Done!

I finished and submitted my bibliography. It feels good.

I enjoyed sharing the semester with everyone.

Finishing

I'm now organizing the papers and preparing the annotated bibliography. Getting the citations just right is not my favorite part.

Finished Searching

Well, the "computer gods" have been working hard to stop me (malfunctioning computer, then a bad internet connection) but I have made progress and found what I needed. The advanced search techniques were necessary to zero in on what I wanted. I ended up using ANDs and truncation (lab*) to get the correct papers and I limited the type of result and date to keep my search current and relevant.

Further Results

I found that searching within the site or journal containing a valid reference can yield more. ERIC sent me to get a reference on EBSCO Host or a journal. On that site, I enter search terms and find more relevent papers. Some of the references were not shown on the ERIC search.

ERIC

I have been using ERIC and Scirius to search for papers. Although I thought it wouldn't be as good, I found ERIC was better at finding papers that focused on the educational use of laboratories in distance courses.

Further Search

I have found papers that are relevent to what I am interested in finding. I looked at the keywords listed for the papers I found previously and tried them in new searches. This seemed to give better results with most of the results being papers that were more focused on what I was looking to find.

I'm still having problems with my computer after Microsoft applied an update. So far, Microsoft has been unhelpful. It has made my search harder because I have to borrow a computer to do it.

I found one paper that I found interesting. Two colleges, a 4 year and a junior college, ran similar introductory chemistry courses. Although not identical, they were designed to be very similar. The 4 year college had a traditional class with laboratory while the junior college offered an online class with a lab portion performed at home by the students. At the end of the year, both classes had a lab practical that required the students to be tested at the laboratory with comparable evaluations. You can guess what the outcome was: the online junior college students received better grades. Interesting.

Other search locations

My search on ERIC returned some material but not as many that related exactly to what I wanted. I am searching for material that would be useful for planning and implementing an online chemistry class. I decided to try a more scientifically-oriented search engine for more resources. I tried Scirus.

The initial search was "online chemistry course" and it did give more results - almost 1 million. I added "laboratory" and reduced the number to about 16,000 - too many but getting better. Choosing to limit sources to journal resulted in 150 hits. This is a manageable number to start reviewing.

Unfortunately, my progress has been hampered by Microsoft. Update downloaded the latest package for my Windows system and it resulted in a system that will no longer boot. Until I resolve that, I'm limited to borrowing my son's laptop when he is home and not using it.

I used the search terms "science" and "distance learning" and found over 1000 listings, more than I was expecting. There were also papers that were several years old. I added the term lab* to that search to narrow it down to papers describing science courses that had a laboratory component. This resulted in a little over 100 listings and most of them appeared relevant as I went through the list. Since there were more hits than I was expecting, I plan to try a more specific search this weekend by using the term "chemistry" instead of science and limit the results to papers submitted in the last 5 or 6 years.

Online Science Courses

I am at the start of my search. I am a science teacher and wonder how to teach a science course in an online environment. This poses unique requirements because a laboratory experience can be an integral and important part of the learning experience for the student. I am interested in how to best incorporate the laboratory experience into an online science course. I plan to use the ERIC database to find papers detailing distance courses in chemistry and other sciences and how they dealt with the laboratory sections of the course. I hope to find studies that look at different options and test the learning results for students.

I will have to do most of my searching during the weekend so I hope to find some papers to give me a start this weekend.