WebMO Uses
Homework assignments
- Universal accessibility
- Visual interface to increase understanding
Computational chemistry laboratory
Research
- Speeds learning curve of specialized software
- Full access to underlying program
Notes:
WebMO has not been used as long as Discus, although I think its implications for chemical education are even more exciting.
We foresee using WebMO to make computational chemistry homework assignments. The software is avaiable from anywhere. It intelligently queues jobs submitted by different users. The results are communicated in a visual fashion to students, increasing their understanding.
Hope College currently uses WebMO as part of a computational chemistry laboratory. We have developed several sets of exercises for this purpose that are published on the WebMO website.
Finally, we use WebMO for rather sophisticated undergraduate student research projects. For us, cost was not the motivating factor. Rather, it is the increased speed with which students learn to use computational chemistry and interpret the results. Once students become proficient in the basic techniques, they do have full access to the raw input and output files to the program, if they wish.