The long-range objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive, highly-interactive course in biochemistry that will be widely accessible on the World Wide Web. This course is designed for use with a conventional instructor and textbook, and it does not attempt to duplicate either of these roles on the Web. Rather, it consists of interactive learning devices that actively engage the student in going well beyond the limits of textbook- blackboards, overhead transparencies and text-and-graphics Web pages. The fundamental motivation of this project is to create a learning environment which leads the student through problem-solving exercises and which provides a richer, more three-dimensional and more animated vision of biological molecules, models and concepts. The pedagogical elements of this course include: a) JAVA applets that lead students through calculations, graphing exercises, problem-solving and modeling of fundamental and advanced topics in biochemistry, including amino acid titrations and chemistry, enzyme kinetics, enzyme mechanisms, metabolic pathways, protein structure analysis, etc., and b) tutorial and modeling exercises on protein, nucleic acid and carbohydrate structural analysis using the free CHIME~ plug-in. A variety of applets that demonstrate the potential of JAVA for this project and the pedagogical possibilities for teaching and learning biochemistry have been produced. These efforts have also produced tutorial exercises that demonstrate the power of CHIME~' as a teaching and learning tool in biochemistry. This project may be viewed on the Web with the URL: http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~cmg. (The user's computer must be JAVA-capable and must have the CHIME~ plug-in installed.) The programming efforts described in this proposal include: 1. Expansion of current modules to include many new examples. 2. Development of an interactive, menu-driven protein modeling package based on CHIME~ and Javascript (a language loosely related to JAVA). This package permits stu dents to select proteins, model and study them, write scripts to save and redisplay their work, and print their results, all within the Web environment. 3. Virtual-reality-animation of figures, biochemical events and processes. This pedagogical element presents spatially complex and time-dependent phenomena such as the motions of peptide chains, the replication of DNA and binding equilibria to students in three-dimensional animations which the student will be able to view from a variety of perspectives. 4. Virtual reality-modeling of biochemical 'thought-experiments', including development of protein purification schemes, elucidation of the functions of signal-transduction factors, modulators of vesicle transport and transcription factors. These models employ JavaScript and JAVA to lead student users from hypothesis to logically-chosen experiments, to results (generated by JAVA applets), followed by re-evaluation of the hypothesis and further experimentation. Biochemical knowledge is expanding at an explosive pace. Teachers in this field need new and better tools to manage and communicate this knowledge to students. This project provides a package of such tools for teachers and students. Its Web-based nature make it available either for classroom use or for study by students outside of class from any Internet access point. Its interactive design engages students more effectively in comprehension and learning. The broader significance of this project lies in the fact that the underlying nature and structure of the proposed JAVA applets are applicable to nearly any field of knowledge. These applets can be readily adapted to the teaching (and learning) of mathematics, physics, economics, and many other fields. They can also be adapted to other levels of education, including elementary and secondary education.
