Thanks for the questions! The models are designed using Java and Processing, and the simulations are embedded in a modular inquiry-based curriculum. Teachers can use the curriculum modules stand-alone or drop-in units and activities to complement their existing curriculum. Using the entire curriculum would cover ~120 days of instruction. In our studies to date, we do see students improve their understanding of the relationship between the three "levels" in chemistry when they work with the simulation activities and this seems to translate to improve learning outcomes as well.

Thank you for your question and suggestion, Chris! The simulations are currently being translated to a mobile/browser-friendly version using JavaScript and should ideally be ready for use by the beginning of the '18-'19 school year. 

I would be happy to send you updates! What's your preferred email/mode of contact?

My e-mail is orban@physics.osu.edu    Are you guys on twitter?

Thanks for your questions, Joni. Our current project investigates the efficacy of CCC in Chicago-area schools. Currently, we are collaborating with 13 schools on the efficacy project. As we launched the project last summer, our work this year has involved collecting baseline data on teacher practices and student learning outcomes without using CCC. We've identified several points in the schools' curricula that we believe the CCC materials will best support teachers and students to connect levels together. Next year we hope to have our first implementation results to compare against the baseline data. With regard to challenges of implementation, we know that resources are an issue. The curriculum encourages students to work with the simulations routinely throughout the school year, and many of our schools lack access to sufficient hardware resources to support this level of use. That will likely remain a problem at scale, so we are developing alternative models of implementation to support teachers with limited access to computers in their classrooms.

Thanks, Chunk! We agree that the representation issue is a central problem in chemistry instruction, which motivated much of our development work on the curriculum. We love PhET simulations too and I'm glad our sims remind you of them! We often look to them for examples of high quality educational technologies for teaching science. With respect to our activities, each simulation in the curriculum is connected to a guided-inquiry activity that helps students gather observations from the simulation to generate claims about chemical phenomena. We also have hands-on activities involving physical models, laboratory demos, and drawing to help students link core ideas across multiple representations. Our current project aims to establish the efficacy of a sustained implementation of the materials, but we have several prior studies that do show that individual components of CCC improve conceptual knowledge in chemistry and representational competence with respect to specific units.

Thanks, Anja! We try to support teachers using the materials in two ways. First, we developed a set of teacher materials that complement the student materials. These materials can be found on our website. They offer guidelines for implementing a unit or activity, examples of student work from prior implementations, and tips from other teachers who have piloted the curriculum. Second, we have a more intensive PD program that involves a one-week summer institute on using the materials, bimonthly work circles with peer teachers during the school year, and one-on-one observations and feedback from our professional development staff who visit the classrooms. We believe the PD program is a core part of the curriculum!

Hi Mike!  It's exciting to see where this line of research is currently.  In thinking from the PD angle, I was wondering if teachers have opportunity to visit each other's classrooms or co-teach and iterate on their approaches in practice?

Jen, this is a wonderful idea. We do have teachers engage in reflection activities together, but they have not visited each other's classrooms. Thanks for sharing the idea!

Thanks for the comment, Carrie. We have found ways to support our collaborators with an implementation regardless of available resources. The materials are designed for students to work together with a shared display, which does require a lot of tech. However, an easy modification that many teachers adopt is to move the activities to the classroom-level where students investigate a simulation as a whole-class activity. This requires only one machine and a projector.

Thanks for your question, Jim! Depending upon the simulation and the unit, users are able to manipulate some variables (ex. temperature, volume, number and kind of molecules). Previous work related to this project indicated that professional development was integral to teachers successfully implementing the curriculum - the types of facilitating questions used in CCC may be new to teachers, so modeling those questions and providing continued support as teachers began using the curriculum helped teachers build confidence and skill. As Mike mentioned in another comment, there are several prior studies related to the current project that show that individual components of CCC improve students' conceptual knowledge in chemistry and representational competence with respect to specific units.

Thanks for your question, James! The integration of the macro level occurs in the other curriculum materials, primarily through demonstrations, readings, teacher-facilitated discussions, and hands-on activities. Students are able to pause, zoom in, and otherwise manipulate certain aspects of the simulation in its current build, but that mainly allows them greater access to the submicroscopic level (as you've pointed out). Having all three levels available within the simulation at once would be an interesting challenge to undertake - thanks for the suggestion!