Project Details:

Distance Education in Chemistry

CTC is concerned that modern, relevant chemistry is made available to individuals seeking it. CTC has access to leaders in both chemical research and chemical education and sees distance education as a means of bringing their knowledge to individual learners internationally. Modern technology can materially assist this process. Of particular importance is serving the needs of individuals in developing countries. At the present time, the strategy is to gather and disseminate information about distance education in chemistry. Workshops, symposia and publications will be the main initial methods for doing so. The 13th International Conference on Chemical Education (Puerto Rico, August 1994) included a special symposium on this theme, and one is also planned for the 14th ICCE in Brisbane in 1996.

At the 39th IUPAC General Assembly held in Geneva, 1997, CTC reviewedtheexplosive development of the World Wide Web (WWW) andconsidered how dramatically it changed the computer network andinternational communications . Such recent progress of the Internetmakes to expect innovations in education. Geographical restrictionis no longer a serious problem, and teachers and students far apartfrom one another can communicate without difficulty. In responseto such an innovation, a new project, tentatively called VirtualChemical Education (VCE), was established. The concept is to usethe Internet as a means of combining these two, e-mail and multimedia,to make a new educational tool.

Ref. 'Virtual chemical education–novel teaching materials bymeans of the Internet', by Y. Takeuchi, H. Hosoya, H. Yoshidaand M. M. Ito, Pure Appl. Chem. 71(5), 825-834 (1999)[pdffile - 202KB]

> VCEsite <http://molda.chem.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/vce>