Teamwork for Learning Chemistry Using Online Social

Networking Resources

Education without a Teacher

E. Zorova, M. Akhmetov

The 21st century is the time of information and communication technologies

• Today we get a lot of information from many sources: papers, magazines, books, TV, and also from the Internet.

• In order to turn this information into knowledge it is necessary for each of us to be able to process it: – to select the sense from that information

noise– to turn it into knowledge – to develop our own skills.

• Understanding of these tasks is reflected in the New State Standards of education requiring from– postgraduates should be ready to continue their

education and self-development constantly

New time dictates new purposes to education

• Today modern students use the Internet very actively.

• However, the Internet includes not only useful, but also useless and even harmful information. – How to defend students from

negative information? – How to make their surfing in the

World Web effective? • We suppose that we have the

answer to this question: students need learning activities.

• The problem is how to achieve it? • The main task of our research is to

find some ways for improving students’ learning activities using the Internet for studying chemistry.

Chemistry is a special part of human knowledge

• It is obvious that chemistry is a special part of human knowledge which is a very difficult subject for many students.

• To achieve a success in chemistry students must have

• certain amount of chemical knowledge

• understand chemical phenomena • describe them using the means of

the chemical language: chemical formulas, equations of chemical changes.

Students use the Web for searching information

• More and more students use the Web– for searching information about substances and

chemical reactions,– but only little part of websites users is able to

achieve success in learning chemistry. • Free web education has both advantages and

disadvantages. – Students can study at their own space and at a

convenient time, – but they need ability to do exercises without

teachers’ support. • Our research let us understand what a teacher can

do for students’ success in learning chemistry. – We know school students spend a lot of time on the

Internet. – Many students spend many hours every day for

communicating on online networking sites.– If students had this time for learning they could get

better results in their self-education.

The possibilities of teamwork using online social networking sites for preparing for their Chemistry exams.

• In our work we studied the possibilities of teamwork using online social networking sites for preparing for their Chemistry exams.

• Students like communicating on online social networking resources without adults. So, the teacher had created an initiative group from the students, who worked as organizers on the Internet account. – The teacher controlled the educational activities of

the students on online social networking service through this initiative group.

– The students of this group invited students from other schools who were interested in chemistry for the Chemistry exam preparing.

– The students solved the exam problems, asked each other if they had not understand anything.

– After two weeks of such work the chemistry teacher noticed the progress in knowledge of the students.

– By this time the students had already had the first success and then they put more effort in learning.

On these slides we can see some examples of students’ learning in groups atthe socials networking resources

Before the exam/ after the exam • Two weeks before the exam the team

began solving exam training tests. • At the beginning the group solved the

exam test for 50 minutes. Soon the team needed only 15 minutes! Many students have even been surprised at their results.

• All the participants have passed the exam successfully.

• After the exam, graduates who were included in this teamwork continued communicating, asking questions on different topics and now they hope that in the future this form will help them in their education and life

Empirical study • For revelation differences between

the groups of the students 1. the students learning online 2. the students having only regular

classes • we have done empiric studies. • In the next slides we can see some

questions from the questionary. Some answers to its questions revealed important differences.

• For statistical analysis we have used Mann–Whitney-Wilcoxon’ criteria

1. I am studying chemistry empirical study

2. For testing my knowledge I prefer

3. I like

4. I prefer

5. I like

6. I like

7. If I get a difficult problem

Perspective on future research

• The research showed students can successfully use teamwork on online social networking resources for learning Chemistry,

• but theoretical didactic and methodological aspects of such education still require extensive studies

E.mail: fondmcr@mail.ru maratakm@ya.ru