Chemical Education Journal (CEJ), Vol. 4, No. 1/Registration No. 4-9/Received February 9, 2000.
URL = http://www.juen.ac.jp/scien/cssj/cejrnlE.html
E-mail: yoshida@chem.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp
Abstract: The recent evolution of the World Wide Web (WWW) has introduced new Internet-based learning and teaching materials for chemical education. Such rapid change in the Internet makes us to expect the innovation of the traditional style in education. The geographical restriction is no longer a serious problem, and hence, teachers and students far apart from one another can communicate without difficulty. In addition to this effectiveness, a lot of fascinating teaching and learning materials on the WWW also arouse our interest in chemistry. Under such circumstances, we would like to propose new paradigm for chemical education in the virtual society to realize the project Virtual Chemical Education, which has been proposed by Prof. Takeuchi at the meeting of the CTC during the 39th IUPAC General Assembly in 1997. In the virtual society, distributed agents, such as (human or automated) teachers, students and learning and teaching materials, will be properly located on the Internet in order to act in harmony with one another.
In the long history of education, schools play an important role in teaching and learning knowledge which has been created and accumulated by human beings. Schools also have the function as a communication place for teachers and students. Such social system has efficiently worked for a long time, however, many people who have geographical problems couldn't receive the benefits. On the other hand, the recent evolution of the Internet, especially World Wide Web (WWW), has introduced new Internet-based teaching and learning materials for education. Such rapid change in the Internet makes us to expect the innovation of the traditional style in education. The geographical restriction is no longer a serious problem, and hence, teachers and students far apart from one another can communicate without difficulty. In addition to this effectiveness, a lot of fascinating teaching and learning materials on the WWW also arouse our interest in science.
Such materials have been already accumulated on the Internet as (1) hypertext teaching and learning materials described in HTML, (2) multimedia teaching and learning materials by using the MPEG movies and so on, (3) interactive teaching and learning materials by using the CGI and Java techniques, and (4) virtual reality 3D graphics teaching and learning materials written in VRML.
In addition to the above traditional resources on the Internet, we would like to propose new paradigm for chemical education in the virtual society as given below to realize the project Virtual Chemical Education [1], which has been proposed by Prof. Takeuchi at the meeting of the CTC during the 39th IUPAC General Assembly in 1997.
A concept of Virtual Chemical Education is composed of creation, accumulation and communication for chemistry on the global Internet. These subconcepts are realized by constructing the following virtual systems.
In the following section, an example of our molecular modeling program, MoldaNet, is described.
Molecular modeling is one of the most important skills for chemistry. It is the chemical literacy for understanding the property and functions of materials and life forms. Accordingly the development of molecular graphics and modeling programs which can be used widely on the Internet is an important subject for Virtual Chemical Education. The evolution of the WWW from a model allowing only the public and open exchange of information enables us to obtain many resources from the Internet. Although such features of the WWW are very important, secure interactive client-server processes must be also considered for accumulating reliable and personal information for education. In this section, I will introduce molecular graphics and modeling program MoldaNet [3], which is an example of the authenticated system using digital object signing and runs on the Internet as a secure signed Java Applet.
When the home page of MoldaNet is accessed by the use of a WWW browser, the certificate dialog appears and requests the grant security permission by the applet as shown in Fig. 1.
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By using the signed applet technology, MoldaNet can read and write files on a local disk. After press the grant button, all of the menus of MoldaNet are allocated to the menu bar. Using the molecular modeling functions of MoldaNet, the labor involved in preparing molecular structure data for 3D molecular graphics is considerably reduced. Selection of a menu activates the corresponding subcommands. The menus are listed as follows.
The 'File' menu deals with molecular coordinate file input and output. The coordinates of fundamental organic compounds, such as aliphatic and aromatic molecules, amino acids, nucleotides and sugars, are provided as templates. Molda [3], XMol XYZ [4] and Protein Data Bank [5] format files can be read and write. Molecular coordinates can be also saved in CML [6] and VRML1.0/97 [7] file formats. The molecular coordinates created by MoldaNet can be transformed into the input files of several computational chemistry packages, such as TINKER [8], MOPAC [9] and Gaussian [10]. The output structures obtained by these computational chemistry packages can be imported to MoldaNet.
The 'View' menu deals with the change of the screen appearance (such as showing x- and y-axes and locating the number on each atom).
The 'Model' menu deals with the construction of molecular models. The all-trans conformation of an n-alkane molecule can be generated in a one-step operation by using the [Input]-[Alkane] menu. A specified atom may be replaced by another element by using the [Input]-[Element] menu. Any molecules made by Molda can be connected with each other using two modes of merging. The [Merge]-[Substitution] menu enables connection with common substituents or registered substituents by users. Two molecules can be connected by the use of the [Merge]-[Molecule] menu. Atom positions, bond lengths, bond angles and dihedral angles can be easily changed by mouse operation.
The 'Display' menu deals with high quality 3D molecular graphics using the Java 3D API classes [11]. Space-filling and ball-and-stick models (Figs 2 and 3, respectively) are available in MoldaNet by the use of the Java 3D API classes. The quality of graphics, the color of a light and the position of a light are changeable. In order to draw 3D molecular models in VRML, an external VRML viewer must be plugged-in on the client system. But MoldaNet enables us 3D molecular graphics on the computer network without any external applications by the use of the Java 3D API.
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The 'Analysis' menu deals with the calculation of bond distances, bond angles and dihedral angles of a molecule.
By using a Java-enabled WWW browser, MoldaNet runs platform-independently and does not require any pre-installations by the user. This means that molecular modeling and high quality 3D molecular graphics can be performed easily not only on the well-known platforms such as Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, but also on new platforms which will appear in future. The new paradigm represents a new type of computational tool for application in chemistry, chemical engineering and chemical education. It certainly offers an alternative approach to the single platform/single operating system vendor model, and represents a move towards object-oriented modular and inter-operable chemistry tools which can take full advantage of the global Internet. Virtual Chemical Education will create such new paradigm softwares and provide them all over the world freely for the new age education in the globalization society.
In the distance education system like Virtual Chemical Education, many multinational people, who have different cultural backgrounds and educational levels, will communicate one another in Cyberspace. In such distance education system, teachers must grasp the ability of understanding of each student and offer the appropriate teaching materials to each student. Moreover, teachers should improve the teaching materials constantly, and always contact with students. It seems impossible to realize if teachers must be human beings. Therefore we must construct a new education model for Virtual Chemical Education. Three types of agent, teacher agent, student agent and teaching material agent are considered. Teacher agent is not necessary to be human beings. Online virtual classrooms will be constructed with a lot of visual aids and interactive communication tools on the Internet. Automated teachers in the virtual classrooms can be also designed by artificial intelligence and agent oriented technologies. Distributed agents, such as (human or automated) teachers, students and teaching materials, will be properly located on the Internet in order to behave in harmony with one another. Such new education system in the cyber communication space will come true [12], and it will grow by self-organization and evolution on the earth.
As mentioned above, the recent evolution of the Internet has introduced new learning and teaching materials for education. Such rapid evolution makes us to expect the innovation of the traditional style in education. Only by the virtual reality education system for chemistry, people may not be able to master the skills of chemistry scholarly and technically. Nevertheless, such Virtual Chemical Education, in which multinational people can communicate one another at the same time, will become an important system for the purpose of understanding Chemistry as liberal arts in the globalization society which has many problems, such as natural resources, energy and environmental problems. Virtual Chemical Education will enable the whole world people to educate in the environment of the scientific global common culture, and someday people who grow in such circumstance will solve these problems on the earth in future.
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