During the spring semester of 2023, I was on scholarly reassignment—I jokingly say I was reassigned to my basement office. Since my reassignment was spent working on interactive online activities, developing an online version of Introduction to Polymer Science & Engineering (TE 200), and preparing it for Quality Matters certification; I wanted to do an online presentation of my efforts. Therefore, this Pressbook and the video below are my version of the presentation of my scholarly reassignment activities. In the video I discuss what I accomplished during my reassignment; it can be split into roughly four sections:

• The results of my participation in DELTA’s Online Course improvement Program (OCIP)
  • This was a wonderful, but unexpected addition to my reassignment time. I was asked to apply and accepted into the program well after Scholarly Reassignment proposal was submitted. I am grateful I had both the time and flexibility to participate.  It was an unvaluable opportunity.
• Development of interactive online activities using H5P
  • The original plan was to incorporate these into a website I would develop, but OIT has never released the H5P plugin for NCSU WordPress sites so I will pivot to Pressbooks for the foreseeable future. Please explore the H5P activities in this Pressbook (it’s why I created it, for you to see the possibilities!).
• Video editing skill development
  • Most of my H5P activities have videos embedded in them. I spent a lot of time developing the skills necessary to produce these videos.
• Process Oriented Guided Inquiry (POGIL)
  • I learned about POGIL for the first time during an online Lilly Conference (spring 2023) and went “all in” on this evidence-based, engaging teaching pedagogy.

Exploring This Pressbook

I created this Pressbook to showcase my reassignment activities and to evaluate Pressbooks as a tool to publicly share the online activities I have developed (it has exceeded my expectations). Below are the sections of the Pressbooks and some notes on why I included them or what I think you might be interested in reviewing.

• Introduction to TE 200
  • Excerpt from “Course Overview” I created as part of OCIP
• Modules 1 – 4
  • Please explore the variety of H5P activities. The front matter of each section is the same as what is included in each Moodle module. This consistent structure was developed as part of OCIP.
• Appendix: H5P
  • This section was created specifically with you in mind! There is a downloadable H5P course presentation template and some advice and links for you to get started with H5P.
• Appendix: POGIL
  • Find the POGIL activity I wrote and had accepted in to the POGIL Activity Clearinghouse, as well as some basic information on POGIL.
• Appendix: OCIP
  • Find my module learning objectives mapped to my course learning objectives, as well as some basic information on OCIP and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
• Appendix: Video Editing & Production
  • Simply a showcase of a video I made before my reassignment and one I made recently for my daughter’s Girl Scout troop.

Excerpt of My Scholarly Reassignment Proposal

Below is an excerpt of the proposal I submitted to request the scholarly reassignment. The proposal was ambitious, but if you substitute the word “Pressbook” for  “website” I am well on my way to completing nearly everything I set out to do. There were unexpected opportunities (participating in the DELTA’s Online Course improvement Program [OCIP] and discovering Process Guided Inquiry Learning [POGIL]) and unexpected roadblocks (no H5P plugin for NCSU WordPress sites and struggling to find a reliable partner for Girl Scout related activities).

Virtual Outreach

Scholarly Reassignment Proposal for Spring 2022

One take-away from the global pandemic is that we can do more virtually than we ever believed possible. I will leverage the skills and knowledge I developed during our rapid shift to online learning to develop a polymer learning website and an asynchronous mini-course that fulfills all the requirements for one Girl Scout STEM-based badge. These creations can be used to raise awareness for the Textile Engineering, Chemistry, & Science department and the Wilson College of Textiles, could positively impact recruiting, and point potential students to our traditional, long-standing recruiting/outreach activities, such as polymer camp and the Summer Textile Exploration Program.

Development of an Interactive Polymer Learning Website

Several excellent polymer learning websites used to be available and usable, including:

• Plastics e-Learning
  • This was developed by Prof. Ian Harrison of Penn State through an NSF grant. Harrison used upper level students (including Dr. Rebecca Klossner, FPS alum) to help with the module development. Klossner’s undergraduate thesis related to her contributions to this project,
  • The modules were run on Adobe Flash and I speculate that the site ended when Flash fell out of favor and Prof. Harrison retired.
• Case Western Reserve University’s online textbook.
  • This freely available “textbook” was a great resource for me to refer students to  and is no longer available.
• Macrogalleria is still available, but it is extremely dated, to the point of not being useful.
  • I do still refer TE 200 students to this site, because the content is great. But the interface is so dated that the students have trouble taking the site seriously.

Filling the void of reputable polymer learning websites would be a meaningful contribution to the polymer learning community; in addition to being hugely beneficial to students in Introduction to Polymer Science & Engineering (TE 200) and Advances in Polymer Science (FPS 770), as detailed in the next section. I envision an interactive site with questions to check understanding, short videos, and many interactive “widgets” powered by H5P. Polymer fundamentals will be covered at an advanced high school/early college level with links to “learn more,” which may include links to classic journal articles, more advanced topics, and detailed example problems. Where feasible real world issues will be used to show relevance and create interest in the topic. For example, one page (or module) will be Paper or Plastic?. This module would introduce the concept of life-cycle analysis and the real world complexities of recycling. Another module would be on the Fantastic Plastic: Polyethylene—how can one material be used to make a sandwich baggie, a milk jug, a hip implant, and a high performance fiber used in bullet-resistant vests? This module will introduce polymer crystallinity and morphology, as well as basic mechanical properties and their measurements.

Local Motivation and Impact at NCSU

Introduction to Polymer Science & Engineering (TE 200) is a sophomore level course that is required for Textile Engineering, Textile Technology, and Polymer & Color Chemistry undergraduate degrees. TE 200 is a unique course. Most polymer courses (at NCSU and across the country) are 400 level and above, as most are taught after students complete thermodynamics or physical chemistry. This course was designed for students to take during their second year and the content is tailored to their knowledge level. The students in TE 200 have a wide variety of fundamental chemistry skills and comfort with basic chemical structures.

Advances in Polymer Science (FPS 770) is a required core course for the Fiber & Polymer Science Ph.D. degree. FPS 770 is another unique course. In the fall of 2020, roughly half of the FPS 770 students had never taken a polymer course (informal Zoom poll), while ten students had taken three or more polymer courses (follow-up Google Forms survey). Less than half of the students had taken thermodynamics or physical chemistry and only half of the students agreed with this statement, “I am comfortable determining what types of intermolecular forces are important for a polymer, given its structure. (van der Waals, dipole-dipole, H-bonding)”  (follow-up Google Forms survey). Needless to say, the wide variety of student backgrounds in TE 200 and FPS 770 make them challenging, but fascinating to teach!

Both TE 200, FPS 770, and other students interested in polymers would benefit from having an up-to-date, interactive, polymer learning website. While the H5P interactive activities can (and will be) included in the course Moodle pages, Moodle has limited layout and linking options and students only have access to content while they are enrolled in the course. A publicly available web page would enable students to access and review content as needed for their other courses and even beyond their NCSU experience.

Finally, if the department and/or college wishes to help with promotion and search optimization, I believe the proposed website could become an effective outreach tool raising awareness of our programs and research. Once several modules are built out, I will contact the American Chemical Society’s Macromolecular Alliance for Community, Resources and Outreach (MACRO) and ask for our new polymer learning site to be highlighted on their website.