Advanced Computer Graphics Aided Molecular Visualization and Manipulation Softwares: The Hierarchy of Research Methodologies

In the present day, the huge obstacles, and the major technical problems encountered by the teaching and research faculties, academicians, industrial specialists, laboratory demonstrators and instructors, fellow students and researchers, etc. are to adopt integrative approaches of demonstrating (learning) chemistry and chemical education, and the realistic ways of delivering (grasping) scientific materials articulately with graceful and effortless manner. Towards minimizing these challenges, various audio-visual tools and technologies, advanced computer aided molecular graphics, freely available electronic gadgets assisted chemistry and chemical education apps, human unreadable data reading and accessing softwares, etc. are being incorporated worldwide as the most indispensable physical and electronic means for successful professionalisms. This short article is essentially a collective report underscoring extraordinary approaches, incredible efforts, and innovative skills of the computer based chemical and molecular graphics towards illuminating intrinsic parts of the chemistry and chemical education, and revealing various aspects of the cutting -edge research. As their representatives, herein, the different type computer coding languages based graphical tools such as Molden, GaussView, Jmol, and Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) are referred, and elucidated their potential applications and remarkable attempts in the advancement of diverse areas of chemistry and chemical education. Beside this, the most essential graphical features, unique rendering abilities with magnificent views, splendid visualizing skills, awesome data accessing functionalities, etc. of each of them, and their invaluable roles for studying complex molecules, biomolecules, crystals, and the entire material assemblies as well as for investigating global and local molecular physicochemical properties are presented concisely with the special stresses on their relatively better and comparatively more applicable distinctive attributes explicitl

Using Augmented Reality as a Medium to Assist Teaching in Higher Education

In this paper we describe the use of a high-level augmented reality (AR) interface for the construction of collaborative educational applications that can be used in practice to enhance current teaching methods. A combination of multimedia information including spatial three-dimensional models, images, textual information, video, animations and sound, can be superimposed in a student-friendly manner into the learning environment. In several case studies different learning scenarios have been carefully designed based on human-computer interaction principles so that meaningful virtual information is presented in an interactive and compelling way. Collaboration between the participants is achieved through use of a tangible AR interface that uses marker cards as well as an immersive AR environment which is based on software user interfaces (UIs) and hardware devices. The interactive AR interface has been piloted in the classroom at two UK universities in departments of Informatics and Information Science

Reviews

Successful Instructional Diagrams by Ric Lowe, London, Kogan Page, 1993. ISBN: 0–7494–0711–5

Finely integrated media for language learning

FLUENT, an immersive foreign‐language learning environment, was developed without recourse to hypermedia techniques. Nevertheless, if one accepts the premisses, proposed in this paper, on which the idea of hypermedia has been constructed, FLUENT shows a strong relationship with it. The paper discusses this relationship after attempting to distil the essence of educational hypermedia, and after presenting a taxonomy of media for language learning

Gestalt Theory in Visual Screen Design — A New Look at an old subject

Although often presented as a single basis for educational visual screen design, Gestalt theory is not a single small set of visual principles uniformly applied by all designers. In fact, it appears that instructional visual design literature often deals with only a small set of Gestalt laws. In this project Gestalt literature was consulted to distil the most relevant Gestalt laws for educational visual screen design. Eleven laws were identified. They deal with balance/symmetry, continuation, closure, figure-ground, focal point, isomorphic correspondence, prŠgnanz, proximity, similarity, simplicity, and unity/harmony. To test the usefulness of these laws in visual screen design they were applied to the redesign of an instructional multimedia application, 'WoundCare', designed to teach nursing students wound management. The basic text-based screens in the original WoundCare application were replaced with graphical user interface screens, that were designed according to these principles. The new screen designs were then evaluated by asking students and others to compare the designs. The viewers were also asked to rate directly the value of using the eleven Gestalt design principles in the redesign, both for improving the product's appearance and improving its value for learning. The evaluation results were overwhelmingly positive. Both the new design and the value of applying the eleven Gestalt laws to improve learning were strongly supported by the students' opinions. However, some differences in the value of applying particular Gestalt laws to the interface design were identified and this forms a useful direction for future research

Toward a Semiotic Framework for Using Technology in Mathematics Education: The Case of Learning 3D Geometry

This paper proposes and examines a semiotic framework to inform the use of technology in mathematics education. Semiotics asserts that all cognition is irreducibly triadic, of the nature of a sign, fallible, and thoroughly immersed in a continuing process of interpretation (Halton, 1992). Mathematical meaning-making or meaningful knowledge construction is a continuing process of interpretation within multiple semiotic resources including typological, topological, and social-actional resources. Based on this semiotic framework, an application named VRMath has been developed to facilitate the learning of 3D geometry. VRMath utilises innovative virtual reality (VR) technology and integrates many semiotic resources to form a virtual reality learning environment (VRLE) as well as a mathematical microworld (Edwards, 1995) for learning 3D geometry. The semiotic framework and VRMath are both now being evaluated and will be re-examined continuously