Reporter Volume 26, No.21 March 23, 1995

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Bureau Staff
The electronic classroom is becoming a reality at UB. Technology is
changing the way that professors teach, test and communicate with
students.
	Robert Allendoerfer, associate professor of chemistry,
believes that students who have learned about molecules by using
computers in their labs and for homework cannot be tested effectively
using traditional methods. He and a colleague at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison have developed "VizQuiz," a software program that
tests students taking the general introductory chemistry course.
	VizQuiz questions include movies, pictures or animation, plus
text. Students find a "Buy a Hint" option in the program, with hints
costing several points. With clicking of a computer mouse, a helpful
hint pops up.
	"In the new world of multimedia education, students have been
educated by computers, and by movies and video games," Allendoerfer
said. "If they've learned to move molecules around using a mouse, I
don't know that it's fair to give them a paper-and-pencil test." The
program, being published by the Journal of Chemical Education, will be
distributed nationwide in the fall.
	Allendoerfer and colleagues at other SUNY university centers
have received a grant from the state Office of Educational Technology
to write an electronic introductory chemistry course that will be
available statewide on the Internet.
	"The idea is to incorporate movies and animation and make a
talking, living textbook for the course," said Allendoerfer. The text
could then be used in conjunction with chemistry courses taught at
community colleges or other educational institutions. Ambitious
high-school students (or anyone else for that matter) who have access
to the Internet could also explore the world of chemistry this way."
	In the field of geology, a new interactive computer program
for an introductory course, developed by Marcus Bursik, assistant
professor of geology at UB, makes geology lectures much more exciting.

	The program, which is projected onto a movie-sized screen in
new high-tech lecture halls, demonstrates geological phenomena such as
volcanoes and landslides. Unlike other programs that have mostly
point-and-click features, this one shows how changing a specific
variable, such as the viscosity of a lava flow, can alter the speed or
outcome of a geological event.
	"Other people call their programs 'interactive,' when they are
really just fancy 'point-and-click' programs that makes things move,"
said Bursik. "But our program is truly interactive because it changes
calculations, and shows what will happen based on those changes. Since
the program really makes the material come alive, the students find
the material easier to understand."