Homework Considerations

The spring 2008 semester represents an exciting and interesting time in the development of the WE_LEARN system for organic chemistry, with which many of you are already familiar. In the spring of 2007, John Wiley and Sons acquired the rights to this system for national marketing and distribution, tentatively under the name of On-line Organic Chemistry. Your work, as students, has borne fruit, in that WVU's efforts will be showcased throughout the United States and the world. That's good news and bad news.

This spring 2008 semester represents the transfer of materials from an internet server maintained by Prof. Penn to one maintained by Wiley. Penn no longer has control of the system. In fact, the server that we will be using is located in Moscow, Russia. We are sure to have some adventures this semester, because of the following:

mistakes may be made in the transferral process,
the transfer of materials is not 100% straight-forward,
the server is a developmental server and system links often point to sites on the real server rather than this server,
the textbook that the system is being designed for and the textbook chosen for study at WVU are different, and
the systems are not 100% identical from a software standpoint.

Every attempt is being made to make the transfer transparent to you as a student. On the other hand, your work is important to the transfer process, as you can help to find mistakes/problems in the system. In fact, if you are the first to report a mistake in the system, you will earn bonus credit for this course, which will be added to your final grade. More on this issue will be discussed elsewhere in the syllabus in the determination of the final grade document.

How to Use the WileyPlus System

Follow the link to learn how to login to the system.

Homework Assignments

Homework assignments for this course will appear on the assignment page of the system, with their corresponding due dates. It is anticipated that a file detailing what chapter in the Solomons textbook (Wiley) corresponds to what chapter in the Smith textbook (McGraw-Hill). This will appear in the Homework Conversion link.

Reporting Problems in the System

Instructions on how to report problems in the system are given in the link on Instructions on Reporting Problems. A direct link to the form for reporting problems is http://www.we-learn-horizon.com/Contact_us_wrong_answer.htm. If you are the first person to report a problem in the system, you will earn 0.1% added to your final course grade.

Student feedback from the past suggests that I respond very slowly to these types of problems. I plead guilty, but will also explain why it occurs slowly. Looking up what you have done is not straightforward. Each question to me, that requires a system change requires a minimum of 10 minutes to evaluate your suggestion, to find the original question in the database, make the correction and then publish it. With 400 students this semester in the Organic 1 and Organic 2 classes, I anticipate that I will get very backed up timewise, particularly during exam weeks, when deliberate study is most intent. I hope that you will be patient with me while I try to keep up with everyone and everything this semester.