TEACHING MOLECULAR MODELING ON THE INTERNET

Technology is changing the way we teach and interact with students. Chemical and Biochemical information, like technology, is changing at an extremely fast rate. Access to information is a necessary and an integral part of any curricula and as Chemistry educators, we need to promote the ability to obtain information to our students, either by finding it, or doing the calculations with the proper Molecular Modeling programs.

Multimedia offers the potential to improve the learning process of students online, blended and in person courses by the creation of educational resources by the teachers and their use by students.

Its primary focus being on the educational use of Internet technology in universities, the present study wanted to gain insight into the conditions that shape the integration of e-learning and construct a model that influence the adoption and diffusion of the Internet in higher education.

At the Faculty of Chemistry at UNAM (Mexico), we have started a new course of Medicinal Chemistry using Internet Technology. Specifically, the course is designed to foster deep learning through the planning and implementing the use of several Molecular Modeling programs to study aspects of medicinal chemistry that explore the links between disease, mechanisms of action, interaction ligand-protein and the development of safe and effective commercial drugs.

The course is two hours a week during four months. 40 students are attending the course on site using computers to perform the calculations and 10 students are connected online (from Puerto Rico, Panama, and different states of Mexico) using Teamviewer. They can follow the lectures with voice, video and sharing the computer screen; questions can be asked and answered on real time.

The course is open to anyone on the Internet at http://organica1a.org.

This work was partially supported by a grant from Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico (DGAPA) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México PE205313