The purposes of this paper are to: • Make more chemistry faculty aware of instructional applications of mobile devices • Describe some of the current projects and create avenues for possible future collaboration. • Become the first step towards creating a network of chemistry faculty who will share their successes (and failures) in using mobile phones and tablets to teach Chemistry.

1. THE MOBILE CHEMISTRY CLASSROOM COOPERATIVE (MCCC)
Harry E. Pence, State University of New York College at Oneonta, Oneonta, NY 13861,
pencehe@oneonta.edu and Antony Williams, Cheminformatics Team, Royal Society of Chemistry,
U.S. Office: Wake Forest, NC-27587, williamsa@rsc.org
ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2012, the authors of this paper organized a symposium entitled Mobile Devices,
Augmented Reality, and the Mobile Classroom at the National Meeting of the American
Chemical Society in Philadelphia, PA. This symposium was held under the auspices of the
Committee on Computers in Chemical Education. There was strong interest in this topic as
evidenced by the number of abstracts submitted as well as the attendance at both of the
sessions. At the conclusion of the presentations, Antony Williams suggested that we should
seek ways to maintain the momentum from this event, by encouraging information exchange
and cooperative efforts involving the symposium presenters as well as other interested parties
from the broader chemical community. This paper represents a first step towards that goal.
The purposes of this paper are to:
 Make more chemistry faculty aware of instructional applications of mobile devices
 Describe some of the current projects and create avenues for possible future collaboration.
 Become the first step towards creating a network of chemistry faculty who will share their
successes (and failures) in using mobile phones and tablets to teach Chemistry.
INTRODUCTION
In the spring of 2012, the authors of this paper organized a symposium entitled Mobile Devices,
Augmented Reality, and the Mobile Classroom at the National Meeting of the American Chemical
Society in Philadelphia, PA. This symposium was held under the auspices of the Committee on
Computers in Chemical Education. There was strong interest in this topic as evidenced by the number
of abstracts submitted as well as the attendance at both of the sessions. At the conclusion of the
presentations, Antony Williams suggested that we should seek ways to maintain the momentum from
this event, by encouraging information exchange and cooperative efforts involving the symposium
presenters as well as other interested parties from the broader chemical community. Most of the
participants in the symposium agreed to participate in an online discussion of their papers to move
towards this goal. This paper includes a brief summary of these presentations.
It is hoped that the online participants will join with the original presenters to explore how mobile
devices, both smartphones and tablet computers, might be used for teaching chemistry. The
participants in the online discussion might ask questions about how the various projects were
implemented, suggest a next step beyond the applications mentioned, propose specific instructional

2. areas where mobile devices might be effective tools, propose cooperative projects involving one or
more of the presenters, or describe how they are using mobile devices for chemistry. The long-term
goal is to create a continuing dialogue among those who are interested in using mobile devices. The
following sections are limited to the presentations from the original symposium based on the
availability of the presenter for this online discussion. In each case only the primary author is listed,
based on who indicated they would be available for the discussion.
THE PAPERS
Harry E. Pence (SUNY Oneonta) introduced the symposium by discussing Mobile devices and the
future of chemical education. Pence argued that more than half of the students in most chemistry
classrooms now own smartphones and/or tablet computers, and that percentage is growing rapidly. Use
of mobile devices is now at the place where electronic calculators were a little more than a decade ago;
many instructors are focused more on potential abuse of the devices than on the ways they will change
the learning process. Since most students always carry their smartphones, these devices provide
continuous access to web pages, podcasts, videos, and other instructional materials, including during
lectures. Mobile devices are also a powerful vehicle for using QR codes, markered and markerless
augmented reality applications to create situated learning experiences. He asked whether chemistry
teachers are going to respond to these changes or wait to be dragged into the future by our students.
IM-Chem: The use of instant messaging to improve student performance and personalize large
lecture general chemistry courses was the title of a presentation by Derek A Behmke from Bradley
University. Behmke noted that previous research has linked poor student performance with the
depersonalized feeling of large lecture courses. At the University of Georgia they have attempted to
enhance communication by handing out 26 instant messaging (IM) devices to selected students in a
large (1500 student) general chemistry course. Teaching assistants monitored the messages from the
devices and informed the instructor when there were a lot of questions on a particular topic. They
found that IM-Chem participants had a mean course grade that was 0.14 GPA units higher than non-
participants, probably due to the active learning environment created by the IM devices. Additionally,
an overwhelming majority of participants stated that IM-Chem personalized the large lecture setting by
providing them with an unintimidating way to ask questions and individualized answers to those
questions.
Cynthia B Powell from Abilene Christian University talked about a Case study in mobile device
usage: Mobile enhanced inquiry-based learning (MEIBL), a collaboration that involved Faculty
members at three different institutions. Mobile devices were used to deliver podcasts covering
laboratory techniques and conceptual information that provided vital modeling and scaffolding for
students working in chemistry and biology laboratories taught with an inquiry-based curriculum. The
results indicate that the electronic resources allow students to work more independently and writing
samples that were evaluated indicate an improvement in depth of learning across a semester. Students
responded positively to the mobile platform, and ~70% reported that the electronic resources enhanced
their academic experience.

3. Autumn L. Sutherlin, also from Abilene Christian University, discussed her work on Blended
biochemistry: Using technology outside of class to better reach students in class. Sutherlin
pointed out that Biochemistry is difficult because it requires not only the memorization, but also the
interpretation and evaluation of large amounts of material. She said that technology helped her to
introduce constructivist techniques into her Biochemistry I course. Students did assigned reading
followed by Just-in-Time Teaching, including warm-up questions which they responded to online
before class. The warm-up questions along with responses to clicker questions followed by Peer
Instruction were used to guide class discussion. This helped the instructor identify the areas of content
where the students were struggling and to focus in on areas that require higher order thinking skills. In
conclusion, she observed that students not only liked peer instruction and just-in-time teaching, but that
it also allowed them to perform better on examinations.
Mobile learning in organic chemistry: Discussion of the student's role in the 21st century
classroom was the title of a paper given by Mai Yin Tsoi from Georgia Gwinnett College.
Acknowledging that today's students are very different from those of previous generations, she and her
colleagues created a student-centered, mobile learning environment in Organic Chemistry with a suite
of electronic course materials which include videos, apps, and a social network. This project has been
underway for the past three years, and the findings thus far show that students bring a distinct set of
needs and skills to the learning environment, which impact their use of the mobile learning materials.
Some of these qualities, such as self-efficacy, attitude, and technology expertise, were found to
significantly affect whether students use mobile devices for learning Organic Chemistry.
Antony J Williams of the Royal Society of Chemistry presented a paper entitled Putting chemistry
into the hands of students - chemistry made mobile using resources from the Royal Society of
Chemistry. The increasing prevalence of mobile devices offers the opportunity to provide chemistry
students with easy access to a multitude of resources. As a publisher the RSC provides a myriad of
content to chemists including an online database of over 286 million chemical compounds, tools for
learning spectroscopy and access to scientific literature and other educational materials. This
presentation provided a review of the efforts to make RSC content more mobile and therefore
increasingly available to chemists. In particular it discussed their efforts to provide access to chemistry
related data of high value to students in the laboratory and included an overview of spectroscopy tools
for the review and analysis of various forms of spectroscopy data.
Alex M Clark (Molecular Materials Informatics of Canada) discussed the current state of the art for
mobile apps for chemistry, and their use in an educational context in his paper entitled, Chemical
structure diagrams, reactions, and data: Anytime, anywhere. The creation of chemistry-aware
mobile apps presents a significant opportunity to enhance chemical education. Tablets and mobile
phones introduce a level of convenience that makes them all but omnipresent. Access to chemistry-
oriented learning material is of significant value, and taking it one step further involves providing
content-creation capabilities. Being able to create, view, send and receive chemical data, and use it to
interact with educational or reference services, makes these devices powerful interactive learning tools.
In her talk entitled, Engaging students in learning through the use of mobile webapps, Lisa B.
Lewis of Albion College pointed out that our students are addicted to their mobile devices, and so are

4. we. She suggested that there was a way to take the obsession that students have with mobile devices
and harness it for education. Her talk described the efforts to create mobile web applications for the
study of chemistry and English using HTML5 and Java. She described some examples of the webapps
developed for the study of acids and bases, including the design, format, pedagogy, and coding
challenges that were encountered. Students liked these apps because they allowed them to digitally
study wherever they were, and felt that the value was equivalent to their online homework program.
Using HTML5 to build immersive teaching materials, was given by Kevin J Theisen from
iChemLabs, LLC. Theisen said that mobile devices give students today access to a wealth of
technology for interacting with digital information. It can be very enticing to take advantage of these
platforms in classrooms. However, the ability to distribute information across the wide range of
devices students may possess is a significant problem. This barrier restricts most instructors to
distributing text and images, since they simply do not have the time to prepare and format coursework
for all the existing devices. HTML5 standards present a simpler approach to distributing dynamic
graphics and interactive data across all desktops.
Doris I. Lewis (Suffolk University) discussed The Demise of the Textbook and the Rise of ...
Something Else. Lewis noted that textbook publication and authoring are seeing a rapid transition
from a printed format to a variety of electronic platforms. The year 2012 has seen the release of the
Apple iPad text platform, a lawsuit against a Boston open-source text company by three major
textbook publishers, and the widespread adoption of Blackboard-based online learning systems in
colleges and iPad texts in high schools. Science education content creators face an expanding variety
of options, with no settled, universal platform yet on the horizon.
Lucille A Benedict from The University of Southern Maine gave a presentation entitled, Integrating
student-created videos into research papers. She pointed out that students increasingly create
personal videos and photos, use multimedia (videos and photos) to supplement study materials,
disseminate these on social websites, and generate QR codes embedded with a URL linked to the
content. For this project, students in instrumental analysis created research papers that included short
videos focused on research methods developed during independent research performed in the course.
Videos were uploaded to YouTube and accessed from research manuscripts using QR codes.
Evaluation of articles and videos was analogous to journal article review; papers that were accepted for
publication were incorporated into an online course journal. This project is an extension of published
work that had students create videos that were then QR coded and posted to instruments and lab
manuals. This project reinforced that having students create a publication increases their engagement
and their investment in the finished product.
This was an exciting and well-attended symposium, followed by an active discussion of how this group
might continue to cooperate on this topic and expand the dialogue beyond the current venue. The
organizers thank all the speakers, as well as the Committee on Computers in Chemical Education for
sponsoring the symposium and Cynthia B Powell for moderating one of the sessions.