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Assignment
2: Assignment
3: CITTN
WebTool
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ASSIGNMENT 3: Last updated on: 11/06/2006.
Working
as a group,
Practical Overview The purpose of this project is to reinforce your learning by getting you to realize that organic chemistry is everywhere. This project deals with one specific medium: online news. During this project you will choose an online news article that discusses a topic in organic chemistry (restrictions are listed below) and create a web page that summarizes the article and explains the chemistry talked about in the article. The summary should also include links to other websites that provide more information. For example, if your article discusses methamphetamines, your web page could have a link to a website that discusses methamphetamine drug treatment programs. If you’re not a computer programmer—don’t panic! You will create your web page using an online web tool designed by the University of Missouri. This project was originated by Dr. Rainer Glaser from the University of Missouri, and we have been doing the project in cooperation with them for years.
Guidelines for Newspaper Article Selection A key feature of online publishing is access to national and global information. To be able to access this information, one needs to develop an awareness of the extraordinarily increased accessibility. You are not limited to any particular online news services, you can use any online newspaper that you can find on the WWW that is reputable and does not require a login. Let's restrict ourselves, however, to English language newspapers for now. So, where to look? MSNBC and USA Today are good places to start. Your selection
of topic and of its relevance to chemistry will be judged by your
peers. Please note that the article does not need to be about chemistry (and will most likely not be.) What you are looking for is an article that you can relate to chemistry. Be creative in how you approach the topic. You may find an article about a meth lab, industrial waste, acid rain, etc. Think about the reactions that occur, the synthesis of the chemicals, etc. Keep in mind that your choice of articles will be judged by your peers on a number of levels. It is up to you to pick an article that you can analyze as well as one that is interesting to you readers. This brings up the issue of subjectivity. As science students, we like things that are objective, not subjective. Much of this part of the project however subjective in nature. Sure, the chemistry that is explained can be graded as either correct (or at least reasonable) or incorrect. Your choice of articles, how interesting your analysis is, etc. is open to interpretation. If someone gives you an 8 out of 10 for "interest" is it wrong? Of course not. It just means that your topic did not appeal to them at a level of a 10. Remember who your audience is and target your project for them. The URLs of newspaper article sometimes change and that can be a problem. Some online providers use a different link for their current editions and their archives. Use an online provider that does not change the URL. Also, use only an online provider that is accessible free of charge and does not require a login. Every news item should be connected to one of the book chapters covered in the course. As much as possible, let's try to get an equal distribution. Project Creation Each and every student in your group should have already send an email to ciitn@yahoo.com stating which group they are in. If you have not done this yet, please do so immediately. You will receive a response from the teaching assistant that will contain your password (initially your group number) and the Course ID (required for login).
After you have received your password:
1. Open your browser to the following site: http://ciitn.missouri.edu 2. Click on the Student Group Login link. 3. Enter the Course ID that was sent in your confirmation e-mail into the “Course ID” field, your group name in the “Group Name” field (not case sensitive), and your password in the “Password” field. 4. Once you are logged in, click on the Group Account link (this will change the menu options listed on the left hand side of the page).
IMPORTANT!! Please change your group's password as indicated in the "registration" email recieved from Dr. Schelble.
5. To begin a new project, click on the “My Project” menu option. Then click “View”. 6. If you do not already have a project started, it will give you a link to begin the creation process. 7. Enter your information into the fields on the screen. When you are finished entering in your information, click on the “Submit” button at the bottom. You can update and submit as many times as you wish until the specified due date and time.
Guidelines for Editorial Comments and Links There are many approaches you may take in writing the editorial comments. Make sure that you realize at all times for what audience you are writing. Your editorial should provide an explanation and analysis of the chemistry behind the article and it should be made clear how the article relates to the chemistry. Embedded Link
Requirements and Construction. The editorial comments should contain
between 4 - 8 links to sites that provide information that deepen
the understanding of the subject matter of the newspapers article
and provide the best possible context definition. Several issues
need to be considered in selecting these links. Connection to Professional Chemistry Journal Requirement. One of your links should lead to an article that has been published in a professional chemistry journal. (In some cases, the project might profit from a link to an article published in a professional scientific journal rather than a chemistry journal.) You will learn in one of the Collaborative Learning sessions how to access and search the professional chemistry journals published by the American Chemical Society. Do provide the full citation to the article as well as the link so that people off campus also can access the article (in their libraries) if they do not have online access privileges. The full citations contains the authors, the abbreviation of the journal in italics, the year of publication in bold, the volume in italics, and page numbers (e.g. Michael Lewis and Rainer Glaser J. Org. Chem. 2002, 67, 1441-1447.). To construct an embedded link you need to supply the URL of the site to which you want to link. This information is provided in a so-called "a-tag". The "a-tag" starts with <a> and ends with </a> and the word that will serve as the link will be between these tags. The URL is provided as part of the <a> tag in the "href" qualifier in the format <a href="URL">link-to-this-text</a>. The web site of CNN for example is located at http://www.cnn.com and a link to this web site could be provided by the statement <a href="http://www.cnn.com">CNN</a>. When you enter the text of your project in the online database, please do provide such "a-tags" whenever you want to embed a link. A note on readability…….you’re typing your project into the “Editorial Comments” field, pressing <Enter> between each paragraph. You click on the “Submit” button, and you’re done! However, when you view your project, all of the white space (places you pressed <Enter>) is gone! Unfortunately, a web document’s <Enter> is different than in a word processor. The tags you need to use here are the <p> and <br> tags. Unlike the <a href> tag, these two tags do not have a “shut off” tag. The <p> tag is the equivalent to pressing <Enter> twice, while the <br> tag is the equivalent to pressing <Enter> once. If you need space between paragraphs, I recommend using the <p> tag. Please, please, PLEASE use these! Many projects have not used these in the past, and their projects became quite difficult to read (not very pleasing to the eye!).
There is a very useful link to the left of the editorial editing section in the webtool labeled HTML Help. It contains everything that you should need to add the basic tags used for this project. Create Reaction Mechanisms
You will need to draw a reaction mechanism using ChemDraw. You may include more than one reaction mechanism, but please keep the number reasonable. Instructions for ChemDraw are included here.
1. Start the ChemDraw program. 2. Create your drawing. (The tutorials available from help are quite good.) 3. Save your file to disk. The naming convention for ChemDraw drawings is the word “group,” followed by the group number, an underscore, and eq1. For example, if my group number is 16, I would name my file group16_eq1. Subsequent ChemDraw drawings would be named group16_eq2, group16_eq3, etc. Save your drawing twice—once as a .gif file and once as a .cdx file. If you decide that you made a mistake or want to change your drawing, you will need to open the .cdx file—the .gif files are pictures and are stored in a format that are not editable! 4. Upload your drawings (.gif files) to the webserver using the webtool. Ensure your files are named as described above and upload the project by selecting "Upload Files" under "My Project" when logged into the webtool. Ensure you copy the file reference displayed by the system after a successful upload. Follow the instructions below to add the reference tag to your HTML. Note: You cannot put your picture on your own personal webspace (be it at UCD or elsewhere) and then make the <img src> tag point to it—ALL PARTS OF THIS PROJECT MUST BE ON THE MISSOURI WEBSERVER.
Insert Images into the Project If you followed the instructions above, your picture file should be residing on Missouri’s webserver. The first thing you need to do is find the exact location in the “Editorial Comment” field where you want the picture to appear. Once the location has been chosen, insert the tag (an example follows): <img src=../2005002/group16_eq1.gif> You can insert other images as well, e.g. other structure drawings, pictures of molecular models generated with Chem3D, sketches as part of Q & A, ... If you have several images, insert the others in the same fashion and again use a name of the type group#_whatever.gif. A Final Word on Projects
1. Please check your spelling/grammar. Keep in mind that your project is representing UCD to all of the people who read our study (which could be some international students, too). If you are not skilled in these areas, see if there’s someone in your group/class who would be willing to proofread your project. A second pair of eyes (or a third or fourth) sometimes helps! So does a spell checker….. 2. I know that there are probably some of you who have HTML backgrounds and that’s great! However, these should be PLAIN projects—you are not allowed to include fancy fonts, background colors, animations, etc. Doing this is a good way to wind up on the teaching assistants’ radar for point deduction! 3. You cannot reference print materials and include them as footnotes! All reference materials must be online links. 4. Do not plagiarise. Likewise, when you’re grading someone else’s project, if you find plagiarism, please report it to the instructor and teaching assistants immediately. 5. If you wind up in a group where there is an individual that is not doing his/her share of the work, feel free to kick this person out of your group! This is supposed to be a fun project, and it’s no fun if only one (or a few) people are doing all of the work. Please notify the teaching assistants and instructor if this should happen. Thanks!
6. An example of a project, that my group did, is accessible through: Guidelines
for Questions and Answers Asking good
questions is not a simple task. In fact, to ask a good question
about a problem leads halfway toward its solution. Asking questions
is a key problem-solving skill and schools critical thinking. You need to
write 5 interesting questions. The questions should include as many
of the following types as possible and question 5 has to be of the
PSP type. You should identify the type of each of your questions
by providing the type abbreviation in parentheses after the question. You also need
to provide answers to your questions. Answers to questions 1 - 4
will be rather factual and should be given as brief and concise
as possible. Question 5 should be answered by a 1-page essay and
this essay should be the result of a collaborative effort. There
is no one correct answer to PSP questions and instead the quality
of the essay will be decided by the depth of the analysis and the
number and quality of arguments in favor and against the thesis.
Note that you are answering your own question and you are in the
wonderful position where you might consider improving the question
as you work on finding an answer.
(ICR) - Identification
of Components and Relationships: Questions in this category
seek to emphasize pertinent pieces of information in the assignment.
Questions of this type require the reader to identify essential
pieces of information and identify their logical value (hypothesis,
assumption, deduction, rationale, ...). Categories
for Peer Review The evaluations
of the Collaborative Group Projects will be carried out by public
and collaborative peer review. Each group is required to evaluate
the projects of up to three other groups using the CIITN web tool. Every group
can assign up to 100 points to a project. The web tool will request
you to assess various aspects of the group projects. For each criterion,
you need to supply a number grade and a brief justification. More
detailed justifications should be given if the assigned score is
either very high or very low. Please download the
Intergroup
Peer Review Worksheet for each group you are assigned to grade and mark each
category as indicated. Remember, it is a mandatory requirement to add a comment for
each and every grade given. These sheets are great for working through the grading
process and serve as a backup reference for why the grades are assigned as entered.
It is best to work as a group when grading each project instead of having different
members grade different projects. Remember, that you must be able to defend a grade given
whether good or bad, so please take care in your efforts.
The evaluations
from all peer evaluations will be averaged. Do take these evaluations
seriously, you are affecting the grade of your fellow students.
Try to be fair and objective. You must be comfortable with your
judgment and be able to stand by it and defend it in public. Your
evaluations have to be made in writing and they will be made public
on the web. The peer review
will proceed in two stages. In the constructive peer review, you
should focus on pointing out the strengths and making suggestions
as to how the project could be improved. The projects will then
be revised. The second peer review evaluates the revised and final
version of the project. Usually, the scores of this second peer
review will be higher than those of the first. The final grade for
this portion of the project will be an average of the first and
the second peer review. There will be awards for top projects in
each class. Print off the constructive review once completed because
once you start on the final review, the constructive review comments
will not be available electronically. Group Assignments
for Peer Evaluations Peer review assignments have
been posted as of TBD. Logon to your group account and select the "Projects
to Review" link to view your assignments.
The basic idea is that most groups are reviewed by 2-3 other groups
- the averaging will take the edge off of individual judgements.
The groups never evaluate their own evaluators
- reciprocity will not occur. Some groups will benefit from up to 4 reviews
and some groups will have to prepare up to 4 reviews. The more everybody
browses all of the entries, the better the quality of the grading.
Evaluations of small subsets without having a view of the overall
quality inadvertently distort the evaluation. Download a copy
of the Intergroup
Peer Review Worksheet Logon to your group account and select the "Grade
Projects" link to enter the grades off of the worksheets into the system. Once these are submitted,
you will not be able to update them, so take care that the entries are correct before submitting them.
Print 1 copy for yourself (as stated in the "Categories
for Peer Review" section).
Grade will be
based on average of constructive and final and is worth 60% of project. Intragroup
Peer Review To access the intragroup
peer review, go to the webtool, select "Student Personal Login", enter the course ID,
Student ID and Password. The Student ID and Password are both the unique ID entered by you
or your group team leader when your group was setup at the start of the
semester. Your initial password is the same as this ID. After you login, press the "My Account" button
at the top of the screen. Then press "Grade Members" on the left menu bar. You can view the guidelines
and enter the scores as appropriate using the two submenu links made available. When doing the intragroup review, you are
entering a ratio of who deserves how much of the points the group earned (excluding yourself of course
since you will be graded by the others in your group.) Divvy up the points as appropriate ensuring the
total points add up to 100. If there are any points left over, enter these points in the "Points Left"
text box at the bottom of the page. Example: If you have 4 people in your group and everyone participated
equally, enter a 33 for each of the 3 members you will be grading (34 for one of them), please add comments, and enter a zero in the "Points Left" field. You can withhold points if you wish, but they will not be counted towards your score (which will be entered by your group members the same way you graded them.) The questionnaires
WILL be made available to the students that are being evaluated when they view their scores.
We will collect all the responses for each student and average the
results. That average will be the score for assignment #3. The questionnaire
was developed in collaboration with the University of Missouri at
Columbia Campus Writing Program. Each student
must also fill out the following two documents. One is a study habits
document and then the other is an evaluation form for the project. These
were passed out in class These forms
should be submitted to Dr Schelble also by 12-12-2006. Absolument
mon ami, l'excellence est une habitude. |