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This second NMR Elluminate tutorial is the core of the NMR tutorial work - it covers interpretation or prediction of the NMR spectra from protons within simple organic molecules.

We were provided with a short PowerPoint presentation of eight slides showing the structural formulae of three organic molecules and the corresponding NMR spectra.  Colour-coded version matched up the lines within the spectra to the chemical groups responsible for them.

As I am not familiar with this subject (apart from the short period spent teaching this module last year) I worked through all of the relevant module material.  I then found that working out the spectral features was relatively straightforward.  There was one feature whose details did not match up clearly to the rules of the simple models we used. I asked for clarification on this from the topic specialists on our dedicated support forum, but did not receive a response before the tutorial. 

The material covered in the PowerPoint was not enough for a tutorial as students would probably not to be sufficiently familiar with the topic to work through these examples within a tutorial. I referred back to the presentation I used last year. I had provided a summary of the rules at the start of this presentation. 

I made a few minor changes to improve the clarity of these slides, including stretching the content and darkening the colours. Then I rehearsed the presentation via Elluminate on my Tablet PC, using the pen to annotate the screens, including writing out the working.

My intention was to get the students to apply the rules for the examples. Therefore I extracted key screens containing the rules and placed them on our group forum for students to print out before the session.

In practise the session ran well. The students, although again reluctant to speak, did contribute and successfully worked through the three examples. They seemed to appreciate the exercise (though I have not had any specific feedback). I provided a pdf version of the annotated whiteboard screens on the forum afterwards.