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Notes Browsers Curly Arrows was originally written for Netscape (4.7+), and in the early days, there were propblems with other browsers. However, now it runs without problem in most browsers, but note that Java and JavaScript must be enabled.
Progression in the Questions In order to provide more challenge to students, the behaviour of the interface can be set at three different levels, as follows.
Within each topic, the first questions are set as Stage 1 questions, and the later ones as Stages 2 and 3.
Notes to teachers In the Electronics section of this application, the student is required to annotate structures with all lone pairs and partial charges. The intention is to give practice at doing this, even though in reality, all lone pairs and partial charges in a reaction scheme would not be drawn in by an experienced chemist. In the main Curly Arrows sections, lone pairs of electrons are shown explicitly at reacting centres, but not necessarily at all heteroatoms in a molecule/species. Lone pairs are normally omitted from product structures.
We are aware that some organic chemistry teachers feel that all curly arrows
should end where the pair of electrons will be after the reaction, so
that a bond-forming arrow should end half-way between the two atoms
involved. Although we see merit in the rigour of this, we feel
that our approach - which we believe to be the most commonly convention
used by organic chemists - leads to greater clarity and less ambiguity,
particularly when the reactants are not drawn in close proximity.
Please feel free to make a link to this site if you think is would be useful for your students.
Authoring of questions for Curly Arrows does not require programming skills, but you would need to be reasonably computer-literate, and have quite a bit of spare time. The Assessment module is available only to registered students at Aberdeen University; this simply uses a selection of the questions available in the tutorials, presents them to the students in a randomised sequence, and records the mark. Marking is done in exactly the same way as it is for the tutorials. If you wish to design your own content or introduce assessment for your own students, you may like to know that we are prepared (for a fee) to make copies available for use at other sites. Loading the tutorials on another webserver is straightforward, but the Assessment module, which uses PHP for authentication, would require to be rewritten to suit local conditions. If you are a lecturer or teacher, and would like to have a password to allow you to try the authoring interface, or if you would like further information about this project, please contact: Dr Mary
Masson, University of Aberdeen, Some links to this site
Page updated Friday, 01-Aug-2008 13:41:13 BST |
