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Summary

Foreword

1. ECTN Information
2. ECTN NewsLetter
3. ECT Chemistry Tests
4. ECTN Projects
5. Dissemination Programme
6. Miscellaneous on Educational studies
7. What's coming next !

Foreword

Dear All,

I hope you made it well on your way back after the meeting !

This NewsLetter includes plenty of news, good news, of course !! I might draw your attention to some topics developped below, as these are the contribution of some of our members - THANKS to them.

The General Assembly has elected a brand new President and vice-President, and 5 Administrative Council Members - Congratulations to them. We wish "Good luck" to the new team, but of course they won't be able to make things better, greater and faster without the help, the contribution and the involvment of all of the members of the ECTN. Thanks in advance to everybody.

We also welcome in our Network, Prof. Marta SALISOVA, Vice-President of the Slovakian Society of Chemistry, she has great interest in the "Objective 1" project. She also was introduced by Prof. Pavel DRASAR.

And now, let me take just one example (at random), and believe me or not, the Chemistry Tests have gone out, what a piece of chance ;-))... we have a long road to polish and prepare the next Demo release on both the Windows and Internet environment, and an even longer Highway for the certification release.

Do I need to convince you that we need to work all together on the test target ? Think about : the short description of the ECTN and the tests usually make a great effect on a third party, you can make a comparison with most of your faces during the main assembly, when I told you the number of the mailing list names the NewsLetter is targetting !!

ECTN represents 30 countries, more than 100 institutions, displays a demo test in 19 languages, targets professional and academic certification in chemistry, develops many projects, and work on a European core chemistry definition (actual and for the future) !!

Just think about this : with the "Core Chemistry" definition, we have a great chance to "still" have a short distance ahead in comparison to some countries or well known Chemistry association. We disseminate widely the information, and now the request is clear, I should say the requests are clear : when will it be available ? at what price ? where would the certification test be passed ? who recognises the levels ? etc ...  if we missed the target, all what you've done will be simply useless, but will for sure serve other people, and then forget everything about Intellectual property and European creation.

Just have in mind that the Association will help us in assuming the property, the dissemination, the recognition by official bodies and industries, of our EChemTest - as soon the Association is created, we will be able to face this market.

As a conclusion of this foreword, let me insert a wording from Terry MITCHELL  (see § 7) :

"... we probably have to take ourselves more seriously than we have ever done ..."

Best regards
P.Mimero

Summary of the ECTN Plenary Meeting, Lund, Sweden, 29 April, 2001.

There follows a brief summary of the outcomes of the ECTN Plenary Meeting. 
To obtain a full report of the meeting, click here "ECTN Plenary Meeting R 2001.pdf" {18 Kb}

1. It was agreed to de-couple the management structures of ECTN and ECEN (see full report for explanation).

2. It was agreed that ECTN should form a non-profit making Association under Belgian law.
The following were elected to the interim Administrative Council of ECTN :
 

Mr. Anthony SMITH, CPE Lyon, FR  -  President
Mr. Richard WHEWELL, University of Strathclyde, UK  - Vice-President

and 5 Administrative Council Members
Mrs.Evangelia VARELLA, University of Thessaloniki, GR
Mrs.Kristiina WÄHÄLÄ, University of Helsinki, FI
Mr. Antonio LAGANA, University of Perugia, IT
Mr. Juan RODRIGUEZ-RENUNCIO, Complutense Madrid, ES
Mr. Hans- Günther SCHMALZ, University of Köln, DE
 

3. Two new working groups will be established next year:

Biological Chemistry (Leader: Arne van der Gen, Leiden, NL; a.gen@chem.leidenuniv.nl)
Remediation (Leader: Milt Karayannis, Ioannina, GR; mkaragia@cc.uio.gr)

Members are invited to contact the leaders if they are interested in joining these groups.

4. The current working groups - Image, Multimedia, Core Chemistry for the Future, Food Chemistry - will continue working next year but will not be funded except for a group meeting to be held on the day before the next plenary meeting. The Teaching and Assessment group will consider the topic of Postgraduate Education next year, but will only be funded for a meeting on the day before the plenary meeting (contact Terry Mitchell if you are interested in joining this group; (mitchell@citrin.chemie.uni-dortmund.de). The Green and Sustainable Chemistry group should complete its work in the current funding period.

5. Raffaella Pagani (Complutense Madrid, ES) will lead a group that will link the ECTN with a European project entitled ‘Tuning Educational Structures in Europe’. Raffaella has submitted a project within her Socrates Institutional Contract in this area. The group will consist of those who signed up for her project plus Paolo Todesco, and members from the Core Chemistry for the Future or the Teaching and Assessment groups so that one member from each of the 15 EU countries is represented.

6. Workshops on Image, Core Chemistry for the Future, Teaching and Assessment, Green and Sustainable Chemistry, Multimedia in Chemistry Education, and Food Chemistry were held. The outcomes will be reported separately.

7. All participants were provided with a copy of the CD-ROM containing the chemistry tests produced by the Evaluation of Core Chemistry project. An appeal for people to participate in this project was made. We need people for translations, proof reading/corrections, question setting, …. , in all areas of chemistry but particularly in analytical and inorganic chemistry.
Contact Tony Smith if you are interested, or know of people who might be interested. To have the tests ready for people who require certification rather than self-assessment some refinements are necessary ? it was agreed that we should complete this work by the end of the year.
If the Grundtvig project is funded there will be much work to do (but funds available) to create new tests and to provide extensive feedback to some of the current tests.

8. The next plenary meeting of the ECTN will be held in Perugia, IT (Organiser: Antonio Lagana), 9 ? 12 May, 2002. Make a note in your diary now. In 2003, the plenary meeting will be held in Prague, CZ (Organiser: Pavel Drasar).

A. Smith

The NewsLetter of May will target more than 180 individual member from 34 countries, as Partners and ECEN / TASSEP members were also added to the mailing list.

REGULAR : Please remember that all the information submitted before the 15th of each month will be included in the current month issue.

EXCEPTIONNAL : For the July issue, I would much appreciate if you could send your material as soon as possible but not after the 7th of July at the latest ; I will be in Brisbane for the IUPAC meeting with an Internet access, and after the 9th I will be on tour.

SPECIAL : All long letters, reports or contributions (i.e. longer than a half A4 page format) will be made available from the ECTN NewsLetter as an Internet link  - the document will be transformed to a .pdf ACROBAT file to be readable from a Multiplatform environment. In this case, a brief/short description of the letter will be inserted in the NewsLetter with the link. Remember that the software ACROBAT READER will be needed and a plug-in is necessary to display it directly with your browser (IE and NN / Mac, Win, Unix). Download the required file(s) at : www.acrobat.com

P. Mimero

In order to organize the comming period and to prepare the next important event of the future regarding the tests, the "Objective 1" Working Group leaders received on May 15th the guidelines regarding the tests, the libraries, the translation, the double checking, and the correction. They are asked to send their own agreement by May 30st.

• ECT Translators

The list of the Translator coordinators is available on the EChemTest website ; Anda P. and Bjørn P. confirmed in Lund their own agreement of being respectively the Latvian and the Norwegian coordinators.
Peter T.H., who is actually the correspondant for the Dutch area, will soon move to the USA for his post-doc.
 
• ECT Demo Tests

Most of you should now have in your hands the actual version of this CDRom (v 3.5.1. eu). We would strongly appreciate it if you could send us back your comments and suggestions about this product - this will be very helpful to improve the next release.
15 languages are available on the CDRom,
- 2 more are now completed : Hungarian, and Slovenian (thanks to Zdenka K.),
- 2 other are on the tracks : Lithuanian draft partially done (thanks to Mudis S.), and Bulgarian under process (first test received on May 18 - thanks to Kalina M.),
- Russian needs to be developped, the Organic test is the only one test available at the moment
- Latvian is under consideration (thanks to Anda P.) and could probably be made available by the end of the Automn 2001.
- An opportunity could also be "open" for a Gaelic version during the year 2001 (thanks to Mike B.).
 
• ECT Certification Libraries

Important activities are in progress.
Polish : Organic Libraries are now completed (thanks to Henryk K.) ; Physical Libraries are almost 60% done (thanks to Marek F.) ; General Chemistry at both Levels 1 and 2 were requested in Lund by the Polish team for translation.
Greek : Organic Libraries are done at approximately 75% (thanks to Evangelia V.).
Gaelic : on the most optimistic eventuality, the full set of Libraries could be translated (thanks to Mike B.)
 
• ECT Volunteers

Janine M. offer her help to review the French versions of both the Demo and the available libraries. Please WG leaders and Coord. Translators contact her for any help if needed.

Volunteers to translate the chemistry test libraries into their own language are welcome to contact Pascal Mimero who can supply the necessary files.
 

• ECT Website

Still under work ! I had some feedback in Lund for light correction in various languages. So if you noticed something that should be changed or corrected, please tell me ! Jens J. provided the Danish version of the web page ; Anda P. will soon provide the Latvian translation of the web page.
 
• ECT Feedback after CDRom dissemination

version 3.5.1.eu only in 2000

From A. GEORGES - University of Sydney (AUS) // met at ChemInt 2001, Washington DC (USA) - Sept.00
"... Yes, I had no trouble reading the demo CDRom from the ECTN/European Chemistry Test.  I thought the lay out was clear and, apart from getting into a loop during the analytical test module (my computer I think), it was easy to use.  Did you use something like 'Question Mark' to write the questions in?  It would be useful, I thought, to be told which question I got wrong and what the correct answers to those question were.  ..."

From L. CERVANTES - Mexico DF (MEX) // met at 16th BCCE, Ann Arbor MI (USA) - Jul/Aug.00
"... I would very much like to receive more information about the European Chemistry Test. I reviewed the CD you gave me at the 16th BCCE and it seems to me that it is very well designed. ... "

From J. DE COCK - Cape Town (South Africa) // met at 16th ICCE, Budapest (HU) - Aug.00
"...  I went into your websites and are still interested in your programmes; it will really fit what we are doing here ..."

From M. MAKARSKA - University of Lublin (PL) // met at IUPAC'99, Berlin (DE) - Aug.99
"... I've just spent my spare time for testing your chemical program. It's very good idea. I tried to solve all questions, from all levels. {Polish version - Inorganic and Analytical were not ready at this time} Together with my friends from lab of course. We got almost 100% from 1st level and about 80% from 2nd level. And I must say, that the last level isn't so easy for me, especially that now I learn rather inorganic and analytical chemistry, not organic. But I hope that in the future all kinds of chemical tests, which you planned, will be prepared. And we have one question. Is it possible to check in your test, which problems are solve correct? Because it's important, in my opinion, to be able to know which questions are solved correct and which incorrect. ..."

From A. TCHOUGREEFF - Kharpov Inst., Moscow (RU) // met at EUCO-CC3, Budapest (HU) - Sept.00
"... thank you very much for sending me the CD ROM with theCore Chemistry Evaluator. It has recently reached me. Itried it again in a quiet environment and must admit thatit can be very useful. ..."

P. Mimero

• MuTALC - Multimedia Teaching and Learning in Chemistry

Dear Colleague,
in this issue the working group on Multimedia Teaching and Learning in Chemistry (MuTALC) starts its collaboration with the ECTN Newsletter. The aim of the collaboration is to inform the members of the Thematic Network about the initiatives undertaken and  the advances achieved. In this issue a synthetic report on the debate held at the annual plenary meeting of Lund (26-29 April, 2001) and some details about the proposed questionnaire and  workshop are given. Suggestions on the proposed items are welcome.

The coordinator of the MuTALC working group
Antonio Lagana (lag@unipg.it)

Click on the following links to download/display the Report and the Questionnaire :

- "MuTALC_LundRep1.pdf" {17 Kb}
- "MuTALC_LundQuest1.pdf" {10 Kb}

• Core Chemistry

A report of the work carried out by this working group at the Lund meeting is available here : "ECTN Core Chem Report 2001.pdf" {13 Kb}.

P. Todesco
 

• Food Chemistry

To obtain the report of the work click here : "ECTN Food Chem Summary.pdf" {9 Kb}.

?. ???

• Teaching and Assessment

At the ECTN General Meeting in Lund it was decided that the group led by Terry Mitchell should continue work, this time paying particular attention to postgraduate training. Those interested in taking part in this group as new members are asked to contact him by e-mail under : mitchell@chemie.uni-dortmund.de. A full report is available here, click on "ECTN Teaching Methods WG R.pdf" {30 Kb}

Thanks
Terry Mitchell

• May 2001 - BOSTON (USA).

Which organisations represent university chemical education in Europe?

This was a rhetorical question which I posed during my talk on "Post-Bologna Chemical Education in Europe" at a joint German-US Education Symposium entitled "Chemical Education in the United States and Germany: a look into the 21st Century" in Boston on May 3rd. And my answer was:
 

• The national chemical societies
• FECS (the Federation of European Chemical Societies)
and (of course)
• ECTN


I went on to talk about the tests which we hope soon to make available as testing tools in Europe. Now that we are turning ourselves into an Association and by doing so cutting some of the strings (and eventually the umbilical cord) which bind us to Brussels and the Commission, we probably have to take ourselves more seriously than we have ever done in order to build ourselves a high profile with respect to the other bodies mentioned above, but also for example with respect to the ACS. While we have made a good start in this direction, there is more work to be done. But we certainly have a future as a "third force" in Europe as indicated above.

The ACS was represented at this meeting by Sylvia Ware, who many of you will remember from our meeting in Grenoble, and Sylvia expressed a clear interest in keeping up the contacts between ECTN and the ACS, particularly now that they have set up a working party on postgraduate education chaired by Marjorie Caserio, of textbook fame. Sylvia spent much of her talk on discussing Green Chemistry, which ECTN has also just been looking at. Other US speakers were Glenn Crosby (Washington State University) and Robert Lichter from the Dreyfus Foundation, while Germany was also represented by Carsten Bolm from Aachen and Christiane Reiners from Cologne.

I concluded my talk, which ranged from the action points of the Bologna Declaration to the reactions of European chemists to it, with the conclusion that "Europe is getting its act together for the 21st century: all we have to do now is motivate young people to enter chemistry". Which brings us back to ECTN with its Image of Chemistry Group.

Terry Mitchell

• July 2001 - BRISBANE (AUS). World Chemistry Congress (38th IUPAC / 9th ACC)

Both abstracts submitted were accepted and will be presented by Pascal Mimero
- ECTN : oral session
- EChemTest : poster + demo presentation

Pascal Mimero

A French study on the Chemistry teaching at various levels in France has been carried out by the SFC (Société Française de Chimie) over 2 years upon request of the Ministery of Education. A fisrt part was published in the April issue of the monthly review L'Actualité Chimique", 2001, N.4 & 5, the second part was published in the May issue (L'Actualité Chimique, 2001, N.4 & 5)

Two other articles of interest were published in J.Chem.Ed., 2001, Vol.78, N.5
pp.677 - Inorganic Chemistry at the Undergraduate Level : Are We All on the Same Page. Les L. Pesterfield, Charles H. Henrickson
pp.582 - Chemistry Report : MAA-CUPM Curriculum Foundations - Workshop in Biology and Chemistry ; Macalester College, November 2-5, 2000. Norman C. Craig

Pascal Mimero

• Lund Meeting : other Working Group reports
• MuTALC activities

• Check our EChemTest web site for News and updates ...

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