Chemistry Commons^™

Teaching College Chemistry In The Time Of Covid-19 Pandemic: A Personal Account Of Teaching In The Old Normal Vs. The New Normal, Armando M. Guidote Jr

Chemistry Faculty Publications

The SARS CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2), cause of COVID-19 (CoronaVirus Disease 2019) has afflicted close to 10 million people all over the world resulting to almost half a million deaths. This disease is severely contagious and necessitates social or physical distancing between persons. As such, traditional face-to-face learning is not advised and teachers need to shift to online teaching. There are challenges to online teaching and learning for students, teachers, and the higher education institute, e.g. hardware, bandwidth, and software issues. These will be difficult but these can be overcome eventually. This work is a personal account …

First-Semester Organic Chemistry During Covid-19: Prioritizing Group Work, Flexibility, And Student Engagement, Leslie A. Nickerson, Kevin M. Shea

Chemistry: Faculty Publications

Our first-semester organic chemistry class focused on structured group work to enable active learning in class. When Smith College switched to online learning after spring break, the class was adapted to fit into an online learning model while retaining active learning. Using feedback from students, we implemented two tracks, one focused on independent work and one focused on group work. Using Zoom’s breakout rooms, we were able to simulate the full class and small group experiences of our in-person class with the help of student learning assistants to facilitate group learning. Slack was introduced for class questions and communications. Student …

Organic Chemistry Ii Lab Manual, Caitlyn Bailey

Senior Honors Theses

This project aims to supply a full lab manual and grading key for Organic Chemistry II, a class often taken by sophomores in Liberty University’s science degree programs. Properly applied laboratory experiments create a beneficial learning environment for science students by using hands-on procedures to transform intangible lecture concepts into concrete demonstrations. Lab work also fosters the development of problem-solving and critical-thinking skills that students need in research and the workplace. Thus, having a comprehensive lab manual is critical to students’ success and understanding in this upper-level class. This project adds to the experiments of Organic Chemistry II lab through …

Safe Use Of Hydrogen Peroxide In The Organic Lab, Patrick Dussault

Organic Peroxides: Safety Issues

The article describes good practices for use of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) in an organic lab setting. Major headings include:

Leading references; Toxicity; Physical properties; Chemical properties; Stability and incompatibilities; Confinement/pressure; and, References to accidents involving H₂O₂.

Less Cookbook And More Research! Synthetic Efforts Toward Jbir-94 And Jbir-125: A Student-Designed Research Project In A Sophomore Organic Chemistry Lab, Mike A. Christiansen, C. L. Crawford, C. D. Mangum

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

In light of the meaningful learning gains that can be obtained through a genuine research experience, chemistry educators have had a longstanding interest in making teaching labs less “cookbook-like” and more research-driven [1]. With this mindset, we recently restructured our two-semester sophomore organic chemistry lab course to include a synthesis project that was chosen, designed, and carried out by students. This led to progress toward the syntheses of JBIR-94 and JBIR-125, two antioxidative/anticancer natural products that have yet to be assembled through organic chemistry. The major drawback of our course redesign is that it requires close supervision by an instructor …

Integrating Formative Feedback Into Individual And Group Assessments In A First Year Organic Chemistry Module, Barry Ryan, Julie Dunne

Conference papers

It is common for science undergraduates, particularly first year students, to remark that they do not receive appropriate support in their transition from second level to third level education; particularly in effective scientific laboratory report writing, new subject area preparedness and technical ‘know-how’ [1]. This is compounded by the insufficient, or inappropriate, feedback offered to students in these problem areas. The pedagogical emphasis often focuses on quantity rather than quality; both in report writing and content delivered. This publication describes an assessment methodology redesign to, firstly, incorporate on-line formative feedback and; secondly, to introduce one-to-one and one-to-group lab report feedback …