ISpec: A Web-Based Activity for Spectroscopy Teaching

Thomas Vosegaard

doi:10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00482

Abstract

Students’ skills in structure elucidation of organic molecules are developed by training them to understand advanced spectroscopic measurements and elucidate structures of small organic molecules from mass spectrometry (MS) and infrared (IR), ultraviolet (UV), and 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic data. The present work puts a specific focus on developing student skills to ensure that the students (i) are aware of the resources involved in obtaining the spectral data and (ii) obtain the skills necessary to handle spectra which have not been processed by experts, to better reflect the use of spectroscopic techniques in their later work life. This is achieved through the web-based spectroscopy activity iSpec, in which the basic idea is that every action costs resources. The cost of a resource is given in the form of resource points (RPs), such that different experimental data can be “purchased” for a number of RPs.

Highlights

Training of student’s skills in spectroscopy is essential for their future work in several areas of chemistry, and since the early days of spectroscopic techniques, this has been the case.[1]
The student skills are developed through learning the basic concepts of mass spectrometry (MS), IR, UV, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and by interpretation of such spectra of small organic molecules, in our curriculum, but as a general theme in every chemistry degree program
Students are normally instructed to extract all information from all spectra to ensure that they make conclusions that are supported by all the spectral information

Summary

Introduction

Training of student’s skills in spectroscopy is essential for their future work in several areas of chemistry, and since the early days of spectroscopic techniques, this has been the case.[1]. Point (ii) above addresses the issue that when students are presented with exercises on paper, the spectra are typically prepared with peak labels, integrals, relevant expansions, etc, which is not the case when they they work by themselves in the laboratory.

Results

Conclusion