THE USE OF PORTABLE DEVICES TO TEACH ORGANIC CHEMISTRY AT THE UNIVERSITY, VIRTUAL REALITY

At the Faculty of Chemistry (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) we have faced with the problem of bringing abstract concepts in the field of chemistry to the real world. Each year we are having more students, this year we have 6,500, with 1,350 new enrolling. This brings to our system a strong pressure of using new techniques and technologies for teaching.

The main problem in Chemistry is the abstraction of facts in order to understand the 3D arrangements and properties of the molecules. During the last 9 years we have used stereoscopic tool in order to teach the courses of Organic Chemistry. With the aid of several Molecular Modeling programs we have been able to show the distribution of the molecules in the three dimensional space.
The implementation of the 3D world has been in two ways:

-The Use of a High Tech Auditorium
Sala IXTLI is an auditorium with 50 places and a 180° screen with 3 projectors to simulate 3D environments. This tool has been very useful for research and teaching. Students are immersed completely in a 3D world, they feel and can touch the molecules. Each course improves the awareness of the students to a new undisclosed world and is very rewarding from the teaching point of view.

-Using portable devices:
The technology is now at a breakpoint in which we can use simple tools to teach students to understand the basic chemical concepts in a 3D world. Several devices are available; in our case we are using Smartphone’s, iPhone and iPad, also new applications are available free, these devices are wide spread between the student’s populations and can be a valuable teaching tool.

Moodle is a teaching platform that has been available now for several years; it has advantages over the traditional teaching method, allows a very strong interaction with the students using electronic tools. Also the possibility of delivering the lectures in this platform and the elaboration of questionnaires has been very useful. We are using this tool in portable devices with a great success, incorporating power point presentations, video and 3D animations.