 Okay, well, I think I think we will I think we'll get started So welcome everyone This is this is actually the the first public lecture that We've done at chemistry world since I took it over this summer so I'm excited to see everyone here and You know, basically I really thank you for all of your You know support to science circle Every week and you know, especially thank you for taking time on what for one for many of you is Saturday morning Let's see so There's Just I'm keeping an eye on the nearby chat as well. Okay, so What are the recent developments at chemistry world? Well, let me Let me start the talk Yeah, there's an abstract There's gonna be a PDF of my talk up on the science circle website So that's why some of my slides are kind of wordy. I'm not gonna go over every word I know that acknowledgments usually come at the end of a talk, but I often forget to do them so I'm going to I'm going to just kind of start by acknowledging all of you in the science circle for your attention Current NSF funding chemistry grant that particular one Which helps support the science circle region? My own research students, especially Dustin Who has been a good sport and giving up part of his Saturday morning to? Co-present with me my collaborator George, of course we collaborate on the NSF grant funding for This region this year Is coming from the Department of Chemistry and as always I've got support from the College of Arts and Sciences in the grad school so And of course, I am grateful to everyone for their attention so Story so far Chemistry world was put together a few years ago as a joint project of between Dr. Wendy Keeney any cut she's dr. K in second life and from Texas A&M and Kurt Winkleman who was at Florida Tech at the time he's moved to take a Chairship at a different department They received NSF grants and part of that grant was to develop this region report on the use of second life for Chemistry education and given the actual grant information there. So we've had two Talks in science circle by Kurt Winkleman. He gave a talk summarizing their findings From chemistry world and he actually gave a tour of the region last year So I do want to also mention Zandi Mars and random coal they did the bulk of the work to develop the region and Activities and they've done a fantastic job just about everything that you see around you here is their work Except for some of the recent additions that I'll point out So I you know basically here's some more words in the PDF. You'll be able to link to Their paper. I just wanted to make sure that that got in the talk the an Important summary would be that You know the text and italics that I've got here overall the results of this pilot studies suggest that the virtual worlds can Be effective for teaching chemistry experiments And this and their work was the first account of student learning and attitudes after performing college level Experiments in second life. So it represents a huge amount of work So another plug curious George is here. He gave an excellent talk last week about vertex and His introduction had an excellent summary of the pros and cons Regarding second life. I will direct you to watch that talk if you weren't there or weren't able to see it I was a very very good Good one very thought-provoking for educators. Okay, and I agree with I agree with the pros and cons Okay, so let's tell you a story now stories are more fun than thanking people and you know thanking funding agencies So in summer of 2020, I was assigned to teach chem 135 Which was the freshman chemistry for engineering lab? During during this falls part of my teaching load and as you know, we were in the midst of a pandemic So, you know, it wasn't even clear if we would have in-person activities possible, so we kind of had to worry about Developing a plan for in-person activities and we also had to simultaneously develop plans to teach teach online so I asked dr. K and dr. Winckelman if we could use chemistry world for classes because the content here that was existing at the time was perfect for at least two of the labs that we would like to teach and During those conversations. I found out that since the NSF grants had run out and Dr. K had retired the region was no longer being paid. So You as you know, we've seen a lot of regions just go away in Second life taking with them Taking with them hours and hours like weeks of content Weeks of work. So I didn't want that to happen. So You know, one of the things I was able to do was convince my colleagues of using the second life content and in our lab and And I was especially happy to be able to obtain funding from SIUE. This is our school My department chair dr. O'Brien was very supportive. So You know SIUE our school is a what you would call a comprehensive masters institution. I wouldn't call us an elite school by any means The Enrollment is about 14,000 students. We are located near near St. Louis. We're about Oh, I'd say 15 20 miles northeast of St. Louis and we're on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. So we're technically in in southern Illinois so having You know having students in Labs is an important part of what we do because we train them for bigger and better things getting good Lab materials, especially ones that are already extant and not making them go away. It was an important Part of what we wanted to do So in June 2020 working with dr. K and working with Linda labs I took over stewardship and I like to use that word stewardship of this region So This wasn't a simple process I You know before taking taking over I had to get approvals from chair from our information technology services from the lawyers and You know, basically making sure that I would follow our SIUE policies Finally I got permission then talk to marketing about you know, how to put a little bit of branding On on the site. I just put up three signs and I worked with Marketing to do that My goal here is not to make any Or not to make any major changes to the existing content What Zandy and random developed for The labs here works very well I've added a few things here and there, but you know, I'm not don't it's not my business I feel to mess with what was developed with the NSF NSF grant so Just a bit of a preview will take you up to the platforms a little bit later the existing content There's a gas laws experiment to essentially collect gas in a Graduated cylinder And you use the ideal gas law p vehicles and RT knowing pressure knowing The volume knowing the temperature you work back to a number of moles and you figure out Molecular weight for that particular gas that you're using Ends up being a very nice very nice experiment The other experiment that was Extant on the site is called a precipitation titration Titration is a type of it's called volumetric analysis. So just the word volumetric Volume of course is like, you know, how much of a liquid you might have a volume metric is measuring just volumes very Precisely if you're a chemist in the year 1900 volumetric Analyses would be your life basically analytical chemistry and titrations Back then we're almost synonymous. Okay, and again, we'll show you that on on the tour okay, so one of the things that One things that came with the region that random and zandy Developed was the ta HUD as I'm calling it and I've just moved it forward a little bit Now I'll just move it in in front of the screen for for for a bit So so how the heads up display? There we go. It heads up display. Whoa is simply a Is simply a object in second life, but instead of Materializing it resing it in the second-life screen. You just attach it to your to your screen these things are just built from Um, these things are just built from prims and scripted as you normally would script any object in second life and then You know and put it in your inventory. You would wear it on the screen. I've blown this one up The HUD is really really useful And let's see in this box I'm going to move that in front of you if you click on that box You can get a copy of the HUD it'll attach and if you wear it or attach the HUD it'll Show up in the lower right hand corner of your screen saying you might want to have that on On on later as we go wandering around. What are the parts of the HUD? well, essentially It allows students who are working on one of the platforms upstairs to call for assistance There's a little like panic button on each of the platforms that can appear There's those obs one obs two those Those are teleport links to observation decks, but we don't We don't really use those much. We just use the calls for assistance and to click teleport And the home button will actually would actually take you to a To the lab that I'll show you later so Let's see Tag How does one click on the HUD to be able to wear it? So the little box with kind of the paisley Cube with paisley in front of the screen if you click on that box, it'll give you a copy of the HUD Then you take that in your inventory And if you right click when it's in your inventory and say where it should show up on your screen Okay, all right So let me move that out of the way again How are you doing dustin? I'm doing good. Just just listening and okay Okay, I don't want you to fall asleep there. Um, let me let me at this point Introduce dustin. This is dustin pumpford. He's one of my Students in my research group and he was assigned to me as a teaching assistant for the Lab that we taught this semester. He's one of five teaching assistants and you know, we started working on Figuring out how to make sure that all the students would have a good experience Here in second line. We started working on that during the summer, I think so So, yeah, um Let me let me advance the slide and see where we are now enter so just you know, kind of to Say what additions I've made to the region. I've added the bio and organic structures the big fancy Scary structures that you see around you in this corner. It is a dna with Cis platen attached to it behind the tree There's a Protein chlorophyll a complex. I think I've got an entero backed in No, it's a rhodopsin Trimer lurking in a lagoon over there Since it's a membrane transmembrane Um Protein I figure having it soaking in water is it's not a bad way of representing it I've added a few interactive activities. So for example, um, the solid state activity, which is the checkerboard over to The right of the screen as you're looking at it And you know some objects which res large temporary structures. So for example, let's see. I'm going to click on Oh, well, let me click from this distance There we go There is a tiny little thing tiny little thing next to the checkerboard that will res a fairly good Definition model of a kovid protein. That's a 2000. Uh, well, it's not 2000 premise, but it it uses You know two thousand or more Prem equivalents I forget what you call them of the region's resources That's why anything big like that is only a temporary structure last a couple of minutes Then it goes back then it goes then it goes away And I see someone's found the orbital resin boxes that I have around here and again, um, they're about 50 50 prim equivalents each But they're temporary and they go away. So as long as we have a good buffer of capacity left on the Region people can Manifest res Big objects that are not permanence and don't like shut down what other things can happen on the region So those are a few things that I've developed here Let's see Thanks for Putting up with me as I navigate around here. Uh, so, um, you know, what What are my plans for the spring? I'm teaching a fourth year bio and organic class So that's how these bio and organic structures. I've got nine people in it So I'm going to get them used to second life and Have them do some activities in here Haven't really 100 planned all of that out yet, but I did want to mention it So getting back to our story of summer in in july we were Given permission to actually do In-person labs, but with reduced lab capacity. So instead of having sections of 24 we had sections of 10 students So we went up from I think like five sections up to 14 so What what I decided to do is that we'd go ahead with Some in-person activities But kind of schedule more and more online and second life activities for the mid to the end of the semester because You know with winter approaching, you know from the perspective of july with winter Approaching and thanksgiving and everything then we kind of thought that there was a chance that the Classes would be turned online again as they were in March of this year and in fact No in-person classes for the last two weeks of the semester were allowed. So The having second life activities then would be a real boom So the four activities that we planned Were the gas laws and precipitation that were already existing and an intro And Which which happened really early on and then the solid state modeling experiment, which was completely new Oh and Plus we started asking students to register get their accounts Started in july And that was kind of a continuing problem because we're working with 18 year olds 19 year olds And some of them, you know, let things drag on until october But we were able to do So um briefly why a second a solid state structure experiment. Hey, Dustin Did you teach the solid state structure experiment in person? I did I've taught both in person and second life for this experiment Tell me about the in person one So the in person one um solid state tends to be a tough Concept for freshman chemistry students in general But the in person one Does have a few issues. I remember, you know this This picture of the model we have there At least when I was teaching somebody from a previous class had You know broken it or some glued fallen off And you know, you have a bunch of students Getting confused on that and sometimes it's hard to You know cut through the middle of a model to see The packing in certain ways Right so And and constructing them is fiddly Yes Yeah, so fiddly and frustrating and Uh, it and it's actually been something that my colleagues and I My chemical education colleague, uh, dr. Wittiger Um, it was working with me on trying to develop A similar activity using unity over the past year and a half And I think they made some good progress Except pandemic hit so, uh, you know, we wanted to we wanted to update this activity Uh, let's see looking at the chat. I see uh, george is asking about How to make structures. Yeah, the big, um, COVID-19 structure all of the big structures I made And I can I can help with that. I can even actually just Give you copies of some of the structures I have if you like um, see so You know, if you're going to develop an experiment from scratch, it's not And implemented in second life. It is not a simple thing to do You know, one of the one of the problems with second life in um Second life uses for education from The early days was that people would code objects and then try to cram what they build into their pedagogy And that just doesn't work. Uh, we have to design experiments first to Be cognizant of learning objectives and then do the coding so that The learning objectives can be met So some of the influences I had, um, I would strongly recommend if you're going to develop stuff for Teaching in second life looking at greg perrier's teaching in virtual world guide. I think we've got that on the On the Second or on the science circle website It's in its third edition now. So there were there are a lot of good tips I also uh worked with Science circle members in 2018 and 2019. I I just didn't have it in me to do one this year. There was so much going on for the And we wrote proposals for the advancing informal science learning program One of the things that we really pushed hard was universal design for learning principles So what is that? Uh, so in a nutshell you start with the pedagogy you ask yourself what your goals are and what Background support is necessary. Then you have to decide how to implement um those Goals with hopefully flexible methods and materials like what we have available to us here in second life So but you also need background materials so videos and links to Other material Other supports such as having teaching assistance and office hours You know to do a good job on the pedagogy There has to be some social aspect of learning at least that's uh, that's what seems to work at our institution So again, uh, deciding how the activity will tie back to each of the pedagogical goal and uh, how to plan for Assessments of these goals as all part of this and finally once you've made some plans I thought about what the pedagogy is going to be. It's time to start building your coding and activity Which is kind of the more fun part of all of this So I put together a white paper it ended up being about You know five or six pages Long and I included all of these details details details Um, so there were desired learning outcomes. What do we want people to know about? solid state structures well, I'm not going to bore you with with the reading all of these details here, but I will point out that we started out with clear goals For what we wanted to teach and what we wanted students to get out of it All right, this will all be in the pdf. So if you want to look at it in more detail, it'll be there So, you know the second stage was planning for learners You know and we found the links that we needed to have or we made video pre labs or planned on video pre labs and You know having the ta's walk students through the activity first So so Dustin we had a number of times during the semester when we started with students Or when we brought students into second life You know starting in July and august we were inviting them to make their accounts the week of um Oh the week of labor day For scheduling reasons, uh, basically had them come in Make sure they had their accounts join a group that Would allow this all to communicate with each other. They had to send me their avatar name from their si e-mail account so that they could So that I could double check who was in the group and make sure that we had some security there And you know, basically, uh, see that that week they were sending Sending me some selfies of themselves in various places in the in second life so Since I didn't do the direct stuff with ta's or with with students rather I call on Dustin. How did that week go? um Yeah, that week went pretty well the they're signing up and Most of them signed up. Of course, um, there's always going to be a few who kind of linger on and You know don't sign up, but I would say overall we have most most of those students are Getting in pretty easily and signing up Yeah, so we so we had what a hundred and we ended up with about 120 students for the semester and after that week it was A hundred that I had the avatar name for who had joined the group and then Those last 20 it was like pulling teeth to get them to Join the group and some of them never did and so I just put them on the access list for the region What I did not want was Just random folks coming in when we were teaching second life labs and griefing students So, you know those weeks when we had the labs Running I had Access limited to only people in the group So let's see Yeah, the leet learning curve sumo has a great Point here. How long does it take them to get up to speed with second life? So i'm gonna ask dustin this uh since uh, so dustin um in the summer Do you remember your first experience the second life? Yes, I do. Um, you showed me around Showed me the ta HUD and kind of took man a little tour through the region Um, then also you put me in touch with zandy mars who's one of the creators of the region and she kind of Showed me a little bit more in depth, you know about the region how it works I would say for those students When they Got on and doing experiments it'd probably take them about 15 minutes to learn the mechanics of each experiment You know what what buttons to click how to work through the menus So usually I would beforehand I would you know go up to the labs with them Kind of give them a demo Of what to do But it's I mean it'll only take a couple minutes before they you know got the ball rolling and figured out how to do the experiment Right, so the students once they were in didn't really have Um a problem with the learning curve of using stuff in second life I was just kind of getting them in uh and getting them in the groups so that we could have security Um, george has a great question here a question for mike Did no one at your university make an issue of the adult content in sl actually no one did And you know, I did address it When I was asking permission, but I also pointed out That we're using the internet a lot for teaching now and there's a lot of adult content on the internet so we can't You know, we can't say that the whole of the internet is bad just because there's some cd parts um but When what I learned from your talk last week george that we could uh work with linden labs to create a portal where students would have a rated pg or m Avatar I really like that and going forward if we do more of this stuff I think that's uh what I would like to negotiate. I think I could surely get our University on board with that Yeah, yeah, the bureaucrats and the other self appointed protectors They they tend to listen to me. I mean, I'm in good with them. So, um, I'm not I didn't really get much feedback from from them and honestly where students choose to go on their own time Is is not something that any of us are really You know have the right to criticize so Yeah, uh, so anyway this slide, uh, just an excerpt from my plan for implementation This goes on for pages and pages and pages just in the green You know having whatever text and then supports learning outcome 1a. This was developed before any Anything can uh, or any any development of activities happen. Yeah, and I I agree um, you know, uh, academia in the u.s. Is um is very, uh conservative right now about You know things that things that can be seen but again It may be that there is a bit of a difference between um east and west coast and the midwest are my my um colleagues administrators and students seem to be very practical so Uh, let's see going going back to the next slide So yeah tour preview. Uh, so, um, let me move the solid state experiment over here a little bit closer to you. Uh, let's see edit And then move the whole thing I've moved it behind the edit buttons Okay, there we go So that that ended up being um being what we developed and move that in a way and move you down edit Down click Hey, Dustin, do you want to build a simple cubic model? I can do that go ahead So we got to make sure that the z axis spacing is right first Okay, so he's um pulling up a menu and uh choosing um What the spacing between layers of atoms will be layer one layer two We'll just put on all these layers Layer four All right, and this is the simplest model we can build it's called simple cubic and you basically see how all the atoms stack It's not the most efficient way of packing atoms together And it's actually kind of rare for like a metal alloy to have this structure um I thought fallium had this structure, but it might be actually a um like a rubidium Or something like that. Uh, there's only like a few metals that actually have this structure um Let's see. Hey, Dustin, could you maybe expose like a one one one face? Okay Good luck with that if I Yeah, a lot of the students would have um Issues with this so we we do transparency And we would go with the corners so transparency Corner six I don't know if I quite got it's almost something like that, but I don't think I quite got it I got one more to do we'll do corner one on that guy and then then it's like a slice out of that crystal, right? So one of the things that is important for material science is When you have these different structures is like how to slice through them to expose different crystal faces Polonia and polonium is is is that yes, you're right So, you know, basically, this is one of the simpler structures that we have And you know, how this thing works Well, how it works is um Described in videos you can see that there's kind of a pink sphere Just floating off to the side that says click me for links to useful web pages And one of the web pages is a frequently asked Questions page and I made a whole set of videos that actually guide students through through the experiment and one of them is Just a pre lab that I did is a Well, I call it a chalk talk, but it's actually a pen and paper So you can see that i'm describing unit cells and the like And you know the activity up on Is up on platform students can play with it back up there. I see built a simple cubic model You know finally assessment one of the things I did not do this semester because A there's no time and b we're building Trying to build quickly to provide educational stuff for students. I didn't get a irb for actually doing a In-depth publishable chem ed program Paper on this material. I figured we needed to have at least one round of People going through and giving us some informal feedback and so we can improve before we Publish any anything on on there You know for me the most important part was the feedback from the ta's this semester So Dustin feedback from ta's What would you change One of the first one of the first things that I would change is just You know getting them all signed up during that syllabus week of lab I think that would just make it a lot easier for everybody to you know, all get in at once With that There's not Too much I would change actually I think that they Um did pretty well with the experiments Like I said, it just took them, you know, 15 10 15 minutes to get used to the experiments And you know, that's that's not really anything different from when they're doing stuff in person No, it probably takes them less time to figure out the computer then Yeah Because you know in person they're a little more cautious maybe about setting themselves on fire Yes, and we don't we don't want that I do have a funny story back in 2012 we decided to go from Using bunsen burners in the lab to using Electric hot plates because we had one semester Three incidents where people turned off their bunsen burner Then moved it by grabbing the top like immediately after like the part where fire was coming out They grabbed the top and moved it So, you know a very minor burns, but we decided at that point that we just needed to Do something else so What I would love to do right now is just actually take you on a bit more of a tour So we're going to go for a walk So, uh, I think we'll go back to kind of the training area first And then we'll wander into the building and we'll show you in the building and then we'll go up to one of the platforms Fair enough. So I'm going to stand and Let's see. Let's uh, well follow me And oh, hey, you can see my molecule pet. I built a molecule pet. That's uh, It's a porphyrin nitrosil compound. It's one of my former students who went to work with george at university of oklahoma made this molecule and so, uh, it's Lovely little structure that follows me around It gets very lonely when I teleport and come zooming all right, so one of the nice things about the Um ice cast servers you can hear me throughout the region and I've also set up Chat relays for the region Like especially like in the places where we are going to I haven't set them out throughout the region. So there may be some blank spots in coverage All right, so anything you type in the parts where we go to you should be rebroadcast Okay, so this is the usual landing point. Uh, and if folks had Landmarked the place I put up some teleport Nodes to get back to where we did the presentation the presentation area was Brand new. Uh, I actually just set all that stuff up in the last 72 hours It wasn't really a good kind of amphitheater on the region I may work on that and kind of make it so that it's a better place to be So, um We're in a corner of the sim where we have uh, set up A burette See, I'll walk over to a burette piece of glassware It's a piece of glassware that you use to measure the amount of liquid that has been delivered And it's essentially a long tube with markings on and Valve I don't know if the valve works. No the valve Doesn't work here, but this is supposed to um help Students To figure out how to use their camera to zoom into things I made videos on zooming into things so students could Kind of see what I see when I was uh talking to them about zooming into things There's like a lab coat available here with goggles. I kind of have to have the more cartoony avatar They don't work with mesh avatars And so in in this region it's essentially kind of the setup and the training Zone so that students Maybe during that first week when we're getting them up with all of their Account setup we would do This region a little more So i'm going to wander into the building I love that there's um like gum and places to sit everywhere in uh the region We don't have anywhere to surf and we don't have any uh vehicles All right, i'm walking over the bridge and i'm going to go into the building See dustin is flying over there already Dustin you really like flying don't you I do It gets it it gets it from place to place Pointy to pointy quickly so This is actually a replica of one of the chemistry buildings uh on the Texas A&M campus, I believe uh, and So let's see Over over here. We've got a couple of offices. I held my office hours Exclusively in second life this semester. I gotta say I didn't have much in the way of traffic But I did want to Encourage my students to come into second life I would kind of sit in this office. I had a whiteboard set up And on request I'd start a zoom session if they wanted to I did want to make sure that I was in here dustin I think they are losing some sound we have a couple of people in the music channel saying it's down who Okay, weird, uh, let's see Let's see So we're we have lost the stream for this place Checking yeah, it's actually not letting me use The music on mine actually Really? Okay, so I thought I had set the lab To have the To actually have the um media set up right sound yep, the sound is working now okay, so um, I guess there I guess the uh main part of the atrium is a different parcel that I didn't Realize was there. So, uh, sorry about that. Uh, but again, the main part of the atrium is just The main part of the atrium Let's see Once everyone is in here you should be able to hear voice again This is this is a lovely little Set up of a lab. There's not actually any experiments that they do in here. They can do things though like you know Wash their wash their eyes out and in the eye wash station if uh, if necessary You know, they can wash dishes, uh You know, I think what I would like to do with uh, zandy and random in the future is develop this Into like develop this area into a place where we can actually talk about lab safety Um, you know, so we have the eye wash. We have various safety things around the lab. So, uh, like the Safety shower and I gotta say in a freshman lab, you're not really going to be handling stuff that Is usually you're not going to handle stuff that's so dangerous that a safety shower and the eye wash are absolutely necessary But does happen Uh, so the hoods are actually those rocket-looking things above each of the Benches, uh, this is actually a common design in Some labs they would actually come down to much closer to above where Where people are working So so there are actually hoods in here I do have hoods in my second life or my uh, science circle, uh lab You can you can visit my science circle lab where I've got a few of these exhibits up It's it's in the skybox so, um, we're going to go and We're going to go this is the hood. Yes We're going to go up to platform one and if you've got the HUD you can click on the one Or i'm going to wander over to this, uh, water molecule the one where i'm standing Uh, there's a water molecule. It's rotating. It's got a one on it Alrighty So i'm up on platform one now So come and follow me And let me know if sound is still working Yeah, some of these molecules are very high energy scissies. So yeah, uh, even the water Molecules sends you a kilometer up in the sky All right. Well welcome, uh, so this is one of our lab benches I guess, uh, you have been shrunk down to, uh, the size of like a bick lighter And You know, um the original experiments on the lab bench, uh, include the, uh, gas Laws experiment I was talking to you about that's kind of where where I am. Um That's then what what was the what was the thing the students had the most trouble with with the gas laws experiment Uh, the gas laws experiment actually there were hardly any issues with that Really? Yeah, I would say that one went the most smoothly. Um, that that was just them Learning how to use, um second life Okay in that so they weren't um, I mean maybe with attaching the tube to the lighter Or maybe things like that, but nothing really big with that experiment um that they had issue with maybe um Actually closing the door on the balance Which they have trouble with in real life. Yes Um, because there's actually it actually matters in second life, right? Because there's a little bit of wind that can actually Keep your mass fluctuating Okay, so, um Let's see. I see sissy. Do you have sound yet? I think there's um a couple of people having issues with The hud where it um teleports you you might just have to go back into the lab and click on the number one molecule Hmm So it teleported me and a handful of other people Back out towards the bleachers when we clicked on the one I think really. Yeah, so Oh, that's terrible. So you guys might have to just come and click on the molecule for now Okay, um, so Dustin, I'm I'm gonna go downstairs for a second and and and fix that but uh So, um For our for for can can you can you describe like how we did the Um, how we did the first two of the actual second life lab labs with how you know students Get help I'll be there. I'll be back in a sec. So we had three second life lab experiments So they're all on this bench. Um, you can see in the far corner. We have our solid state model right in front of us. We have the um molecular Mass and then way over on the left side. We have our titrations experiment So for our first two, which were the molecular mass and solid state students had the option of Doing it, um at home or coming into the lab to do it on the computers in case they had You know any questions so I could answer it right there or Get any technical difficulties figure out Such as if you know, if there was one student who wasn't signed up or in the group Um, so most students actually came in Um to the lab to do that Of course, there were a few who didn't come in and were able to do it on their laptop pretty easily Okay, um, so there weren't Any problems there it went pretty smoothly Having those students in there and we were able to figure out all their technical difficulties and Teaching them things, you know that they might have forgotten like using the control alt to zoom in and Look at things more closely And then the the third experiment, which was probably the most complicated Was the titration experiment and we did that Fully by second life That went pretty good As well, so it kind of demonstrated that The students learned well enough to take on a more complicated Experiment like the titrations where they had several steps and several different things to do Right, so for the titration lab, this was right after Thanksgiving I did have two students one had a chrome book As her computer so I had her come into the lab And do the experiment another had Just weird problems with his computer that second life would run and had him come in to the actual lab But out of the 120 students those were the only two students and they were alone in the labs We took all the chemicals out so there wasn't any really danger in there They were just using them as computers, but everyone else was either at home You know or wherever I don't know where people were doing their second life from But for the titration experiment, which was arguably one of the most complicated experiments that they did in second life It was fiddly They they seemed to come through it like troopers Yeah, they They did pretty well, I would think you know and when they had issues we were able to figure those out Wherever they were the chat function on here, you know like the speak Was very useful and right so voice Yes, most of them Had that even the ones who didn't with the chat were able to Get their point across and ask questions and get answers awesome so Do you think do you think that uh, do you think that this was a success? for Teaching this semester I think so you don't have to say that because I pay you or anything I do think I do I do think that it was a success, especially during the um, obviously during the pandemic You know our university we were off between Thanksgiving and the end of semester So we had that second life lab during that time where there were no in-person classes and I think it was I'm good for engaging those students during that two-week period especially So I don't know What the plans are going to be in the future? um, but I think you know this could be helpful even Even in non-pandemic times well, the you know talking about the pandemic I ended up having um A few students quarantine each week. I think the most I ever had Quarantine because of exposure or because of testing positive was about eight students in one week So you know out of 120 only eight students It kind of ramped up during the semester until about october It was like one or two a week then three or four then four or five then up to eight And then it ramped down for the rest of the semester so Yeah Let's see Have I gotten student feedback? I'm going to get student evaluations in the spring It's our policy not to let faculty see their student evaluations until after grades have been assigned Uh, so sorry that folks are having trouble with uh, the the music screen um Yes, I did the scripting But not for everything I essentially did the scripting For the entire of the solid state activity, which is over where I'm standing now And you know the moderate amounts of scripting for making The huge models appear You know having them do a few things. I'm comfortable with scripting. Uh, it takes me a little while but uh, you know, um Doing anything worthwhile in second life does take a does take a A long time You know, and I'm glad their sandbox is um set up because you know when you have When you script things to make objects appear and you forgot that They're self-referential sometimes that may fill up a whole region with uh with adams It didn't happen to me, but I caught myself before Some that that it could have Yeah, um Let's see Dustin is there anything else you'd like to add Oh, yeah, I guess I can um, maybe answer some of the questions that you You guys have so I'd probably want to talk about some of the challenges that we faced For each of each of the experiments. Um, like I said with that first experiment Um, the molar mass of butane that one probably went the most smoothly Uh, but then again, I think that was probably the most simple experiment The solid state models, uh, so that was our second lab Um, so that was a tough subject Um And students seem to have some problems with the miller indices Okay, I don't know if that was just there They haven't been exposed to it. So when they were looking at the You know the one one one diagonal cuts, uh, some of them were cutting it the wrong way Right So that that was pretty I can I can I can clarify that part. Um, so the lab Is a separate course from the class and most students are taking them both together in the class. They hadn't gotten to solid state models ever or solid state stuff by the time we ran our solid state experiment The plan was that they would see it at the same time, but um, the class got bogged down a little bit That's the best laid plans of of mice and tas And in fact all of the miller indices stuff would have come from The pre labs and the supplemental materials I gave them miller indices are kind of important for engineers to know about But we don't have much of it at all in the regular freshman chem textbooks yeah, um so I think using those pre lab videos and um It was nice for them, especially when they're at home to be able to you know, if they forgot how to do something I think it was really nice for them to be able to go back and do that Um, because when you're working in person, you might not be able to You know have your other materials available to you You know when you're working with hydrochloric acid or something you don't want to be You know looking through your binder Right exactly. Yeah, so I think that was Really nice. Um, I do think that the solid state experiment Is just as valuable if not more valuable as the In class solid state experiment So I think that they learned They were able to interact with the models a little bit more in second life As compared to in person And it's quicker to make as well That's really awesome to hear that it's quicker to make and and that you think they That they they learned something Because because that's definitely the goal. Um, we were also thinking of the vscpr type models But and I would have and and there's a plenty of stuff that is already in existence for Oh when I say vscpr It's the acronym is valence shell electron pair repulsion theory and it's really a theory of why molecules have the shapes that they do but there's plenty of Activities already in second life that cover that particular content That I could have made an experiment about but I had a discussion with the Eric boss whose dr. Boss teaches the classroom part and he had been heading that material hard in Several different other venues already for the class. So I didn't see a need to Put yet another Activity for for that particular topic so So at this point, I think we've Seen everything that the region pretty much has to offer you can feel free to wander around I I put a gold nanoparticle up in the mountain somewhere. You can use your cameras to find that You know, there's gold in them. They're hills That's an easter egg Each of the other 12 I mean there's 12 platforms, but they're all identical to this one So, you know, you can if you have the hub you can can wander up and look I guess If if anyone's got the HUD on I can click on the call for assistant button. You can see That you know platform one Has lit up on the HUD if you happen to have that on it just lights up in red and then you teleport over to The platform where students are calling you and then you can shut the Shut the call button off and and talk to the students That's a really nice aspect that Zandy and random came up with for managing managing students and TAs Let's see. So at this point, I looked with chat and answered questions Saterno is asking did you experience any hardware constraints? Do your students need dedicated GPU for these experiments? um no, I think that the students were able to get into second life and run Second life and do the experiments without any problems I mean out of my 120 there were only two Who didn't seem to be able to? Have the hardware available to them to be able to do the experiments and I would have let them and I did let them Into into the lab So any other questions? I think we have one from arian She's asking if they can visit here again Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah the the region's open I only close it when we have actual teaching activities happening and Yesterday was the last week of classes our classes start up Oh, January 19th and You know, I would probably I would probably keep the region open for the entire spring semester If I teach my chem 410 class up here I'll uh Well, maybe shut the region twice a week for an hour or something like that each time but otherwise it's your Anyone is everyone is welcome Okay Tag asked me a question about electronic configuration of Species that sounds like a really wonderful thing that Actually, I saw it developed on the acs islands back when there was an acs island And so that actually that what you're asking about actually is exists in someone's inventory I would just have to hunt them down and figure out You know a nice place to put it Let's see other questions Yeah, I think laptops are getting better and better Dustin Dustin was surprised about being able to run zoom and second life. Um at the same time. Yeah, mine My laptop is you know, just an inexpensive Lenovo with an i3 processor and it's doing zoom and second life as we speak so So it shouldn't be too many laptops out there that Don't run this for sure Right. Yeah, my older laptop That I got I think 2010 or something like that. I was running zoom and second life at the same time I got a new laptop recently because it was getting I was running like form or five major memory pig programs at the same time and it was getting slow so Thus the regular arian we used the regular second life viewer for students You know, I just kind of went through the official site. That was a mistake I'll tell you why we had one section Wednesday afternoon where Linden labs would either shut the region off for 20 minutes or during the lab release a new update and I would actually have to Come into the lab and update all the computers and You know, then students could do their labs again So I'm going to have one lab section who's had a hard time with second life and all the rest have had an easy time Firestorm doesn't Firestorm doesn't insist that you update Um, you know as often as the regular second life viewer does and I know you can turn that feature off on the regular second life viewer, but uh, that wasn't something I was able to get done during the semester What would happen if linden life altered? SL barometric pressure or sea level? Well, I I think the most of the region might get flooded if they raised sea level. Um, I think the Atmospheric pressure On the platforms is just coded into the barometer. I don't think that The barometer looks at what second life's current atmospheric pressure is it would be nice if it says the Can I compare how well students learn with a sim and not using with a sim? From this semester data, I can't Uh You know, but from what um, dr. K and You know And uh curt published a while back There results were that the actual in-person version of the experiment and the second life version of the experiment were about equal in terms of How well students learned and in fact in their paper one of their major comments from students was that The second life would make a great Pre-lab activity so that students would come into the lab and be able to do their titrations really fast and then go away Let's see. What was I looking for from the old acs region? Uh, they had a um, they had a um They they had an activity that basically showed electronic configurations gas phase electronic configurations of all the elements So barrigan is asking about the wind and um, we had a talk about Wind power in second life not too long ago. I think Um, so I think there is wind in second life already Dustin, would you like to add anything? any final thoughts I don't have too many final thoughts. Um, it was just nice to um, be able to Teach synchronously without being in person um, and it was nice to Not have to worry about telling the kids to Or a lot of the students to put on their goggles and keep their masks on and didn't have to worry about any Safety things like that. Oh, yeah mask was a whole thing, right? Uh, I had forgotten about that. Did you have a problem with telling students about masks early on? Oh, yeah, I had to Tell them, you know, get it up over your face It's not a chin strap Right, right, right exactly cool. And and it doesn't help with the goggles. It makes them fog up Yep So if we were being real hardcore about it, I suppose we could have insisted on goggles in the second life part, but You know having having that amount of detail um, just kind of Seemed unnecessary to me Let's see. Um, I was using the sim degrade their safety skills in real life Activity and um walking into a lab where there are things that Can actually get on you And you know in terms of actual real life stuff when we're in the lab, we uh do Impress on them how serious safety is um So I don't I don't think I don't think the the the two are necessarily connected. I'm not a real big fan um for totally online activities For learning how to do chemistry. There is a lot of hands-on stuff That we do that just can't be taught without kind of that kinematic aspect to it Like dust and when we're in the research lab and you're working with a vacuum line um, do you think that working on a vacuum line in second life Would give you the nearly the same sort of experience? uh, definitely not because there Uh, wouldn't be any consequences for doing bad things in second life where when you're working with a vacuum line, you can definitely Um, you definitely need to be paying close attention Yeah, because it can explode or you catch fire or you know, if you're not wearing your goggles And it explodes you get glass shards in your face. Uh, so so that part's really serious On the other hand, you know, you have to know how to do this safely because You know, you're trying to do significant things towards you. You're getting your master's thesis um, but if I wanted to give someone the You know a taste of using like a vacuum line Uh, experiments a second life taste might be a good sort of introduction and A safe way of doing it. So I think I think there's definitely a place Uh for the second life content and the real life content to interact But if you're going to be a professional in chemistry, then you got to have the hands on We got to be able to teach people how to Do the hands on stuff without hurting themselves or others Yeah, I think it was um the second life is helpful especially for these Our class was engineering chemistry. So these students might not work, you know In the chemical field, but they still need to have the theoretical knowledge and know how this How these things work. So I think The theoretical knowledge from second life Is still pretty good for them Yeah, so, you know, once we're once we're back doing real things In, you know, what's we're back doing in-person labs without COVID-19 I assume our labs are going to go back up to 24 people The second life activities Will I think have a place there's plenty of times when a student has to miss a lab because they're sick If we have a similar lab in second life, they can do that as a makeup You know and uh, even the even doing the second life type experiments as a Pre lab activity Can help them And you know as the Dustin as he said for the solid state activity was actually probably superior to the in-person version Yeah, I just think it was easier For the students and actually I think it would take less time because I remember from last year when I was teaching in person A lot of the students went Over their You know two hours and 50 minute time period for that lab and we're really struggling with it right right Yeah So, yeah, I mean we could make this into more of a video game where you know Someone catches fire and runs around and you know, and there are consequences But you know having unpleasant consequences when you just kind of enter your video game lab Uh, that's that's kind of harsh for a freshman lab. You know if I were doing this for a fourth year students Uh, I I'd love to build more of that kind of stuff in Um max had a comment here or there's a snow storm and the campus is closed. I saw something come by Um, you know essentially because we're supposed to be doing everything online now after Thanksgiving They told us. Uh, yeah, uh, you're not canceling your classes if it snows because you're in your basement anyway Okay That was kind of fun So I see it's getting to about an hour and 20 minutes in Maybe Are there any last questions? Awesome. I'm not seeing any Last questions. So I want to thank everyone for coming today and for your for your attention I'd like to thank Dustin for being a good sport and co-presenting with me. I think uh hearing your perspective as Someone who was doing the direct work with the students I was just coordinating the labs and trying to make sure that there was a good environment For learning to happen having both of our Perspectives, I think was uh, very good for today. Yeah, I'm glad to do it Thanks for inviting me in Oh, yeah, um Cool. Well, thanks. Thanks everyone. Um, what I'm going to do at this point is uh, stop our zoom stream and ice cast And uh, probably Uh, wander off. So I hope everyone has a great weekend and I hope you all stay safe All right. See you guys later Okay