but also of Coady computer laboratory incorporating 22 distributing information WHAT IS HTML? IBM RS/6000 workstations in a classroom within a . classroom in In order to use standard Web brows environment. These workstations are used a similarly convenient ers in displaying classroom materials, throughout the undergraduate chemical en fashion. In the same the documents and graphics must be for gineering curriculum,151 primarily as a tool matted in the language of the Internet. for using the ASPEN and Provision simula manner that these This requires converting documents pre torsc6·71 in courses ranging from the initial browsers and the Internet pared by other means (LaTeX, Word, mass/energy balances course all the way have made accessing Excel, etc.) into Hypertext Markup Lan through the senior design course. This work information across the guage (HTML). Once they have been station classroom is also used in teaching world nearly converted to HTML, any browser soft organic chemistry with Spartan molecular instantaneous and ware can be used to preview the docu modeling and visualization software.181 ments before they are added to the course interesting, the intranet Web site. Because of the required and heavy use of can be used to assist networked workstations in their other Hypertext Markup Language is a rela coursework, students have ready access to instruction and ti vely simple means of preparing docu the Internet. In addition, many students also information distribution ments in a manner that various browsers have access to the Web from their home or within the classroom. can use to display information in a for dorm via dial-up access to the CSM net matted manner. Preparing documents in work or other external networks (such as HTML, particularly simple text-based Compuserve and America On-Line) and are able to readily materials, can be quite easy. The HTML "language" is text obtain classroom information. In fact, a recent survey of heat based and can therefore be created and read with a large transfer undergraduates showed that every single student in number of applications and word processors. Various tools the class knew how to access the WWW and that fully two for converting files such as those produced by Word, thirds of them could access the Web from their home/dorm. Excel, and LaTeX to HTML are available on the Internet. For those who are interested in preparing their own docu WHY USE THE INTRANET? ments directly, or in optimizing files created using con Academicians are not noted for having a lot of free time, verters, a number of excellent tutorials are available on so the first question one of them usually asks is, "What do I the Internet. They include: get in return for the time investment required to incorporate • A Beginner's guide to HTML the Web into classroom instruction?" It is a difficult ques http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/lntemet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html tion to answer because the Web is always evolving-prob • A Bare Bones Guide to HTML ably at a rate proportional to the rise in the use of the http://werbach.com/barebones/barebone_html.html Internet itself. As the number of uses for the Internet increases, so do the conceivable applications of having • The Web Designer such a resource available. http://web.canlink.com/webdesign (This site has a great list of the converters currently available on the Internet for the various Our approach in this initial use of Web-based materials computer programs and platforms.) has been foc used on the ability to rapidly disseminate infor mation in a convenient manner. There are, however, a num In addition to the above, Java is the latest development in ber of other possible advantages in using the Web to aid in incorporating new capabilities into Internet browsing soft the instruction of an undergraduate course. They include the ware. Developed at Sun Microsystems, Java is a true pro- Spring /997 JI I gramming language for the Internet that, in its simplest page prevented many students from showing up at the form, allows incorporation of animation into Web pages.191If door and finding us unavailable. your browser is Java-capable (most current browsers are Course Syllabus • A description of our policies on Netscape has such versions available for UNIX worksta grading, homework, and exams so that students would tions, PCs, and Macs), a great site for exploring its capabili always have access to the information. ties is Course Outline • A description of where we expected http://www.javasoft.com/applets to be throughout the course. Course Obiectives • Outlines of what we intend for Also, for a glimpse of the educational possibilities of Java, the students to learn throughout the course. see Office Hours • Office hours are given. http://www.gamelan .com/ Schedules • Our weekl y schedules are displayed so We did not attempt to include Java into the class home students will know when we are available.