Beginning of Year Meeting (5 September 1999) Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London

Welcome Page  Course Index  Administration  Meetings 

Time & Place:   6 Sep 99 at 14:00 in EB29

Present:

Martin Attfield (MPA)
Paul Barnes (PB)
Jeremy Karl Cockcroft (JKC)
Martin Vickers (MV)

Agenda:

Tutors
Quality Control
Recruitment
Examiners
Course Handbook
Course Planning
A.O.B.

Tutors:

Martin Attfield was formally asked to be a tutor on the Powder Diffraction course on commencement of his Royal Society University Research Fellowship in October. There was a discussion of where he could most usefully contribute to the course. The decision was taken that the last lecture on publication would be the most appropriate since this was closest to his research interests; it would also give more time for training in web page development.

Action by JKC:
Update web pages, provide MPA with computer ID access, information etc. JKC to act as Mentor for MPA, especially with reference to the PD course.

Quality Control:

The subject of validation by external professional bodies was discussed.

Background: In contrast to classical undergraduate subjects such as physics and chemistry, where the Institute of Physics (IoP) and Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) validate and accredit courses as a matter of standard practice every 3 to 5 years, our dynamic postgraduate web courses are not linked to any professional bodies for professional accreditation. The nearest equivalent national body for the Powder Diffraction course is the British Crystallographic Association (BCA), which has no remit for course validation (given the specialisation of the subject). In order to achieve quality control, it was decided at an early stage in the course development that we should follow the route taken by PPS and PX in seeking experts in the field to validate our course.

PB reported that, following the decision of the Subject Review Meeting of 21 July 1999 (see link), he had approached Mike Glazer (BCA President) and Dave Taylor (ex Pilkingtons) at the Glasgow IUCr Congress about course validation. JKC mentioned that he had also discussed it with Dave Taylor at the same meeting. Following the election of Lachlan Cranswick (of CCP14) at the IUCr Congress to several key committees, the latter had also been approached by JKC. It was felt by all that this would give a more balanced approach to quality control given the "young" nature of the Internet.

The procedure for viewing the course material was discussed. Given that this is the first year that the course is running, it was felt that an accurate view would only be obtained once 4 or 5 sections of the course material has been released. This would imply an initial review of the course material either over Xmas or during early January. It was agreed that all reviewers should sign the copyright agreement form as a matter of standard procedure.

The subject of internal quality control was also discussed. It was felt that this role was ideally suited to Bob Cernik (deputy director SRS, Daresbury) as the holder of an honorary chair in the department.

Action by JKC and PB:
JKC to pursue validation with DJT and LMDC. PB likewise with AMG and RJC.

Recruitment:

JKC reported on recruitment. Despite the massive interest shown in this new course by people coming to the Birkbeck Stand at the IUCr Congress (see link), so far no one had actually signed up! It was agreed that this was disappointing. It was also agreed that we would run the course even if we only had one registered student since this would force the pace of web course development; it would also mean that time and effort spent previously on course development would not be wasted. [From small acorns do massive oak trees grow!]

No action required

Examiners:

JKC reported that he had informally asked Dr. Andrew Fitch of the ESRF, Grenoble, and scientist responsible for constructing the world's best powder diffractometer (and, previously, senior lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at Keele,) to act as External Examiner for the course. ANF had agreed in principle. JKC said that he would contact Brian Harwood to check about the procedure for the appointment of External Examiners, but he thought it took place each February.

Action by JKC:
Check with BH.

Course Handbook:

PB pointed out that the course organisers would be required to have hardcopy course booklets for the forthcoming TQA visit next year. JKC and MPA strongly thought this went against the concept of electronic distance-learning courses on the Internet and that students sign up for such courses on the basis of what is visible on the Web. PB insisted that the TQA panel would need something other than a URL address. JKC, somewhat reluctantly, agreed that he would print off the web pages visible to the public and that this would form the basis of a "Course Handbook".

Action by JKC:
Print off visible web pages, preferably in colour.

Course Planning:

A long discussion was held on how the course material was progressing. On the JCPDS, permission has been sought and provisionally granted to use a small amount of material for teaching purposes. PB agreed to get this confirmed in writing. PB reported that he was currently preparing non-ambiant and modern techniques I and II to take into account time-resolved, non-ambiant, and in-situ methods. He had obtained a fair bit of material from collegues at the IUCr Congress.

JKC reported that he had purchased 3 copies of CorelDraw 9 (costing approx. £1000) from group funds for PB (home and office) plus JKC (home use) to assist in the preparation of diagrams since neither person has drawing programs on their PCs. PB reported that JMG still had money to pay Simon Jacques for the many hours he spends in drawing figures. MV would continue to help out PB in the conversion of his text-based lectures to HTML. This would mean that he would have less time to work on laboratory duties. PB, MPA, and JKC agreed to this.

JKC reported on his discussion with Lachlan Cranswick re use of CCP14 software utilities. The main problem here was that while the suite could be freely accessed by academics and not-for-profit organisations, it could give problems to industrial students on the course who were following the course at their place of work.

Concerning the first lecture, Huub Driessen had offered the material from PX, which with small changes, would be suitable for use for PD. This was gratefully accepted. As with any new course, it was anticipated that the released version of any lecture would only be ready shortly before its release. In this sense it was recognized that lectures for the course were no different to face-to-face lectures being prepared and given for the first time.

Action by All:
To continue working on the preparation of course material.

A.O.B.:

JKC brought up the subject of Web robots. It was generally agreed that it was getting harder to find things by chance on the Web, and that the search engines no longer put one top of the list when searching for keywords such as "Powder Diffraction". Difficult to know what to do about this.

Action by MV:
To look for powder diffraction courses on the web with a variety of search or meta-search engines; to see how easy (or difficult) our course is to find on the Web.

Date of Next Meeting:

Towards end of the first "term" - February/March 2000

Welcome Page  Course Index  Administration  Meetings