For the past five years, the UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory has offered a course on our MidasPlus molecular modeling system. This course is intended to familiarize Resource users with molecular modeling software in general, and MidasPlus in particular, and is designed for both beginners and expert users. The course is taught in a large classroom with an instructor demonstrating MidasPlus using a video projector directly interfaced to a Silicon Graphics workstation, with auxiliary handouts and laboratory exercises to be performed later using the graphics workstations available within the Resource. The main problem with this approach to teaching is the time lag between instruction and practice (i.e. lessons may be forgotten, or questions may come up only during hands-on experience). Another problem is that participants must physically be present; there is no possibility of remote learning.
When the initial version of the CHIMERA molecular modeling application is released later this year, it will be necessary to train early users of the system. Eventually, when CHIMERA subsumes all existing MidasPlus functionality, it will be necessary to retrain the entire active MidasPlus user community. This includes not only past users, but new users that we will continue to recruit. It is unrealistic to expect these users to visit UCSF for training, or to send Resource personnel to individual sites to train users there. Using a videotaped tutorial is passive learning, which is suboptimal. A World-Wide Web based tutorial is useful, but cannot anticipate all the errors and questions of novice users. The collaboratory environment offers the exciting possibility of remote active learning.
Our interactive training testbed calls for both classroom- and collaboratory-style courses on the use of CHIMERA. It is our expectation that only UCSF users will participate in the classroom-style courses, while the collaboratory will allow users to participate from many remote locations. We will compare these two approaches to training and evaluate their relative effectiveness.