16 Aug 2001
This project resulted in the development of a Web-based interactive tutorial describing instrument operation in an undergraduate physical chemistry course. The project was successfully completed by constructing a website which provides students with a complete set of experiments along with a set of four animated tutorials used to visualize the operation of instruments in the physical chemistry laboratory. The URL for this site is “http://panther.bsc.edu/~pchem”. The site was developed with the Flash4 software package (Macromedia, Inc.) and so requires the Flash player to be installed on the user’s computer to view it. Currently, the Flash5 player is available for download from the Macromedia, Inc site. Links to the download site are made available in the website.
This website is constructed to be an interactive chemistry laboratory manual for the physical chemistry (CH311/CH312) course at Birmingham-Southern College. This is an upper level course sequence in which students use different advanced instrumentation. The students access the tutorial for the instrument used in their experiment from the website. The tutorial is an animated movie with a timeline and actions determined by a script. The movies were developed by constructing, using drawing tools or by importing graphic images, “objects” to be placed on a stage. The objects can be made to move, change shape or color, or dissolve from view. The temporal aspect of change is controlled with the number of “frames” used to complete the action. The more frames, the longer the action takes to complete. Stop commands class=GramE>are embedded in frames to halt the action. Buttons are constructed and correlated with actions to allow for playing the movie, and for jumping forward or backward in the movie. Text is placed in the movie to complement the animation and to further explain the operation of the instrument being examined.
The entire site is designed to provide students in the physical chemistry course at Birmingham-Southern College with a single location from which to obtain information about scheduled experiments. The tutorials, however, are available to anyone with access to the Internet. The tutorials are designed to aid in a general manner in the understanding of instrument operation. The success of these tutorials is gauged by feedback provided by users of the tutorials. Anyone completing a tutorial is requested to complete an on-line assessment form. The assessment form is accessed from the “Instruments” page of the site. Upon submission, the completed form is e-mailed to the instructor.
The course presents experiments using a variety of instrumentation. The instruments covered in the tutorial include a uv/vis photodiode array, an HPLC, a monochromator, and an FT-IR. We plan to update the site periodically to include more instrumentation.
The support of the Associated Colleges of the South through their ACS Technology Fellows Program is gratefully acknowledged. Birmingham-Southern College provides ongoing support of this project through technical help and server storage for the website.