Title: Distance Education in Chemistry
Coordinator(s): H.
Bouma, S.W. Bennett and Y.
Takeuchi
Remarks: Interaction with other
IUPAC bodies and with organisations concerned with global distance
education, e.g. ICSU, ICDE
Objective:
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.
Progress:
At the 39th IUPAC General Assembly held in Geneva, 1997, CTC reviewed
the explosive development of the World Wide Web (WWW) and
considered how dramatically it changed the computer network and
international communications . Such recent progress of the Internet
makes to expect innovations in education. Geographical restriction
is no longer a serious problem, and teachers and students far apart
from one another can communicate without difficulty. In response
to such an innovation, a new project, tentatively called Virtual
Chemical Education (VCE), was established. The concept is to use
the 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 by
means of the Internet', by Y. Takeuchi, H. Hosoya, H. Yoshida
and M. M. Ito, Pure Appl. Chem. 71(5), 825-834 (1999)
[pdf
file - 202KB]
> VCE
site
