Let’s get
ready to rumble—a wiki/textbook smackdown is coming to the University of
California Davis for the spring 2014 term.
In one
corner is the traditional print chemistry textbook, used by general chemistry
classes for decades. It will face off against the online ChemWiki, an open
collection of chemistry articles and resources, collected and vetted over the
last five years by Professor Delmar Larsen and a host of student-editors.
Researchers from the Center for Education and Evaluation Services at the UC
Davis School of Education will decide the winner, according to a university press release.
The 200
students enrolled in general chemistry during the spring term will all attend
the same lectures and take the same tests. But half will study from the regular
textbook while the other half will use the free ChemWiki in lieu of a textbook.
The head-to-head bout, supported by a grant from the National Science
Foundation, is intended to determine whether the wiki is good enough to knock
the textbook out and save students money.
If so,
additional grant monies will help expand the wiki. Plans are underway for a
collaboration with UC Irvine’s OpenChem initiative, a series of free and open
video-recorded lectures on chemistry.
Larsen and
his colleagues are also creating wikis for other scientific fields—including
physics, statistics, geology, biology, and mathematics—with the idea they may
someday deliver a final blow to textbooks, at least those for undergraduate
courses dealing with fundamental concepts that haven’t changed in years.
