Discussion

A systematic approach to chemical information is older than any of us and what we are trying to do with chemistry data and information today is not too far off from what has been desired for many generations. Even engaging computers to assist us with this data, actively pursued in very sophisticated efforts since mainframes. While we may think our workflows and information activities are different today than previous generations, the fundamentals that the informed human needs to manage to use the computer are really not that different in principle. I mention this as what I would perceive as a core lesson of the course content. Regarding the course design, I found the lack of cohesive learning objectives and syllabus a significant challenge for pulling together a course, as opposed to a loosely themed series of 'visiting lecturers'. I have experienced as a student (UG and grad), a TA and an instructor various courses taught by multiple lecturers, even in disparate locations via various connecting technologies (my library degree was one of the early online programs). They all suffered this challenge, everyone taught to their own perception of the content and delivery and very little coordination was feasible given limited time. Now as a professional, I have come to appreciate the value of the seminar series style, in person, online, in real-time, as needed. I have my education fundamentals and professional training, and I am looking for different ideas and approaches to augment my knowledge and experience. If I was seeking background and solid foundation in a new area I would search for a cohesive course experience, building material sequentially. There is a forthcoming column on chemistry related MOOCs that looks a bit at this question that we may want to consult. I support the premise that one useful learning goal is the ability of the students to design and conduct ongoing projects. Perhaps a future version could generally scope the type of projects available and target supporting skills to cover in the modules. There is a lack of such a foundation course in chemical information, especially designed to engage 'regular' chemistry majors more directly in the digital culture. They may be brought up surrounded by it, but I have yet to appreciate how much 'under-the-hood' and 'information-as-a-computer-sees-it' learning may be available, even as far as many of us educated in the 'early' days of computer program design that are hacking the informatics space now. New interfaces and tools are more available for lower barrier than ever before, can we marry these with the best practices that are useful to understand behind the scenes for forthcoming chemists to engage more scientifically?

I've uploaded a first draft of an overview of how I think the mining of the PubChem and Wikipedia Chemboxes can help us work with chemical safety information that is available on the web. The numbers in the paper are based on my "spare time", manual review of the 88 or so chemicals named in the 1995 edition of Prudent Practices last week. It would be great if we could double check them electronically and expand the number that are reviewed using the XML data from PubChem and scraping of the ChemBoxes.

>What type of online material best engages 21st century students? I've been thinking about this a fair amount of a variety of purposes, so I'll share some random thoughts that might be relevant to the question: 1. When we did the OLCC on chemical safety in 2004(?), it felt pretty exciting to connect students and campuses nationally and I seem to remember greater participation in the on line materials. Whether this was due to the novelty of the opportunity or the topics discussed, I can see where the greater availability of all information in 2015 would require a different medium to keep one's attention these days. 2. Talking to my son about his experience as an undergrad at a high end liberal arts college (graduating in 2013), he would talk about what was said in classes, or reading he did (he likes to talk about ideas), but not about any on-line experiences. That was for entertainment. 3. I have had success with using on line content to prepare students for lecture by pre-loading jargon, but they still needed conversation to incorporate logic that connects those pieces of jargon. Maybe the authors of the OLCC papers could develop quizzes that provide that aspect of the topic?

Ive uploaded an excel page with the list of chemicals from the LCSS. There are four tabs, Sheet0, Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3. Sheet3 is the filtered down list in alphabetical order. The other sheets are just part of the filtering process. There are many duplicates which I can get rid of and there are many chemicals listed by pubchem as numbers.