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Summary

Foreword

1. ECTN Information
2. ECTN NewsLetter
3. ECT Chemistry Tests
4. ECTN Projects
5. Dissemination Programme
6. Tuning Project
7. What's coming next !

Foreword

Dear All,

Well, back to our business
holidays are almost done ... for everybody

Happy to "see" you again somewhere on the Net !!

To restart the season, and as promised by Antonio LAGANA in Lund, I am pleased to welcome the second report of the MuTALC project (thanks to Gustavo AVITABILE who was on duty this month).

Guess what ! I have the feeling that the dissemination programme will require more and more resources, from all of us, and especially from the computer side ... what a coincidence, isn'it ?

Also, the NewsLetter mailing list welcomes two new guests this month, Pr. A. GEORGES from Sydney (Australia) and Pr. Igor NOVAK from Singapore (Malaysia).

See all of you next month.

Best regards
P.Mimero

1. ECTN Information

The first session of the Interim ECTN Administrative Council will be held in Köln (DE) on September 15.
Thanks to Hagga SCHMALZ for offering this location.

A. Smith

2. ECTN NewsLetter

 

Mailing list update ... did you plan to change your email ? want to still receive the NewsLetter ?
... please send us a quick notice with your new email ;-) click here

P. Mimero

3. ECT Chemistry Tests
European Chemistry Test 2000 / CD current version : 3.5.1 eu

The next major upgrade of the CDRom is on tracks. New improvment, polished tests, new languages, ... it should be ready by ... well, as soon as possible ! the deadline needs to be approved by the AC meeting in September, but I would strongly suggest it should be by the end of 2001, or early 2002, January at the latest.

This release will be the last one using the QuestionMark Author for Windows version, no further issues are planned using this format. Further CDRom versions will be issued with the QuestionMark Perception for Windows version, same software version and format as the Perception for the Internet (it means full compatibility)
 

• ECT Demo Tests

The proofreading session will soon start. Group leaders will contact the translator coordinators in order to proceed.
Remember that those who will have to proofread the test should be from a proper Chemistry background, native speaker, BUT, different from those who already translated the original version.
Comparison should be made with the original English text, in order to check the consistency of the meaning.

• ECT Volunteers

Still needed, especially in the Analytical Chemistry Development ...

• ECT Website

Nothing new, as your webmaster was on holiday ;-)

• ECT dissemination

UNIVERSITY of SYDNEY NSW (AUS)
I had a meeting in Sydney on August 9, with Prof. Adrian GEORGES, who already sent us his feedback. (see the May issue of the NewsLetter - Vol 2, N 5). The Tests might have interest either, to check a global knowledge, or to monitor the learning process (all year long maybe) - one of the idealistic perspectives would be to have various tests setup and ready for special topics (such as "Addition Mechanism", or "Stereochemistry", ... ). The department strongly supports the use of the Internet for teaching, self-assessement and testing - the main "interface" choosen was WebCT - who have already signed some agreement with QuestionMark.

Also, an eventual English pre-testing session could be under consideration with his own students using the demo test contained on the CDRom - it should be further discussed.

Thanks to Adrian Georges who received me and allowed me to present and update the Tests information and the further development of the ECTN projects.

The combined IUPAC / 9th ACC congress in Brisbane was fruitful (see the paragraph 5).
Igor NOVAK from the National University of Singapore (SIN) // met at WCC 2001, Brisbane QLD (AUS) - July 01, already tested the CDRom, and sent his own comments and suggestions ; these were transferred to the Pre-University and Physical Chemistry Working group leaders.

P. Mimero

4. ECTN Projects

• MuTALC - Multimedia Teaching and Learning in Chemistry

July 2001 report

At the WG meeting in Lund it was decided to issue a monthly report to be prepared by a different member of the WG each month. The present issue of July 2001 has been prepared by G. Avitabile. Click here to get the PDF format of this report

Group membership

The group coordinator is Antonio Lagana (e-mail: lag@unipg.it). He posted a report on the discussion and the proposals held in the Lund meeting. Click here to see the report

In the meantime the WG mailing list was established: ectn_multimedia@chemistry.unina.it         Subscribed members include: Gustavo Avitabile, Gabriella Borzone, Ernst Bratz, Anna K. Croft, I.L. Dukov, Mariano Fajardo, Antonio Ferrer Correia, Marek Frankowicz, Johannes Froehlich, Michael Gagan, Jose Rodriguez Izquierdo, Jens Josephsen, Dimitra Kovala-Demertzi, Ugo Lepore, Marcello Longeri, Rinaldo Marazza, George Marouli, Bjorn Pedersen, Jose' A. Rodriguez Renuncio, Antony Rest, Gian Franco Tantardini, Michael Thomas, Evangelia Varella, Kristiina Wahala, Janusz Wojcik, Paul C. Yates.
For additions, deletions or corrections to the list, please contact G. Avitabile, avitabile@chemistry.unina.it

Activities in the near future

A group meeting will be held in Roskilde (DK) on September 15-16, 2001.

A questionnaire will be circulated, both on electronic and paper media, to collect information about multimedia usage in Chemistry learning. M. Frankowicz is preparing a draft of the questionnaire. The final version will be approved during the Roskilde meeting. Click here to see adraft of the questionnaire

A workshop on Multimedia in Chemistry learning will be held at the beginning of the 2002 ECTN meeting in Perugia (tentative date May 9). The format includes two main lectures, some invited talks and a hands-on session to illustrate some e-learning products developed by the members of the ECTN. The workshop will focus on both educational and IT aspects to encourage the sharing of experiences.

Research projects

ELCHEM

The Management Committee of the COST in Chemistry METACHEM action (D23) has approved the e-learning project:

ELCHEM: A METALABORATORY TO DEVELOP E-LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES FOR CHEMISTRY

The goal of the project is to create a metalaboratory, i.e. a networked distributed cooperative environment of partner Laboratories with different abilities sharing resources and experiences to produce new and better learning tools. ELCHEM will work in close contact with the Multimedia in teaching and learning in Chemistry working group of ECTN.

Members of ELCHEM

1	Antonio Lagana	University of Perugia	coordinator
2	Ernst Bratz	Lehrstuhl II fur Technische Chemie, Muenchen
3	Gustavo Avitabile	University Federico II of Naples
4	Dimitra Kovala-Demertzi	University of Ioannina
5	Jens Josephsen	Department of Life Sciences and Chemistry, Roskilde
6	Paul Yates	University of Keele
7	Anna Croft	University of Wales Bangor
8	Evangelia Varella	University of Thessaloniki

Time Table

The time table of the project is, at large, the following:

2001 Design of a prototype
2002 First implementation of learning material, interfaces and services
2003 Prototype evaluation. Mid term workshop
2004 Full implementation and testing. Massive developement of disciplinary contents.
2005 Diffusion and evaluation of the results. Final workshop

Gustavo Avitabile

>>>> LAST MINUTE COMPLEMENT from Michael GAGAN


Colleagues

As the time for our Group meeting in Roskilde approaches, I am sending the notes of our previous two meetings in Lund on 26 and 29 April, to refresh your memory. I have also included a slightly revised version of the draft questionnaire, and a draft of the covering letter to be sent out with the questionnaire, for discussion in Roskilde. If you are unable to attend the Roskilde meeting, and have any comments on either of these two items (or on the notes), please send them round to the Group e-mail address set up by Gustavo Avitabile (as used for this communication). All three items are sent in Word and RTF format, so one or both should be accessible by saving to your hard disk and opening from within your word processor.

Lund_questionnaire_1.doc
Lund_questionnaire_1.rtf
Lund_questionnaire_2.doc
Lund_questionnaire_2.rtf
Multimedia_Group_letter.doc
Multimedia_Group_letter.rtf
Multimedia_Lund.doc
Multimedia_Lund.rtf

Best wishes

Michael G.

Summary

5. Dissemination Programme

World Chemistry Congress 2001 (IUPAC / 9ACC / AIMECS) - Brisbane QLD, Australia  July 1-6, 2001

An oral presentation and a poster were presented at this conference. The oral contribution concerned the ECTN and the various activities of the network, the Poster contribution focuses on the Chemistry Tests.

Important and interesting contacts were made during both events with representatives from Academic as well as from Industrial organizations of different countries (Australia, Japan, India, Malysia, South Africa, Philippines, Belgium, Makedonia). All of them received a CDRom.

For exemple, within the list of contacts,
- Dr. Igor NOVAK from the National University of Singapore (Malaysia) already evaluated our CDRom and sent some remarks.
- Dr. Charles FOGLIANI from Charles Sturt University, Bathurst NSW (Australia) - Responsible for the Australian National Chemistry Quizz (I will develop this item for the September NewsLetter - will concern Level 2 and especially Level 1 ; sharing his experience would be helpful for the future development of the Level "0" test).
- Pr. John WEBB and Mr. Joe MONIODIS from Murdoch University, Perth WA (Australia) - have a collaboration with an INSERM unit in France and have much interest in our tests French/English (Level 3 Organic Chemistry but especially at Level 2 General Chemistry for an evaluation of chemistry knowledge level prior to the student exchange)
- Dr. Edmond DIFFERDING from UCB Pharma (Belgium) - who might have some interest in the Level 3 Organic Chemistry, but also for the future Level 4 in Organic Synthesis.

We also were invited by Pr. Masato ITO from Soka University (Japan), to submit our contribution to the CEJ - Chemical Education Journal. Please find below an extract of his last email.
 

Dear Contributors to Chemical Education Journal (CEJ),
Thank you very much for your preparing for contribution to the
Chemical Education Journal (CEJ) Vol. 5 No. 2, featuring
"The Proceedings of the Symposium "Chemistry and Community"
in The 9th Asian Chemical Congress, Brisbane 2001"
and
"Contributions on Chemical Education to the World Chemical
Congress, Brisbane 2001"


Updated information of the WCC 2001 dissemination programme will appear in this paragraph or in the "ECT Dissemination" item of paragraph 3 in the following NewsLetters.

Pascal Mimero

REMINDER : Creation of the Abstract Archives : would you like to submit an abstract right now ? click >here< !

6. Tuning Project

A meeting of the chemistry synergy group for the 'Tuning Educational Structures in Europe' project (for details of this project see the March and June 2001 Newsletters) was held in Brussels on 22nd June 2001.

Present: Julia Gonzales (Universidad de Deusto, ES); Robert Wagenaar (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, NL); Johannes Froelich (TU Wien, AT); Bernard Leyh (Université de Liège, BE); Terry Mitchell (Universität Dortmund, DE); Raffaella Pagani (Universidad Complutense, ES); Kristiina Wähälä (University of Helsinki, FI); Anthony Smith (CPE Lyon, FR); Evangelia Varella (University Thessaloniki, GR); Brian Jennings (University College, Cork, IE); Paolo Todesco (Universita di Bologna, IT); Ad Oskam (University of Amsterdam, NL); Bengt Jergil (Lund University, SE); Richard Whewell (University of Strathclyde, UK); George Francis (University of Bergen, NO).

Apologies for absence: Matthew Johnson (University of Copenhagen, DK); Carlos Neto (Universidade de Aveiro, PT); Gino Paolucci (Universita di Venezia, IT); Jean-Pierre Gorrichon (INP Toulouse, FR).
 

1. The Tuning project was presented by Julia Gonzales and Robert Wagenaar, the project co-ordinators. Details and reports of this project can be found on the web at the following addresses:

www.europa.eu.int/comm/education/tuning.html

www.relint.deusto.es/TuningProject/

www.let.rug.nl/TuningProject/


2. The work of the Chemistry Thematic Network in the areas of Core Chemistry (Paolo Todesco) and Teaching Methods and Assessment (Terry Mitchell) was presented. This showed that the ECTN had already carried out some of the work required for the Tuning project, and the experience gained in this work would be useful to the other subject areas.
   
3. A questionnaire is to be distributed to recent graduates and to employers, by each member of the group. The target is to contact 150 graduates and 30 employers in each country. Those members who will have difficulty in contacting this number of people will ask other ECTN members in their country to help. The target date for the receipt of completed questionnaires is 15 September 2001. The analysis of the questionnaires will be undertaken by the Tuning project co-ordinators who are employing specialists for this task.
   
4. Raffaella Pagani gave a presentation of the CDI project ‘ECTS in Chemistry Curricula: A Practical Tool’ which she had submitted as part of the Complutense University Socrates Institutional Contract. This project is closely linked to the Tuning project. It was therefore hoped that this project would be funded and run parallel with the Tuning project ? thus providing funds for meetings which could be held jointly. However, since the meeting it has been learned that this project has not been funded. Thus we must rely on funding from the European Commission to hold further meetings in Brussels.
   
5. The Tuning project has identified four areas for which each of the subject groups should nominate a representative. It was agreed that the chemistry representatives would be the following:

- Core mapping - Paolo Todesco, University of Bologna, IT
- Teaching and Learning - Terry Mitchell, University of Dortmund, DE
- ECTS/workload -Richard Whewell, University of Strathclyde, UK
- Employability - Kristiina Wahala, University of Helsinki, FI

Tony Smith would be the chemistry representative on the Tuning project steering committee.

Raffaella Pagani will help co-ordinate the overall chemistry project from January 2002.


6. Each member gave a short presentation of their country’s education system for chemistry (start & end of teaching period, total number of teaching weeks (hours) per academic year, number of exam weeks per academic year; start & end of academic year, type of system (year, semester, trimester, block), break(s) between the semester/trimesters, etc.). A one-page summary for each country has been circulated to each member.

A.K. Smith

7. What's coming next !

• MuTALC activities (Cont'd)
• News from the Grundtvig application
• The Australian National Chemistry Quizz
• ... the September NewsLetter

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