15, lunch&LEARN: Using web-based computational chemistry software to teach first-year students

Luc Patiny, chemistry and chemical engineering lecturer at EPFL, presents a series of online tools he uses to teach interactive courses to his first-year students. 

Providing his students with the same web-based tools used in research and the industry, Patiny enables them to delve into exploratory learning while also acquiring practical experience by solving problems of increasing complexity.

After a brief introduction during the lecture, students solve series of online exercises supervised by teaching assistants. 

Over the years, Patiny and his colleagues have developed over 300 open-source javascript libraries allowing students to apply and understand a range of computational methods.