Collaborative Research: Cheminformatics OLCC

阿肯色大学小石城分校和印第安纳大学之间的合作项目正在使用web2.0和社会网络方法创建化学信息学领域的在线化学课程（OLCC）。通过利用分布式的专业知识，该项目使机构能够教育本科化学家的技能，这些技能对社会的重要性正在迅速增加。除了填补课程中的学科空白之外，项目团队还提供了一种教学方法的范例，这种方法可以扩展到本科科学教育的其他领域。巧妙地构建和实现的OLCC是基于先前对要求较低的产品的经验。它使高等教育机构能够教授有效使用计算和信息学技术作为科学发现过程一部分的新兴领域的课程。除了为pi所在机构提供最先进的本科教育机会外，该项目还向希望参加混合课程的机构提供化学信息学材料，其中每个参与机构的一名辅导员负责当地学生的成绩和评估。这种经验分享的另一个智力价值是潜在的教师发展，因为非专业的引导者从远程专家提供的内容中获得经验。与此同时，社区正在开发新的数字学习模式的经验和欣赏，这些模式越来越适合新一代的“自由学习者”。OLCC正在引导模块和数字教学对象的发展，这些模块和数字教学对象用元数据编码，可通过国家和国际档案机制检索，并且可以重新利用和分发到其他课程环境中。使用分布在一个校园或一个国家以外的专家，正在以一种新的模式教育当前的学生，这种模式使传统的边界只具有历史意义。混合课程的在线组成部分，其多讲师对多学生的组成部分，加上培养学生对学生的互动，将有助于建立一个多元化的社区。OLCC的设计正在开发超越传统课堂的现代教学机会，工业学习者、非传统学习者和远程学习者都可以以满足他们独特需求的方式利用这些机会。

The collaborative project between the University of Arkansas Little Rock and Indiana University is using Web 2.0 and social networking methods to create an OnLine Chemistry Course (OLCC) in the area of cheminformatics. By leveraging distributed expertise, the project is enabling institutions to educate undergraduate chemists in a skill set that is rapidly increasing in importance to society. In addition to filling a subject gap within the curriculum, the project team is providing an exemplar for a teaching method that can be extended to other areas of undergraduate science education.The artfully constructed and implemented OLCC is based on prior experience with less demanding offerings. It enables institutions of higher education to teach a class in the emerging area of effective use of computational and informatics techniques as part of the scientific discovery process. Beyond providing state-of-the-art undergraduate educational opportunities at the PIs' institutions, the project is making the cheminformatics materials available to institutions that wish to participate in the hybrid course wherein a facilitator at each participating institution is responsible for the local students grades and assessment. An additional intellectual merit of this sharing of experience is the latent faculty development that occurs as the non-expert facilitators gain experience in the content delivered by the distant experts. Simultaneously, the community is developing experience in and appreciation of new digital learning modalities that are increasingly comfortable to the new generation of 'free-agent learners'. The OLCC is leading to the development of modules and digital Teaching and Learning Objects that are coded with meta data, retrievable via national and international archival mechanisms, and which can be repurposed and distributed into other curricular environments. The use of experts distributed beyond one campus or one country is educating current students by a new model that makes traditional boundaries of historical interest only. The on-line component of the hybrid course, with its many-lecturer-to-many-student components, coupled with nurtured student-to-student interactions will aid in the building of a diversified community. The OLCC design is developing modern instructional opportunities that extend beyond the traditional classroom and that industrial learners, non-traditional learners, and distance-learners can all utilize in ways that meet their unique needs.