VIPEr Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource: A community for teachers and students of inorganic chemistry
A Community of Practice for Improving Inorganic Chemical Education
We seek to enhance the inorganic chemistry classroom and laboratory experience for students and faculty members through the development and growth of IONiC (Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists), a vibrant virtual ‘community of practice.’ The community’s foundation will be a cyber-interface that facilitates collaborative development of learning materials and their dissemination to the wider inorganic community. This website, VIPEr (Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource), will serve both as a repository and as a user-friendly platform for social networking tools that facilitate virtual collaboration and community building. Using VIPEr, we will develop and disseminate best practices for teaching inorganic chemistry.
We hope that this project will (1) contribute to the knowledge base of inorganic chemistry teaching by developing, testing, and disseminating new inorganic learning materials; (2) contribute to the understanding of best practices for “virtual communities of practice” by assessing the impact of IONiC on the leadership group and other users; and (3) develop knowledge about the use of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools for faculty and students.