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 Ratings
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| Reviewed: |
Jan 20, 2003 by Biology Editorial Board |
| Overview: |
This extensive collection of tutorials allow students to critically analyze
three dimensional structures of amino acids, proteins and DNA. The tutorials
all use Chime and are very interactive and of superior quality. They also
follow a consistent and easy to use format, which decreases the challenges many
students (and instructors) face when going from one tutorial to the next. These
tutorials are well-documented, with many different views that enable the viewer
to analyze and dissect the various components. Very well organized, with good
use of color in the descriptive text. |
| Learning Goals: |
Learn sturcture-function relationships in macromolecules |
| Target Student Population: |
Any college student, and probably AP High School Bio and Chem students. |
| Type of Material: |
Interactive Lesson/Tutorial |
| Technical Requirements: |
HTML, Chime Plug-in |
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| Strengths: |
Quality of Content:(5) (5) = (5.0)
- Well designed with current and accurate material.
- Very well written descriptions of the images the students are allowed to
manipulate. Each animation illustrates key concepts being discussed in the
accompanying text.
- The content is well integrated with the animations, and the interactive
nature of the Chime visualizations enables the student to readily grasp
somewhat difficult concepts in three-dimensional protein structure.
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| Concerns: |
- Most of the tutorials focus on the overall tertiary structure. Some
scripts that zoom in on specific amino acids in an enzyme active site or DNA
binding site would help students understand some of the mechanisms that they
learn about in class
- References, while complete, might be updated.
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Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool |
Rating:  |
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| Strengths: |
Potential Effectiveness: (5) (5) = (5.0)
- This site is a great resource to have students be able to understand some
of the intricacies of secondary, tertiary, and quaternary protein structure
based on the primary amino acid sequence.
- A good supplement to a text or used as a stand-alone module. Great
potential for students to understand complex molecules from many different
orientations.
- Its interactive nature enables students to rotate models and to do things
like sight down regions of interest within molecules, without having to
actually build the molecules with molecular models
- Highly interactive.
- Also helpful in terms of general amino acid structure.
- Would be possible to write questions based upon material in tutorial.
- Animations help illustrate difficult concepts.
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| Concerns: |
- It would be nice to link the tutorials to some example problems or
questions. These often force students to critically analyze a structure in more
detail.
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Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty |
| Rating: |
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| Strengths: |
Ease of Use: (5) (5) = (5.0)
- Very well laid out, easy to navigate, with material being laid out
logically on the screen.
- Clear index on the first page allows for quick access to tutorials.
- The use of colors in the text helps to locate important points, and the
text is readable and informative.
- Tutorials are well organized and explained clearly.
- Links at the bottom of each page enable quick navigation back to the home
page or the molecule index page.
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| Concerns: |
- It would be advised to change the required browsers to update the current
Chime support for IE. While Netscape is the “optimal” browser,
reality shows that IE is the predominant browser, and I think a lot of potential
users will never give this site a chance if they do not have access to Netscape.
- As with all sites that require a plug-in, accessibility for many students
is limited (it would be nice to have some kind of “auto-install”
plug-in that would bypass the current steps needed to get Chime installed).
However, this is not a function of this site, but the manner in which Chime
is distributed.
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