(1409) VIRTUAL LABORATORY: INTERACTIVE AND SIMULATED HIGH PERFORMANCE LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHY

摘要

The development of Information Communication and Technologies has allowed the enlargement and implementation of novel didactic resources applied in the educational field. Frequently, the use of laboratories to understand practical issues of sciences learning presents some drawbacks such as lack of time and facilities for all students, risks of instrumentation damage and a large number of timeconsuming experiments to provide results. The use of virtual laboratories by means of interactive simulation programs has emerged in the last years to overcome these limitations, presenting a valuable extension to existing lectures and laboratory sessions. Particularly, simulated programs are tremendous useful to teaching High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) since the number of parameters involved and the time-consuming experiments of this technique make it a learning challenge for both students and teachers. HPLC simulators allow to work in a virtual laboratory where students can modify chromatographic parameters while directly observing their effect on the chromatographic separation. These independent-learning activities give students an improved and visual understanding of the molecular basis of separation in chromatography and explore the fundamental principles of HPLC more efficiently than they could in the lab, reinforcing the connections with fundamental chemical principles.