Getting Started with the Virtual Lab:

A Guide for Instructors

The Virtual Lab is free to install, use, and distribute thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation.
Please see our website [http://www.chemcollective.org/] for further licensing information.

How to access the virtual lab for use in your classroom

To run the Virtual Laboratory software for yourself or your students, you can either:

• Run from the web - You can run the virtual lab as an applet from any
web browser. Go to: http://www.chemcollective.org/vlab

• Run from a CD - Contact us to receive (free) copies of the software on CD

by mail. Call 412.268.7914 or email info@chemcollective.org

• Install on your local computer system – You can download the virtual lab software to install on
your computer by visiting http://chemcollective.org/applets/vlab.php and following the included
installation instructions.

System Requirements
The Virtual Lab will run under the following operating systems: Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and Vista or Mac
OS X.1, and higher. In most cases, the Virtual Lab will work with few problems, but it will run best with following
suggested minimum requirements: Pentium III processor, 128 MB of RAM, 30 MB hard drive space and 800 x
600 screen resolution.

Ways to use the Virtual Lab with your students

The Virtual lab is a fully customizable simulation of aqueous chemistry; it has been used by instructors in the
following ways:

Compliment to physical lab

• Pre- and Post-labs: These activities help students prepare for, or better process, lab experiences
by allowing them to work with the chemical concepts without having to concentrate on lab technique.

• Lab make-ups: These activities lead a student who has missed the in-class lab through a
laboratory experiment from their computer, without the need for lab time or supervision.

Compliment to assigned homework

• Open ended/Inquiry-based problems Compliment your current pencil and paper homework with
activities that allow students to use chemical concepts to design and carry out their own
experiments. This is the most powerful use of the virtual lab and one whose educational benefits
have been well studied.

• Homework-checking: These low-risk assignments provide a safe way to introduce the lab to your
students and a way for them to feel more confident about their homework. Here students use the
virtual lab to check the results of a pencil-and-paper calculation or qualitative prediction.

Supplement to in-class demonstration: In these activities, instructors first perform a demonstration in-
class, so students can see the actual chemical processes. Students then explore the chemical system and
processes on their own with guided activities in the Virtual Lab.

Funded by the
Department of Chemistry National Science Foundation
How to familiarize yourself and your students with the Virtual Lab
We have several types of documentation to help you become comfortable using the Virtual Lab. All of these are
available on the CD, or online at http://chemcollective.org/doc.php

• A brief video demonstrating how to use the Virtual Lab

• A step-by-step walkthrough demonstration that provides instructions for doing a basic titration.
This activity shows how to retrieve solutions from the stockroom and glassware from the menus,
and demonstrates pouring and measuring techniques.
• A basic user guide with instructions for using each feature of the lab.

Introducing the Virtual Lab to your students: If you take a few minutes during class to show your
students how to pull a solution out of the stockroom, how to pour between two vessels, and where to look for
information on the contents of a solution, your students will be ready to go off on their own. If you don’t have
an easy way to demonstrate the virtual lab to your class, you can point your students to our 5 minute
introductory video, or give them a printed copy of our one page virtual lab walkthrough. (By the way, the
video is perhaps the best way for you yourself to become familiar with the virtual lab).

How to access built-in homework problems in the lab

The Virtual Lab software currently includes over 50 activities and questions that cover the following concepts:

• molarity • dilution • thermochemistry

• limiting reagents • scientific method • solubility
• stoichiometry • pKa • equilibrium
• density • acids and bases • oxidation/reduction

A complete listing of these problems organized by concept and ranked by difficulty is available for review at
http://www.chemcollective.org/find.php

Standard Problems: The above page also contains links to downloadable Microsoft Word documents of
the assignments, which you are welcome to distribute in your classroom. To load a specific homework
activity, click on the File menu of the Virtual Lab and choose “Load Homework...” A dialog box appears with
a listing of homework activities, categorized by topic. Select the homework problem you would like to load
and click “OK.”

Automatically Graded Problems: The ChemCollective website and CD contain our collection of
automatically graded Virtual Lab activities. These problems randomize the chemical solutions so that no
two versions of an activity will have the same answer. Students can measure the heat of a reaction, the
pKa of an unknown acid, or the concentration of an unknown solution using the virtual lab and then receive
hints and feedback on their results.

Customizing the Virtual Lab for your classroom

Many of the virtual lab activities on our website were created for use in specific classrooms. If you have an idea
for an activity that you would like to use with your students, please write to us and we will create it for you. In
addition, if you would like to modify any of our current activities for your classroom, we would be happy to hear
from you. If you plan on creating many problems, you may want to check out our authoring tool at
http://www.chemcollective.org/create.php.

Contact
Please feel free to contact us at any time for questions, technical help, curriculum support, comments about the
Virtual Lab, or just about education and technology in general; we’d love to hear from you.

More specific questions can be directed to our instructional designer, Michael Karabinos:
Email: info@chemcollective.org
Phone: 412.268.7914