Open and Interactive Digital Textbook and Learning Resources for Introductory Chemistry

Project Team

• Stephen McNeil, Professor, Department of Chemistry, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science (Lead Applicant)
• Tamara Freeman, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Chemistry
• Summer Li, Lecturer, Department of Chemistry

About the Project

Learning activities and resources currently used in CHEM 121 and CHEM 123 have been designed by TKF and WSM to support our unique and award-winning introductory chemistry curriculum. These resources include the use of both existing external open educational and digital resources (e.g. molecular simulation tools from The King’s Centre for Visualization in Science and PhET Interactive Simulations) along with our own digital learning assets and interactive videos (which have themselves been released as OER).

However, the course currently lacks a coherent online resource to serve as a unified digital textbook and learning resource platform. We intend to create a single source to organize the current learning activities within a framework of topic readings aligned with the current course structure, and to provide supplemental readings and practice problems.

While we will be looking at and intend to draw upon existing relevant OER content where appropriate (e.g. introductory chemistry Libretext sites such as Cinel’s Chemical Bonding and Organic Chemistry, and OpenStax, BCCampus, and ecampusontario titles such as Flowers’ Chemistry: Atoms First 2e, Key’s Introductory Chemistry, and Roy’s General Chemistry for Gee-Gees), current commercial and OER textbook offerings do not generally align or integrate well with our specific curriculum and the existing learning activities.

We wish to develop a comprehensive and interactive text- and video-based learning resource bespoke to the curriculum we have created, to complement and assemble our current active learning activities and resources, and that will be available to learners after course completion or outside UBC.