John D. Lamb, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and associate dean for general education in the Office of Undergraduate Education at Brigham Young University, was recently invited to give a presentation about the second edition of his award-winning multimedia text, “Click Chemistry,” at Osaka City University in Japan.
This English CD version of the text, “ChemTutor,” was produced in the mid-1990s, and Lamb has been using it to teach introductory chemistry classes ever since.
One of Lamb’s research colleagues, Hiroshi Tsukube at Osaka City University, was impressed by Lamb’s text, and subsequently translated the digital tutorial manual into a printed Japanese text, which is designed to accompany the English-based CD, to use with his own students.
A second edition, “ChemTutor II” which will also likely be translated into Japanese, contains more multimedia elements, including video and Flash animations. The new edition’s 20-minute mini-lectures, written in Flash and played in a Web browser, are easily navigable and much richer in multimedia than the original “ChemTutor,” according to Lamb.
Writer: Brooke Eddington