Programme Demonstration
This document presents a written description of the Flash video presentation of the Masters in Next Generation Drug Discovery programme demonstration. It can be used in conjunction with a text to speech reader. In the video the text that appears is narrated by the programme director, Dr. Paul McLaughlin.
Slide 1
The opening slide displays a banner with the University of Edinburgh crest and the programme logo. The text on the banner reads, “The University of Edinburgh. Masters in Next Generation Drug Discovery.”
A text box appears with the following text, “Hello and welcome to this programme demonstration. We want to give you a taste of what it would be like to take one of our courses.”
Slide 2
A screen shot of a course called Measuring Drug Binding is presented as an example. The course is built in the virtual learning environment Moodle with which students will have to engage as they carry out various activities.
A comment balloon appears with the following text, “This is an example course website. Each course lasts five weeks, and you do one course only during this time. You are given clear objectives for each week.”
Slide 3
The same screen shot is presented. A new comment balloon appears pointing at two links within a topic – Learning Outcomes and Assessment. The following text appears in the comment balloon, “Clear guidance is given for what is expected.”
Slide 4
The same screen shot is presented again. The next comment balloon appears pointing at a link within a topic – Sound version of above introduction. The text within the balloon reads, “Alternative versions of material are given, where possible, to suit different learning styles.”
Slide 5
With the same screen shot of the course, the next comment balloon now points to a link to a video in the first week’s activities – Meeting with Line Manager. The text reads, “Each course involves solving a problem, which is authentic - as if you were working in a company.”
Slide 6
The screen shot changes to show what happens when you click on the Meeting with Line Manager link. The displayed page has an embedded video. It shows a person talking and there are subtitles on the video that say, “Hello, I have got two projects for you that have to be finished in the next five weeks.” The comment balloon that appears says,” We use multimedia to make tasks more realistic, and challenging.”
Slide 7
A new screen shot is shown that focuses in on weeks on and two of the course. Week two of the course features a link to a Learning Module - What is a good KD? The comment balloon points to this and says, “An example of a Learning Module. This is where you learn basic concepts that you might never have come across before, or need to refresh.“
Slide 8
A screen shot of the title page of the learning module is shown. There is a menu along the top that allows the student to navigate through the material. And another along the bottom that allows students to change settings such as colour scheme, text font and size to suit their own taste. Two comment balloons appear. The first points to the top menu bar and says, “This is an example of a self-paced tutorial.” The bottom tool bar is highlighted in red and the second comment balloon points at it saying, “It has built-in accessibility features.”
Slide 9
A new screen shot shows a page within the learning module. The page has three areas. The first is a video of Dr. Martin Wear, talking about KD. Directly below that is a text area with some context for the video. It says, “Dr. Martin Wear, Head of the Protein Production Facility and Responsible for Biophysical Characterisation, Centre for Chemical Biology, The University of Edinburgh. Question. “What is a KD and what are typical values for a lead compound (one that might bind only weakly but is promising enough to … (rest of the sentence continues out of screen shot and would be accessible by scrolling). The final area contains subtitles for the speech in the video.
A comment balloon points at the video image and says, “These tutorials can contain video files, as we see here, or have text and images.”
Slide 10
In the next slide, two examples of questions within a learning module are given: one to sort a list of drugs, givenas log to the base ten of their association constants, into two categories, “Too weak” and “Promising lead compound“ ; and a question entitled “Is strong always good?” in which the question is asked why the weak binding of warfarin to human serum albumin might actually be beneficial. There is a button to press to check the answer. The comment balloon for the slide says,”There are frequent opportunities to test what you have learned, and to get instant feedback.“
Slide 11
Returning to a screen shot of weeks one and two, the comment balloon points to a link in week two - Post a question this week. The text in the balloon says, “Discussion Groups allow you to post questions …”
Slide 12
The screen shot changes to show a post and a reply in a discussion forum. A post is shown with title “ Is the KDthe same as the IC50?” The body of the message says “I keep reading papers in which they don’t mention the KDat all, just the IC50 values. Are they the same?”
A response is shown. It reads, “Good point. This is a common problem. The IC50 is not the same as the KD for a compound. Think of it like this. Imagine that you have a compound at 1 micromolar bound to a receptor. Then imagine that you add a non-radioactive version of the same compound. What will be the IC50? Obviously when 50% of the radioactive compound is displaced, that is at 1 micromolar. So whatever the concentration of the radioactive compound, the IC50 of the non-radioactive compound will be equal to it.So the IC50 depends on the concentration of the compound being displaced.“
The text in the comment balloon continues the sentence from the previous slide and reads, “…and receive answers from staff, and from other students.”
Slide 13
Again we are returned to a screen shot of weeks one and two, the comment balloon now points to a new link in week - Virtual Class Room. The text reads, “Virtual Classrooms are online and give you access in real time to staff members and to other students .”
Slide 14
The screen shot changes to show an example of a virtual classroom. A popup window has videos showing a student and a tutor. Behind is shown a slide about IC50with a list of compounds and values. The tutor has highlighted the word “acidic” on the slide by circling it in red.
Three comment balloons appear. The first points to the circled word and says, “You can hear and see your tutor in real time, and see annotations made.” The second points to a chat window in the virtual classroom and says, “You can send text messages to ask for clarification while the tutor is speaking.” The third points to the talk button and says, “The tutor can invite you to speak live to the class.”
Slide 15
The final slide has a text box that says, “Thank you for watching our taster and for your interest.We hope to see you on the programme!”