MolnQuiry is a tutorial that explains the structural properties of biological molecules using interactive molecular models. The tutorial also includes an inquiry component where students test their knowledge by manipulating and interacting with the molecular models to answer quiz questions.
Type of Material:
Online tutorial and quiz.
Recommended Uses:
This site could be used in a class lecture when molecular structures are discussed. It is an excellent self-study tool and/or could be assigned as homework.
Technical Requirements:
Requires the Jmol Applet and the activation of javascript on the browser
Identify Major Learning Goals:
Students will understand various functional aspects of biological molecules with respect to their structure beginning with simple chemical bonds and progressing to more complex molecules such as antibodies and antigen-binding proteins
Target Student Population:
High school or undergraduate.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
The tutorial requires some basic knowledge of chemistry and molecular biology to put the information into context. However, the chapters on bonds, proteins and nuclei acids do offer a good introduction to these topics. The chapter on immunology requires some basic immunology.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
• Easy to render the molecule in lots of useful ways to learn about different molecular features
• Well-designed tutorial with two panels that allow the user to simultaneously manipulate the structure in the left panel while reading the explanatory text on the right panel.
• Simplifies a task that most students find overwhelming (molecular modeling). This tutorial takes users by the hand and walks them the features of a molecular structure one-by-one.
Concerns:
none
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
• The modeling window allows users to change the appearance of the models to emphasize different features and/or to accommodate different visual learning styles
• Good supplement to class or text to help students visualize structures
• Highly interactive and inquiry based
• The “study” panel engages students to accomplish specific tasks with the models
• As an instructor, I appreciate the fact that the only way to discover the correct answer is to continue making attempts until the user chooses correctly answers the question. This forces students to critically analyze the structures.
• Self-paced
Concerns:
• It would be useful if the tutorial allowed two molecular structures to be open at the same time in two separate windows so that learners could simultaneously view and compare them side by side
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
• Instructions are very clear
• Easy to navigate
Concerns:
• The movie link does not work and is spelled move? Instead of movie.
• When I used this tutorial on both Firefox and Safari, the program crashed
• The molecular structures were slow to load
• Typos throughout
Creative Commons:
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