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The UCD STEMWiki Hyperlibrary project is a multi-institutional collaborative venture to develop the next generation of open-access textbooks to improve STEM education (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) at all levels of higher learning. The central aim of the DTP is to develop and disseminate free, virtual, customizable textbooks that will substitute for current, commercial paper texts in multiple courses at post-secondary institutions across the nation. This is accomplished via the construction of several pseudo-independently operating and interconnected “STEMWikis” that concentrate on specific STEM topics. The ChemWiki (http://ChemWiki.ucdavis.edu) is the pilot STEMWiki developed to demonstrate efficacy of the DTP approach.
The UCD ChemWiki was created and is currently directed by Prof. Delmar Larsen and is housed in the Larsen Lab at the UC Davis Chemistry Department. This project is a new approach toward chemistry education where a textbook environment is constantly being written and re-written partly by students and partly by faculty members resulting in a free Chemistry textbook to supplant conventional paper-based books. Anyone can view, although an account is required to edit the site modules. The ChemWiki is designed to maintain all Modules (pages of chemistry information) in the primary sections in the Core; the Wikitexts contain only class organization that is custom designed and developed for individual instructors, classes or schools. See the Development page for more details.
The Student Ability Rating and Inquiry System (SARIS) is a unique application that will enable the ChemWiki to present each student with reference material and review questions that are tailored to that particular student’s course and skill level. The SARIS will eventually generate the required statistics to allow the chemistry department to evaluate student learning outcomes at the course and major level and once fully implemented with a feedback mechanism will allow for student specific outcome based assessments of courses or programs. The SARIS is still under construction.
A module's "Talk Page" is the behind the scenes construction page outlining reviews and comments by contributors in order to aid in the development of that specific module. Only users with account have access to a specific Module's Talk Page. When contributing to the Talk Page please make a note not to repeat past comments and recommendations.
The Dekiwiki engine we are using for the ChemWiki is built with a FCK editor that allows for module construction without having to build/edit the raw source (HTML) code directly. It has been configured for most of the needs contributors require. The layout is below; please refrain from using the advanced features in red until you are familiar with the Dekiwiki structure.
In principle yes. You are encouraged to compose your module in a text-only word processor (e.g., Notepad), or process your content through a text-only processor (via cutting and pasting). Then review your text for errors, then cut and paste the final version into the appropriate text box on the module. Some formatting characters used in programs like Word (angled quotes, accents, special characters) will not display properly. Save your edits, review your final text, and make any edits necessary to correct the format.
Each module is unique in its optimal approach. The below guidelines will help in construction and the current model format can be viewed here.
Three steps to add non-copyrighted (e.g. public domain, creative commons, own photos, or figures made from scratch) images or pictures:
Additional factors to pay attention to regarding figures:
Places to get free figures (you MUST CONFIRM THIS WITH A URL FROM WHERE YOU TOOK THE FIGURE):
The alternative (and preferred) approach MathJax instead. MathJax and the system we use on the ChemWiki are very similar. Below are some details to help out.
I modified the page I was working on to use it (it works closer to LaxTex):
Details about it: http://www.mathjax.org/. This link http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php is an online WYSIWYG LaTeX editor that creates math expressions using templates. The LaTeX is automatically written and a preview is displayed. Just copy the code and paste it. Be sure to enclose the LaTeX in dollar signs ($).
Examples to learn from:
An NSF funded Project
By STEMWiki Hyperlibrary