Robert Shine
SimOrg - Student Notes
March 8, 2009

In Week 8 beginning on March 10th, the lab will include a discussion of 
the SimOrg qualitative organic analysis simulator program.  I would like the 
use of this program to be a homework assignment this semester as we gather 
information about how best to use this program in the future.  The program 
has some new features added since last spring when we first used it.  
Your feedback to us would be valuable for future work on the simulator.

The simulator program is now available at 
http://give.ramapo.edu/simorg/simorg.aspx 
and can be used at home or on campus wherever there is an internet 
connection.  Each student has been assigned an account which can be 
accessed from the login page via Lastname.Firstname with password as 
the password.  So Mary Smith would use Smith.Mary and password.  The 
upper case letters must be used as shown.  If you cannot login this 
way, you can login as a guest as instructed on the login page.  Please 
let me know if you encounter any login difficulties (bshine@ramapo.edu) 
and I will fix them.

Your Instructor will decide how you will be graded on this assignment.  
Student testing performance will be monitored and a report will be 
generated which I will share with each Instructor. Students will 
be asked to do about 15 unknowns in the testing mode to complete the 
assignment.  Your use of the practice mode and tutor mode will not be 
recorded.

The program has three modes, one of which must be chosen before logging 
in.  The modes are: practice, tutor, and testing.  SimOrg now has an 
expert system built in which mathematically selects the best way to solve 
an unknown.  This expert system works in the tutor mode and gives its 
output as the user makes a selection.  The left window at the bottom of 
the page chronicles the user input and the right window at the bottom of 
the page gives the expert system output.  The expert system works fairly 
well but is not perfect.  Please let me know your comments about how it 
works.  Practice mode is similar to the tutor mode without the expert 
system output.

If you hold the mouse cursor over a specific classification test or 
derivative test, a question mark (?) will appear and, in a few seconds, 
information about that test will be displayed near the mouse cursor.  I 
think this is an excellent method to help the student learn what each test 
is used for.

One problem with the program is that the windows do not fit comfortably on 
the screen, so mouse scrolling will be required throughout the program 
use.  Please take some time to get use to the scrolling. In the tutor mode 
there will be four scroll bars that will probably have to be used unless 
you have a very large screen.  To select a test, for example, you may have 
to scroll down to find the test you want.  When you click that test, you 
will then have to scroll down to see the result.   You will encounter 
similar operations when you use derivative tests and derivative tables.

Remember there is a brief introduction to SimOrg in the Week 8 lab and 
a longer discussion of SimOrg and qualitative organic analysis in 
Appendix A of the Lab Manual.

http://give.ramapo.edu/simorg/simorg.aspx

Thank you for your help with this project.

Bob Shine