ChemMark-WWW: Chemical Structure Drawing and Marking on the Web

Abstract

Current tutorial programs in web-based teaching and learning are limited to text inputs. Thus, in the field of chemistry, while questions may be asked in text or graphic formats, answers may be text only. This has severe limitations in tutorials (particularly in organic chemistry) where the only effective way to teach and to learn is through chemical structure diagrams. As there are many ways in which a single chemical structure may be correctly drawn, it would be totally impractical to create a library of correct structures against which student structures are to be matched. Accordingly, ChemMark-WWW, a chemical structure drawing and recognition web interface which enables chemical structures to be drawn and marked, has been developed. The program automatically creates a structure connection table for the answer given by the student and matches it against the structure connection table for the answer provided by the instructor. Answers can be post-processed so that the student gets immediate feedback, and the lecturer can immediately see what marks have been awarded – and can also see exactly what the students did!