Synthesis Explorer: A Chemical Reaction Tutorial System for Organic Synthesis Design and Mechanism Prediction

Synthesis Explorer is an interactive tutorial system for organic chemistry that enables students to learn chemical reactions in ways previously unrealized. Accessible online through a user-friendly Web interface, Synthesis Explorer delivers a rich learning experience including dynamic generation of customized multi-step synthesis design and mechanism prediction problems; context-specific feedback; and support for inquiry-based learning through experimentation and interactive dialogue with the system. The system is founded upon a reaction expert system based on over 80 reagent models and 1500 manually-composed reaction patterns, representing the undergraduate organic chemistry curriculum. These reaction models confer the system inherent predictive powers enabling it to generate a virtually limitless number of problems and to answer common questions of reactivity, including the inference of complete arrow-pushing mechanisms. Pedagogical experiments in undergraduate classes at UC Irvine indicate that the system can improve average student examination performance by ~10%.