Université du Maine – France Structure Determination by Powder Diffractometry : Distance Teaching and Distance learning 20th European Crystallographic Meeting – ECM 20 - Kraków A. Le Bail Université du Maine – France alb@cristal.org http://www.cristal.org/

A few generalities… Where is the knowledge ? An answer may be more and more : available online from the Internet. Continuous education is a tool for remaining competitive. Universities cannot always provide to students a broad exposure to experts in all fields. Workshops and Congress suppose expenses for travailing, housing and may be a spoken language problem – many people read english better than they can hear and speak it.

SDPD = Structure Determination by Powder Diffractometry - Less than 100 structures determined per year. More than 2000 people have followed a workshop or a satellite congress on that subject during the past 10 years. Why so few publications ? SDPD is difficult… The number of people really interested in SDPD is close to 300 which is the number of subscribers to the SDPD mailing list : http://www.cristal.org/sdpd/

SDPD Internet Course Created : September 1999 - Why ? We had experts in both SDPD and Internet. Our university and town are too small for trying to organize workshops or Congress. We can only expect to interest fans of racing cars. The student number is decreasing in science, we have to take your students in order to survive. This is why…

Distance Learning (DL) Not new ( > 100 years), costs more than traditional learning (instructor time, equipment, upgrade, technical staff, etc). Pitfalls of DL are known : avoiding them (low-paid, low-level tutors, bad help, hiding the difficulty, etc). Internet changes DL a lot. The previously slow teacher-learner interaction becomes fast and unlimited in volume. Examining the crystallography DL market in 1996-98 : the PPS at Birkbeck College - London. This was our inspiration, using the Université du Maine SDPD well known and highly visited free tutorial (1995) as a basis for our own project.

Implementing the SDPD Internet Course Step one : Synchronous or asynchronous ? Asynchronous, why ? At the PhD level, going at his own speed is more attractive. The inconvenience is : no limit in time for finishing the course. Some students will need 2 years instead of 3 months, and will have time for finding reasons to give up.

Implementing the SDPD Internet Course Step 2 : What content ? For PhD-level students. Therefore, more than a basic minimal knowledge is required in crystallography. Fluency with Internet and the PC world is also required. The estimated necessary content was cut sequentially into 10 sessions. For each of them : introductory text, references, exercises with solution, exercises without solution (continuous control), in HTML. No online multimedia. Students will play with software at home.

Implementing the SDPD Internet Course Step 3 : Deciding the cost ? Could be relatively small because the course is based on software free for the Academic world (almost…). 3 levels of fees : professionnals (1000 Euros), PhD or Post-doc (500 Euros), and students in developing countries (250 Euros ~230 US$). Similar to the Birkbeck College courses.

Implementing the SDPD Internet Course Step 4 : Finding students (« clients ») Advertisements on the Internet at mailing lists, Newgroups… Announces relayed by the IUCr Website. Thousands of personnal Emails (= spamming… we apologize). Result : 12 students the first year.

Implementing the SDPD Internet Course Step 5 : Who will work and how ? Students ( « clients ») will have the hardest job : in spite of the tutor’s help, they are almost alone at work without imperative date for sending their solutions to the exercises. Teachers/tutors : clients are all over the world, emails will come anytime, anyday, especially during the week-ends or during university vacations. Are you prepared to that ? If not, don’t do it !

Communicating – Interacting : 100% DL Email essentially : instructions, questions, answers should be as fast as possible. Course material either atttached to email or to be downloaded from a Web site. Exercise solutions attached to email (from the student to the teacher and from the teacher to the student). Final examination also at distance : no control !

Student-student interactions ? Recommended for a synchronous course, but more difficult to achieve for an asynchronous course. Possibilities of interaction with the world of experts in the field : the SDPD mailing list (~300 subscribers), the Rietveld mailing list (~600 subscribers), and Newsgroups. Possibilities of direct interaction with software conceptors in case of problem (the teachers are not omniscient).

The SDPD Internet Course after 2 years From where came the students ? Potential students were all over the world (the course is in English, a language that scientists cannot ignore). We did not organized that course by following the French education model, nor the European model, if any, nor the American model. We established a World model and consequently we got students from the World.

How the project was accepted by the University administration « Should not cost any money… But do what you want.» Education is almost free in France. Administration suggested registration fees should not be larger than 100 Euros (~100 US $). I wanted 250 to 1000 Euros. I won… Other fight was about how to pay the teachers. After one year functioning, I reported a mean number of 20 emails per student, needing ¼ hour for writing an answer : 5 hours of paid job per student. Underestimated, but accepted and better than nothing. No way to be paid for the 1000 hours needed for the course building.

How does it look like ? http://sdpd.univ-lemans.fr/course/

Information about teachers

Some student (favorable ;-) comments :

Course content

Much more in a downloadable paper :

Once convinced, apply…

How does a session looks like ? First step :

Some things to do before starting :

Some recommended books :

Now read deeply these chapters, tutorials :

Download and play with a few software :

After having played with examples, finally, solve these exercises, please :

Any future for SDPD distance learning ? Expert systems could kill the interest of deep learning ? Explosion of software diversity, a teacher nightmare ? Do this intense activity around SDPD will continue if the number of determined structures keep small ? And if commercial software dominate ? What can be done with that diploma, anyway ? 1999-2000 : 12 students , 2000-2001 : 7 students , 2001-2002 ??? May be less because you know how difficult it is to become a laureate, now.

http://sdpd.univ-lemans.fr/course/ http://www.cristal.org/course/