Contribution from

Xaverian Innovations Projects, St. Francis Xavier University,

Antigonish, Nova Scotia B2G 2W5, Canada

Authors:

Lai Im Lancaster,

B. Sc. [Hon.]

[St. FX], M. Sc.

[Queen’s]

Authors:

Brian M. Lynch

M. Sc. [Hon.]

Ph.D.[Melbourne]

[50-year member, ACS]

With contributions from

• Chad Maheux

and

Emily MacDougall ---->

Innovative Methods of Course

Redelivery in Chemical

Informatics and Chemistry

[note modified title]

Symposium on Social Software

and Chemical Information

Definition of Social Software:Social software enables people to

rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated

communication and to form online communities

[source: Wikipedia]

Partial Definition of a National ACS Meeting:

The meeting enables chemists to rendezvous, connect or collaborate

through direct personal contact as a result of listening to and viewing one-time

presentations. Brief hard-copy summaries are available

to conference attendees.

[source: Brian Lynch]

Recent years have seen revolutions in chemical publication of research and production of abstracts of the results, resulting in virtually complete conversion into electronic products at the expense of paper. Most university chemistry libraries have discarded their paper copies of CA.

In related developments originating in Australia, many universities routinely record most course lectures, providingnew opportunities for feedback and review through electronic access.

Still more recently, podcasts and vodcasts are taking the place of standard audio and streaming video recordings. Although there are at least two organizations with the trade names “iLecture”, universitylectures have a way to go before we hitthe billion-lecture download point.

In marked contrast, at professional society meetings where research results are presented [such as the ACS], many papers are offered concurrently and attendees have to select just one of several having potential interest.Typically, an abstract book [or books] or a CD version is the only permanent record.

A non intrusive system of recording and delivering conference material for storageand dissemination online, as mp3 files supplemented by slides, or as podcasts,has the potential of providing new and valuable products from the meeting without major added costs, enabling a wider, better informedaudience. Those unable to attend a meeting in person may be reached and archived materialcan be accessed, adding revenue to the society’s resources.

About 95 %of ACS membersDO NOT ATTEND

a given national meeting

As with any novel approach, there are difficulties: some speakers may not wish to be recorded or to provide access to their slideshows from priority considerations or perceived risk to copyright: some journals may regard the existence of accessible files on the Internet as equivalent to prior publication.

“Podrecording” [effected by fitting a voice recorder to an older high-end iPod] provides an unobtrusive procedure: the resulting soundfile is automatically downloaded to your computer when the iPod is docked, and may be converted via the iTunes software into mp3 format.

Availability of a sound file is the first stepto a useful record of a presented paper,and, at first sight, an accompanying slideshow file exactly synchronized with the sound outputwould be the most useful archived resource.

However, a listener to the combined audio and slideshow would want to proceed at their own pace throughout the talk, backtracking as necessary and pausing to digest the meaningof intelligent/witty/joking remarks.

Thus it turns out that two separate files, independently accessible, are an ideal solution for replay of downloaded resources.This approach was adopted some time ago by the Royal Society of Chemistry for their “Chemistry Topics” [mp3 and pdf files] which replaced the “Chemistry Cassettes” [cassettes and booklets] created by the Educational Techniques Group of RSC.

Here are some possible formats forslide/audio combinations:• Synchronized during presentation [narration mode for PowerPoint]• Synchronized post-presentation[play recording & match to PowerPoint]• Unsynchronized [separate files, may be run concurrently in multitasking mode]• Autosynchronized playback of .pdf file conversion from .ppt [computer “voice”[readback of all text in original .ppt file]

If time permits, we will illustrate the following:• Introductory presentation for our junior-level Chemical Informatics course [Chemistry 375]with accompanying sound clip• An introduction to an honours student seminar [fraction of PowerPoint presentation]• A sound clip from the same presentation• Example of a poster presentation from an undergraduate research conference with matching sound clip

Problems consequent to having complete“audiolecture” files:1 Storage - in mp3 a 40-minute class equals 25 MB.2 A full-year course [about 70 lectures] would require about 18 GB.3 A PowerPoint file corresponding to # 1 would likely occupy 2-4 MB

• Audio files of acceptable quality have been saved for all 8 presentations at the “Social Software” Symposium

• PowerPoint files of the slides used for all 8 presentations have been saved from Andrea’s laptop

• The audio files occupy about 300 MB in WAV [uncompressed] format.