Template talk:Tracks

From ChemPRIME

This Discussion Page is reserved for discussion of what tracks should be included by default within the ChemPRIME ToC. Not all of the ones here have been included - this is the development discussion. Please feel free to contribute. Please head new discussion comments with a level four header and sign all comments using ~~~~

Using the delineation of 'Sciences' from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_of_science and academic disciplines from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines, How would we feel about a generic Tracks template along the lines of the one above, where the topics put in brackets would not be explicitly shown.

Note that it is EXTREMELY easy to put an exemplar in more than one track. Thus - I suggest we begin by having people build their exemplars using whatever titles they like in the "XYZ Exemplars in Development" track. Thus as students use this site, they know which ones are considered more trustworthy. Then we, as a community, can move exemplars into the other tracks or even multiple tracks. That would hopefully address both of Ed's concerns: keeping track names specific enough to pique interest while keeping the number of tracks small enough to feasibly flesh out (since we can put exemplars into more than one track). Jshorb 16:36, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment JWM

I agree with much or what Justin says regarding organization and that students will want to see a topic that is of interest to them. However, I do not see how either organization proposed so far helps students to see topics that are of interest. The heading [applied sciences] for example, does not sound appetizing at all. And the heading "Sports, Physiology, and Health" does not imply food chemistry to me. Maybe I am not in touch with what students would want to see, but restricting the number of tracks and also getting jazzy titles for exemplars seem to me to be antithetical. It is not clear to me what we should do about this.

For others reading this, a short clarification: My intention was to not include anything shown above in brackets... for just the reason stated by John: it doesn't really help to pique interest. But then, of course, we do have the problem of an un-organized list of tracks. Jshorb 18:43, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment EWV

Justin, thanks for your thoughts. In reading my responses below, keep in mind that I'm pretty old fashioned (if not just old).

I just can't imagine a pre-med not being willing to look at the Sports, Physiology and Health Track because there are too many exemplars to "weed through" (I know their reputation, but maybe not well enough!). Maybe "Sports" needs a separate Track because there's more to sports than heath or sports medicine (materials science in sports equipment, etc.). I imagine we could argue for a long time whether that stuff should be included instead in a "materials science" track, which does seem like a logical addition to me in some ways. My thinking from the start was, as Justin says, that to group into very few tracks is better, and make those tracks inclusive of most topics of interest. I used articles in JCE and other sources as evidence of areas of interest, and tried to group them logically (one person's logic is addle-patedness to another). Unfortunately, grouping into a few tracks can easily be inconsistent with it being "easier to build and expand [than to] rename and divide".

I find Justin's idea of standard Wikipedia divisions interesting, (but there are so many!), and looking at them I'm not sure if some might be combined until we end up with a list similar to what we have. I'd love it if Justin is right about there being too many exemplars to weed through in any particular Track someday, but I just can't imagine it happening.

We could add, as Justin suggests, a grab bag Track and see what happens. This seems logically different from an Exemplars in Development Track (some in development may be very easy to classify). So it seems like we should have a way of tagging "stubs" (Exemplars in progress in all Tracks) like Wikipedia does.

Vitz 19:41, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

When we put a space before text, it converts it to 'code' when the wiki parser runs through it. I didn't modify any of the above text, just reformatted it so it's clearer. Jshorb 19:57, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Ed: I must admit that in the last few years of teaching I've taught fairly exclusively honors students. There is definitely a difference between the extreme honors students who are doing their pre-med requirements in prep for going into an MD/PhD program in research versus some of the pre-meds that I went to school with (in a smaller college). There are differences in culture, that is for sure. That's probably the difference between my approach to how students would pique their interest versus yours. In the end, one would hope that any student using this site would go through the learning curve of figuring out what to expect from each track.

Much of what I put into my exemplar tracks is based off of my experience in teaching the double-honors course here at UW where the students chose a specific topic to do a research presentation on. Given the interest of that small cohort of students over 2 years, I must admit that topics that they are interested in may well verge on the more research-side of things. Resveratrol, medical studies of diseases and research support, nuclear islands of stability, quantum mechanical approaches to cognitive theory may be a little more than we are thinking will end up in ChemPRIME as exemplars! That is fine. That's why we have all of us working here to come to some working track set-up.

In terms of what we can do for now is to go with a VERY abbreviated list of what is above (perhaps similar to what currently exists) but remove the hard-coded names. Thus on the current track template, we would remove the "[[{{{1}}} in Sports, Physiology & Health]]<nowiki>" and instead replace it with "<nowiki>[[{{{1}}} in Sports and Recreation|{{{1}}} in Sports, Recreation, Health Sciences and Physiology]]".

By keeping the hard-coded name (before the pipe "|") simplistic, and reflecting a possible future track, we eliminate the problem of having to divide up a track later on down the road. We can just move exemplars out of it and change the descriptive name (after the pipe). This could work for Bob's problem as well, as we can simply change the descriptive name of "XYZ in the Environment" to something that sounds more applicable. After all - there is a difference between the chemistry that occurs in the environment as opposed to chemistry which is done by humans to sustain the environment, so that semantic difference should be reflected at least in the title of the exemplar track.

Sorry for being verbose - it is one of my habits I'm working on, but I don't have too much time at the moment to distill my thoughts. Hooray for stream-of-consciousness! Jshorb 20:16, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Addendum regarding a "Stub" template at the top of pages: This is doable and I can build it fairly quickly. I do wonder, though, whether or not students should be allowed to see stubs at all? There are pedagogical issues which derive from what students should be allowed to see. The development track would address the issue of editor-control, but limit the exposure of students to ideas in development. I don't have an answer - just a comment and a generally posed question. The question remains: what level of control would we like over what good/bad exemplars students see? Jshorb 20:21, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment2 EWV

I think we should replace "Sports, Physiology, Health" with "Health, Medicine, Physiology" and fold "Medicine" into it; Maybe "Food" should go in there too (pro: food certainly is a big aspect of health; con: "Food" (non-health food science) might stand on its own, but I can't guess the number or nature of contributions we might expect). I also think that "Sports" could be folded into "Everyday Life" (pro: I imagine this would mostly involve sports equipment which is like other everyday stuff; con: the large number of articles dealing with (non-health/physiology) sports and sports equipment might suggest that it should have a Track of its own). So "Food" and "Sports" are on the borderline, in my opinion, of needing their own tracks or not. I have faith in students finding interesting exemplars either way. Justin, would this reorganization lend itself to your "pipe" approach to make the future easier? I really think we ought to straighten this out _now_ as best we can. I may be missing something, because I don't understand why John thinks restricting the number of Tracks is antithetical with giving the Exemplars in each Track flashy names.

Should we add a "grab bag" track to parse later?Vitz 16:27, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment REB

I would really like to see two more related tracks, one "in green chemistry" and the other "in Sustainable Technologies". The ACS has a green chemistry institute, there is an ACS Position Statement on Sustainability .

I would also like to see this as I am having a focus of my Chemistry and Society class on sustainability issues. Also, there are organizations like the Green Chemical Education Network with faculty from all over the country who would become interested in this.

Comment3 EWV

These are undeniably important. When you use the word "link". Couldn't these links be in the form of Exemplars in the Environmental Track, a logical place to look for them? They might be named "GreenChem:X" or "Sustainable:X" where X identifies the specific topic. If GC and ST were separate Tracks, we'd need exemplars to elucidate most of the topics (scores of them) in Gen Chem. Could one do that?

Comment2 REB

OK, I just may have done something wrong, as I think this discussion is in the spirit of a blog, and not a wiki. But I edited my original statement (changed "link" to "track") and fixed up my link's syntax . Please understand that I am new to this project and am learning. I really think GC and ST carry weight as tracks, and I'd love to take on a project for finding exemplars. Especially on the ST level. But I also have some questions. If I spend a lot of effort on this can I publish it later? (I am tenure track, and that is obviously something I have to consider). I am also organizing the Spring 2010 ConfChem: Educating the Next Generation: Green and Sustainability Chemistry and am in awe with the stuff I am finding. Ed, we have never met or talked. Let's chat as I'd like to get a better bearing on what you are doing. But I think the bottom line is yes, we can come up with sufficient exemplars.

Comment3 REB

I have been thinking about the "in Environmental Sciences & Sustainability" (ES&S) track and the potential "in Green Chemistry and Sustainable Technologies" (GC&ST) track, and I really do think they are different. I would like to put forth a few quick arguments for why we should consider a GC&ST track

There is a large and very active green chemistry community and a track of this nature could be of value to them. In fact, it could allow for a paper and presentations to be morphed out of this work targeting that community in a way which could attract participation within ChemPRIME. That is, ChemPRIME could assist that community in developing exemplars.
Environmental Chemistry implies to me the chemistry of the environment, and this is a science, with or without man's exisitance. Only when man interferes with natural cycles and processes does this become a sustainablity/survivablity track.
In some ways green chemistry is sort of a response to the knowledge that mankind can not survive if it maintains activities which are nonsustainable and detrimental to the environment. But that does not make green chemistry environmental chemistry.
How does a dye sensitized solar cell work? a PEM fuel cell? A MOF gas storage vessel work? I really do not think these are environmental sciences. But they are a big deal, and a GC&ST track would be an easily identified track to find exemplars of this type.

I am also organizing the upcoming ConfChem: "Educating the Next Generation: Green and Sustainable Chemistry". If we had a GC&ST track I could focus my class this semester on that track, and present on my experiences with an eye of attracting others to contribute in the future. That is, half of this is how do you use a wiki in a classroom. I just do not think that a ES&S track will motivate the GC community in the way a GC&ST track would.

So the bottom line,is, what is a track? I see we have one for Military Operations? That is not a formal chemistry discipline. But like the potential GC&ST track, there is clearly a community which would be interested in it. I guess the question I am trying to bring up is, do we have one track (ES&S) or two? Will the ES&S track attract the GC community?

Summary thus far (JMS)

There are fundamental differences regarding what a Track encompasses. A track should be a traditionally non-chemistry field which is used as a scaffolding for teaching chemical principles. Thus we should perhaps define what we want a track to be. The following quotes have been extracted from the original proposal:

ChemPRIME is consonant with these calls for incorporation of a variety of real-world problems. Exemplars can be research data or recent findings that are reported in the news; exemplars may be from frontier problems in various fields, or historically interesting applications of technology.

ChemPRIME proposal

Exemplars are drawn from disciplines that chemistry students are known to be involved in and the wiki structure makes possible even broader scope. The benefits of multidisciplinarity are supported by a body of research and informed opinion. PKAL urges that we “respond to the contemporary calls for interdisciplinarity by nurturing and rewarding faculty who make the kind of cross-discipline connections they hope their students will make” . The National Academy of Engineering echoes this call: “Real world problems are rarely defined along narrow disciplinary lines. Undergraduate students would benefit from at least cursory learning about the interplay between disciplines embodied in such problems.” Interdisciplinary curricula are also championed in “Evaluating and Improving Undergraduate Teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics," which states that faculty should be encouraged to develop curricula that transcend disciplinary boundaries, through a combination of incentives (including funding), expectations of accountability, and development of standards for disciplinary and interdisciplinary teaching.

ChemPRIME proposal

We recognize that chemistry is defined not in terms of the subject of study (chemists are fond of saying everything is chemistry, or everything is a “chemical”), but rather in the mode of study, explanation, or understanding. Chemists understand everything in terms of the properties of atoms and molecules. This is perhaps why chemistry departments are being dispersed, so that chemistry groups exist as enclaves dispersed among user departments, rather than in a separate department.

ChemPRIME proposal

Chemists are eager to illustrate the usefulness of chemistry in other disciplines, so it is reasonable to expect enthusiastic adoption of ChemPRIME and many voluntary contributions of exemplars. The wiki structure will encourage this.

ChemPRIME proposal

Sorry for the large amount of text, but I wanted to pull enough of the text so that the train-of-thought is apparent. The goals of the project are not to elucidate sub-areas of chemistry and how chemists are venturing into different areas, but rather to show that other areas are actually doing chemistry - sometimes without knowing it. Thus, we pique the interest of students who may think that their favorite areas of study are devoid of chemistry!

Thus, it is important to realize that Green Chemistry is another field of chemistry and probably should not be a track in and of itself, just as Biochem and Analytical Chemistry are not tracks. After all - someone who is interested in learning about Green Chemistry is already well aware that there is Chemistry involved.

But there is still the matter of Sustainability. From the discussion above, it appears that there is obviously a strong interest in this by many students (which fits in nicely with the goal of ChemPRIME stated above) and Bob is clearly an eager contributor (also in line with the ChemPRIME goal of encouraging enthusiastic adoption). However, it is not entirely clear that all of the topics within the text can be covered by a stand-alone track on Sustainability or Green Chemistry. By putting these two together with the current track "in the Environment" which arguably is too vague to begin with, we can create the new track: "... in Environmental/Green Chemistry and Sustainability"

This has been enacted by using the previously discussed method wherein we display more in the Tracks pages than we do in the actual page titles. Thus, clicking on a page listed on the tracks page: "Atoms, Molecules, and Chemical Reactions in Environmental/Green Chemistry, and Sustainability" will actually take you to a page called: "Atoms, Molecules, and Chemical Reactions in the Environment" This is done for backward & forward compatibility. Currently, the page "... in the Environment" exists for six topics already. These pages will thus not need to be moved under this schema. Also, this means that in the future (after this initial go of Bob's course) if we decide to split off any of these 3 topics into new tracks, we can do so easily (rather than using the full display name of the track as the page title).

In addition to the discussion on Green/Sustainability topics, discussion has also centered around the newest additions of the "in Food" and "in Medicine" tracks. The Medicine track has disappeared as per recommendations and the lack of an "enthusiastic" contributor at this time. However, we do have someone in Food Science generating exemplars such as "pH and pOH in Food Coloring" and "pH and pOH in Food Texture" - and there appears to be plenty of exemplars along those lines to add in, so the Food track was left as is for now.

All changes summarized by this report have been implemented. WikiSysop 22:27, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment 4 EWV

Thanks to contributions from all, this looks good to me. I do think we should consider adding Medicine to "...Physiology, and Health" and moving Sports out of that category. Logically, the non-sports-medicine Exemplars could go in Everyday Life (with Sports added to that title) because it seems like mostly materials science. The sports medicine stuff can still go under "...Physiology and Health". But (mostly non-sports medicine) Sports could also stand on its own.

Comment 4 REB

This looks good to me, and one of the problems I was having was that I have not had access to the proposal and so was unclear on what a track was. So I really appreciate Justin's post....Although, it now looks like the word "chemistry" does not belong in a track and "Green Chemistry" does not fit. I mean if a track is a non-chemistry discipline, then we have a problem with green chemistry being a track. (It is not that I am trying to cause problems here). None-the-less, I think it would be a good thing to provide the green chemistry community easily identifiable exemplars.

Comment 5 EWV

Of course! I added a link to the full NSF proposal under Strategy, linked in Help for Contributors. Thanks Justin and Bob.

Template talk:Tracks

From ChemPRIME

Contents

Original Statement

Comment JWM

Comment EWV

Comment2 EWV

Comment REB

Comment3 EWV

Comment2 REB

Comment3 REB

Summary thus far (JMS)

Comment 4 EWV

Comment 4 REB

Comment 5 EWV

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