Smart Science® Education Excluded from iNACOL

Kemi Jona, a board member of iNACOL, a non-profit organization that promotes online learning, runs a pre-conference session each year at iNACOL's Virtual School Symposium. This year he explains his workshop as follows, "In this workshop, participants will learn about the broad range of practices and technologies available for implementing high quality science learning in online courses. (emphasis added)

Later in the description, he says, "Developers/publishers who are interested in either demonstrating their virtual lab/resource and/or conducting an in-depth training session for participants are encouraged to contact Dr. Jona. Space is limited and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis."

I applied months ahead of the conference as a part of the proposal process so that our unique technology for prerecorded real experiments would most certainly be included in the session for participants to evaluate. When I discovered that my approach to delivering online science labs was being excluded, I inquired as to why that was. His response was, "...your personal rhetoric (both in person and online) against many of these methods is antagonistic to the goals of my preconference."

In other words, it wasn't because I was late, and it wasn't an oversight. Kemi deliberately excluded a very important technology from his session because of a personal opinion. Not only that, but he is opposed to me expressing my opinion. Rather than opening up debate about this topic, he has chosen an exclusionary policy.

He also communicated the following: "The fact that you are blinded by pursuit of profit for your company to understand the impact your statements have is very sad." Of course, no such statement is a "fact." It's Kemi's opinion and has no basis at all in fact. Kemi has absolutely no evidence to support this comment. It is, in fact, completely opposite to the realities.

Despite telling him that I would not personally be present at VSS this year, he remained adamant in his exclusionary approach to his session. Members who do attend will have to contact us directly to learn about our revolutionary approach to delivering exciting real online lab experience at low cost, safely, and efficiently.

He suggested that I submit proposals for conference sessions. I have submitted multiple proposals every year.

I don't believe that my presence or absence at his preconference session will impact my ultimate success. However, as a board member of iNACOL, his influence on this organization is far-reaching. The entire organization could adopt his exclusionary approach. Instead, they should be highlighting the issues surrounding the delivery of online science labs and having broad discussions, even panel debates, on various approaches to resolving this problem.

Because he singled out my statement that "simulations are not science," I am explaining the statement here. It's my opinion, of course, and is open to debate and discussion.

I say that simulations are a tool of science similarly to microscopes, telescopes, and spectrophotometers. Scientists use these tools in a variety of ways to study the real world. They don't study the tools. After all, science is a process.

This distinction, which I firmly assert, is not important to this particular debate because of the differences between science and science education. In science education, the issue isn't whether to use simulations in science courses but what their appropriate roles are.

I think that students' scientific investigations (labs) should be focused on the real world for a variety of reasons. The National Research Council, in America's Lab Report, agrees. Simulations should be relegated to other roles.

Lest opponents of online labs seize on my statements to support their views, let me state quite definitely that while hands-on labs can play an important role in science learning, they are not required for much of "lab" learning. Some hands-on experience can aid in learning by providing kinesthetic experiences and experimental design experiences.

My approach to using prerecorded real experiments allows students to develop the three key results of lab experiences:

* Understanding the nature of science
* Developing scientific reasoning skills
* Appreciating the complexity and ambiguity of the work that scientists do.

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