ECTN Plenary Meeting

There follows a fuller report of the Perugia meeting which I have edited in the form of periods of activity (now, next year, 2003 and beyond). Try the interactive summary below ...

A. Activities for the period June ­ September 2002

A.1. Dissemination
A.2. Working Group Meetings
A.3. Working Group Reports
A.4. New Groups
A.5. Management Committee

B. Activities for the period 1st October 2002 ­ 30th September 2003

B.1. Existing groups
B.2. New Groups
B.3. Plenary Meeting

C. ECTN after September 2003

C.1. Future project 
C.2. Future plenary meetings

Association

No developments to report this month.

Status Report (by June 21st, 2002)

Mainly due to a very busy schedule, some technical delays occurred in sending the tool to the group leaders, not allowing them to start the question implementation. My warmest apologies - it should be fixed by the time of edition.

Analytical Chemistry (Milt Karayannis)
A first set of 120 questions was created by the working group, and will feed the library structure.
Question contribution are highly appreciated, in order to developp the Analytical Test.

Inorganic Chemistry (David Cardin)
    Needs ( Inorganic Chem 3.doc / 22 Kb)

All together, more than 400 questions are now received. David hasn't had time to process each of them yet. Everything will have to be discussed within the Inorganic Group, in order to adapt the meaning and the form to the corresponding library's topic and the level of difficulty (introductory, intermediate, advanced). Of course not all the questions received would be used as they are, a selection would have to be made, also new questions - as a contribution to developp the Inorganic test - are more than welcome !

Main files for the CD (Pascal Mimero)
Translations are still on the air ... translators were solicited to provide complementary materials for the various updates.
By now :
    - English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, Portuguses are done (tiny technical updates still to be done)
    - Finnish, Danish are partially updated
    - Other translation updates (languages or complements) have not yet been received

Organic Chemistry Test and the Industry

I recently had a 5 day's teaching session at CPE Lyon (Continuous Education Dept) with 16 Industrial people (Technicians and Engineers) coming from Chemical R&D labs and production lines. The theme of the session was "Mechanisms in Organic Synthesis", from the orbital description to the various mechanisms (Substitution, Elimination, Addition, ...) and a brief approach on the solvent effect in organic chemistry.

The last day, I run collectively the Organic Chemistry Test in French as a conclusion and synthetic review of the weeks courses. I also set up the feedback display after each question.

Of course, it takes much longer than the "regular" hour, and we only could achieve completely the 15 Introductory questions, as we discuss and debate each of the questions and items suggested. Finally they collectively reached almost a 100% of good answers for this set of questions ! congratulations to them ... (and what about the teacher ?;-)
We then browse the 15 remaining questions in order to get an overview of the increasing difficulty.

My group observation is as follows :

• Technicians in chemistry (production) had more difficulty to answer the questions all over the tests, and especially after the first 15 questions.
• Engineers were more comfortable even with harder questions.
• People involved in synthetic chemistry works, even Technicians, had more accurate approaches at each difficulty, and a good feeling for the possible "Correct" answer.


Feedback and questions from the group :

• A European approach ! that's great.
• We should have such a test in our department.
• Is this test available on the Internet ?
• How much does it cost ?
• Do you issue a diploma, a certificate, ... ?


As an opening possibility for this academic Organic Chemistry test, it would be an Industrial target oriented to R&D and Synthetic Developpement people. For the second time (2001 and 2002), I ran this test in front of a similar public, and my opinion would possibly be to officialize such a test as a means of evaluation at the end of such a teaching session in a Continuous Education context.
After few adapatations, in order to go from a collective evaluation to a personal evaluation, we probably could imagine to issue a certificate to justify the achieved level of knwoledge ... !

Question Mark Perception 3

Version 3 ! the last version is finally released. We most probably will receive it soon from QM.
I'll try to publish as soon as I can, a short technical review of the functionalities of this new software.

Tests on-line ... ?

E-mail received ...
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 12:29:17 +0200
     De: Marek Grzegorz Sawicki <sawicki@ids.edu.pl>
      à: mailto.mimero@echemtest.net

Dear Sir,
Where are the tests in any version available?
Best regards,
Marek G. Sawicki
Poland


See, somebody find us on the Internet ! It seems to be organization called the "Internet for School" located in Warsaw (Poland). Check the website at : http://www.ids.edu.pl

As soon as the version Perception 3 is received, we will transfer the first English tests on the Question Mark on-line store.

Some French-regional openning for the tests in French, English and German, could be under consideration on the new Internet portal for students at CPE Lyon "e-Campus". This new service will provide on-line courses and information as well as testing facilities for students in France but also for all those taking a year abroad during the cursus. I will meet early July the CPE - IT/e-learning expert. More details will come soon on this possible project.

Working Group ECTN Food Chemistry

Received : June 17th 2002, from Jana Copikova
"I am sending you the first draft of the project which I promised to do. This week I will meet Ivonne Delgadillo and I hope that we will continue in this direction."

Download the document : Proposal Food Chemistry (.doc / 40 Kb)

EChemTest.net

 New pages now available on-line :
    - Danish, Finnish : full set of webpages now available (first page and test descriptions)
    - Slovak, Slovenian : newp pages on-line, test description's pages under progress
    - Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian : not yet 100% completed for the full set of pages.

As usual ... the NewsLetter on-line of course !

Important notice

Please note that your webmaster and NewsLetter editor will be off-line from July 24 to August 25 !
Also, in order to save disk space and accessibility for the largest number of sender, do not send during that period, large size attachements with your email, otherwise the mailbox will be full and will automatically generate a failure message ! Thanks.

EChemTest Pre-testing outside of Europe

We have already received several answers from the first request sent after the Perugia meeting.

Situation :
USA
    - Jim Boggs from Texas / won't be able to participate
    - Robert Rittenhouse from Washington state / we have a meeting planned in Bellingham during the BCCE Symposium
    - Mare Taggepera from California-Estonia / we are in touch - not yet decided
    - Seith Reice from North Carolina / request transferred to his colleague Tomas Baer at the Chemistry Department
Canada
    - Georges Hickling from Manitoba / decision should be made later on - he is now testing the Organic Test
        I will meet people from his department in Bellingham
    - Hermann Dugass from Quebec / no answer til now
    - Pat Farell from Quebec / no answer til now
    - François Brisse from Montreal / no answer til now
    - Michael McGlincey from Ontario / no answer til now
Asia-Oceania
    - Igor Novak (Singapore)/ will be away for 6 months but agrees for January 2003 (as far as I know a Level 2 test).
    - John Webb (Australia)/ no answer til now
    - Adrian Georges  (Australia)/ why not - but the new year starts at the end of July ! probably a level 2 test
    - Charles Fogliani  (Australia)/ no chemistry classrooms in his department,
        he kindly will check the possibility with a highschool for a Level 2 test.
Africa
    - Jaco de Kock / we are in touch - no decision til now
    - Oezemena / no answer
India
    - M. Karthikeyan from Pune / agreed on the principle
Taiwan
    - / no answer till now

Wien, Austria (July 12, 2002)

The meeting will be held on July 12 at TU Wien with Johannes Fröhlich and his collaborators.

17th ICCE - Beijing, China (August 6 - 10, 2002)

Both contribution are accepted for an oral presentation :

• "Making European chemistry degrees transparent -some work by the European Chemistry Thematic Network" presented by Anthony Smith
• "The ECTN present the on-line European Test in Chemistry" presented by Pascal Mimero

4th ICEG ­ Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (August 11 - 15, 2002)

The work of the ECTN ‘Remediation’ working group will be presented at the 4th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics by William Hogland.

Metrology in Chemistry

Received : June 3rd, 2002 from Mudis Salkauskas
We in Vilnius now have  a special seminar with trainings on the special subject: Metrology in Chemistry.
The Programme is accessible at the following URL : www.pfi.lt/MiC

Variety in Chemistry Teaching, Keele, UK, 9-10 September 2002.

Details of this meeting can be found at the following website: http://dbweb.liv.ac.uk/ltsnpsc/variety.asp

No advert this month.

No report this month.

• Summer holidays   ;-)

• July-August NewsLetter / edition by end of August / submit your material by August 25.