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Peer Review

DNA Structure

Reviewed:
May 25, 2004 by Biology
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Ratings

Overall Rating: 4.6 stars
Content Quality: 4.8 stars
Effectiveness: 4.3 stars
Ease of Use: 4.3 stars
Overview:
DNA Structure provides a series of Interactive Animated tutorials to facilitate an understanding of DNA structure. The program is also available in Spanish,
German, and Portugese, and utilizes the Chime plugin. There are several
interactive, animated tutorials, including a new tutorial on codons.

Additional resources include links to animations and tutorials on various
aspects of techniques used in DNA analysis, such as gel electrophoresis and
restriction endonuclease cutting of DNA. Students
are able to view DNA from several aspects, and view individual base pairs.
Links to lectures on DNA structure and synthesis are also available.


This tutorial allows students to critically analyze a three dimensional
structures of DNA. The tutorial all uses Chime and is interactive. Students
are able to view DNA from several aspects, and view individual base pairs.
Links to lectures on DNA structure and synthesis are also available.
Type of Material:
Interactive tutorial
Recommended Uses:
Could be used for in-class demonstration, and also as a study-site for students
to utilize on their own.
Technical Requirements:
html, chime
Identify Major Learning Goals:
Understanding the structural relationships of DNA, and the functional aspects of the molecule with respect to structure. The interactive models offer an excellent means of visualizing molecular relationships that are often difficult to grasp.
Target Student Population:
Any level of college or high school student. May have limited use for certain individuals beyond that range.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Basic knowledge of Biology, Chemistry, and molecular relationships

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:
  • Well designed with current and accurate material.
  • Good graphics and animations. Would be very useful for a student alone, or in a lecture.
  • Addition of 5' and 3' module, replication animation and codon animations are very useful.
  • Good links to other educational materials on DNA.
Concerns:
  • A redesign of the front page, perhaps moving some material to other pages, might make things seem a bit less cluttered and might make the site more visually appealing.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:
  • A good supplement to a text or used as a stand-alone module.
  • Interactive.
  • Would be possible to write questions based upon material in tutorial.
  • Animations help illustrate difficult concepts.
  • This would be a great tool to use in a classroom setting to demonstrate
    salient features of the DNA molecule, and perhaps use as a live quizzing tool.
  • The students can go off and study these tutorials, and some of the
    associated links, to better understand concepts covered in lectures and/or
    textbooks.
  • The ability of Chime to 'grab' molecules and rotate them allows a detailed analysis of structural relationships, and also a means of rapidly switching between 'ball and stick' models to space-filling models to get a clearer understanding of the actual nature of DNA.
  • The links provided give a good resource list for students wishing to pursue these topics further.
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.
  • More text describing what the students are seeing would help. It would be difficult for a student to navigate through the tutorial on their own and fully understand what they are seeing.
  • An 'object is loading' bar might be nice when the tutorials are first
    loading, as there can be a considerable delay when a slow connection to the
    Internet is used.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:
  • Easy to navigate and quick, without any defective links or bugs.
  • Easy to navigate, all links function. Only thing might be a slight
    redesign of the page to make it a little 'cleaner'.
  • The animations are fairly easy to manipulate, although it would be nice if the little 'x' boxes somehow indicated they are 'active'.
Concerns:
  • The first page of the site is a bit cluttered, although there is a text link to the tutorials.
  • The text and navigation buttons on some of the tutorials are small and faint, making it difficult for students to navigate.
  • Some of the graphics are faint, and hard to see if projected. It would be helpful if the original DNA molecule came up with thick instead of thin bonds
    for better viewing.
  • It would be great if someone developed an 'export' feature so that these models could be sent to Adobe PDF files for printing or sharing within a course. That way, static images showing important features could be highlighted easily using annotation within a PDF file.
Other Issues and Comments:
The site link goes to a page with the following text:
DNA Structure is now mirrored at molvis.sdsc.edu/dna because that server will
usually provide faster loading.

For those who prefer, DNA Structure also remains available at the (generally
slower) original UMass server.

This is OK, but there should be a redirect there so that the user is taken to
the default site after 5 or 10 seconds.
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