Transdisciplinary molecular design class (TransMoDe)

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1. Phase
We successfully finished the first project phase in October. During this time we designed and implemented a Moodle online course which accompanied our lecture «Computer-Assisted Drug Design». In the online course we put special emphasis on the usage of different types of questions so that the students could familiarize themselves with the computational aspects of the lecture. Different types of questions were developed to achieve this goal. The questions utilized graphics, tables and the completion of formulas in order to keep it interesting for the students. Furthermore we pooled question in quizzes of increasing difficulty. Similar to a computer game the more difficult questions became accessible only after successful completion of the lower level quizzes. This concept is meant to encourage a competitive character and provide feedback to the students about their knowledge and their increasing ability to answer more difficult questions. We implemented a new online server to provide access to simplified versions of different molecular modeling programs. These software tools are required to answer some special questions in the quizzes, so that the students have the opportunity to have a first contact to scientific calculations. This possibility has been well accepted by the students and a special designed questionnaire for the moodle course showed a very positive feedback for the online platform. Evaluation in the moodle platform further revealed a high motivation of the students to repeat tests multiple times in order to achieve higher scores by answering more questions correct. The concept of having different levels of tests with higher level test only becoming available if lower level test were completed successfully will therefore be kept. Furthermore students repeatedly wished to automatically receive the correct answers when having answered a question wrong during a test. We decided for didactic reasons not to automatically provide these correct answeres but will instead increase and emphasize explanations for why the chosen answer of the student was wrong. We believe this will lead to a higher learning effect, as the students have to think about how to answerer the question correct again. In future test the development of these explanation texts will be one focus.

2. Phase
The second project phase included the adaptation and extension of the Moodle online course for our practical class in drug design. The virtual companies of the practical class will have access to the course as an additional resource. For this purpose we designed new moodle courses which are closely related to the practical tutorials on one side and to lab safety on the other side. The big challenge in this is to bring students with very different backgrounds in one line, which the online moodle course helped to achieve. Although this practical class is highly demanding we received very positive feedback from the students. We also received comments especially emphasizing the advantage of having an online training possibility. Our CADD practical class is designed as an interdisciplinary class which requires from students the willingness to dig into new areas. We believe also based on the feedback that an increased time frame e.g. three instead of two weeks would assist in the task to equalize the scientific backgrounds of the students. Since supervising such an endeavor requires additional resources capacities for this endeavor, we plan as a next phase of the project the “virtual week”. This virtual week, which will precede the practical class, will contain easy level tutorials and introductions to definitions and concepts. The students will have the possibility to access this online class in the week prior to the practical class preparing them for the hands on tutorials.

• socially relevant tasks
• combination of lecture, practical class and online courses
• qualification for integrative science

• autonomous working in small virtual companies
• virtual course having levels analog to video games
• take responsibility for your own actions

The number of low level questions in the moodle course should be increased

Feedback fo the students was very positive. They liked the concept of the lecture.

Combination of different teaching methods such as lecture, practical classes or project work keeps the class interesting for both lecturer and participants. The personal responsibility should be increased by allowing the participants class relevant decision. This way a success is directly coupled to their own decisions. The lecturer steps back and is only available for support.

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