Chemical educators are facing a new generation of instructional technologies that impact classroom teaching. New technologies, like smartphones, cloud computing and artificial intelligence take learning beyond the classroom; 3D printing, virtual reality, and augmented reality provide new ways to teach the virtualization skills that are important…

The Internet has disrupted or threatened to disrupt the traditional business models in many different areas, including publishing, record companies, retail sales, motion pictures, and advertising. One potential source of disruption for higher education is online learning, especially the recent focus on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Can…

Open access publications provide scholars with unrestricted access to the "conversation" that is the basis for the advancement of knowledge. The large number of open access journals, archives, and depositories already in existence demonstrates the technical and economic viability of providing unrestricted access to the literature that is the…

Several publications, including "Navigating the Badlands" a book by Mary O'Hara-Devereux as well as a report by the National Research Council, suggest troubled times are ahead for society and possibly higher education. The latter report says that, "The impact of information technology on the university will likely be profound, rapid, and…

The media environment is currently being dramatically changed by social networking, mobile computing, augmented reality, and transmedia. Of these four, transmedia is probably the least familiar to most educators. Transmedia enhances a central story idea with a variety of media components that provide additional information, give increased…

Two decades ago, many campuses mobilized a major effort to deal with a clear problem; faculty and students needed access to desktop computing technologies. Now the situation is much more complex. Responding to the current challenges, like mobile computing and social networking, will be ore difficult but equally important. There is a clear need for…