Success in organic chemistry is heavily reliant on a student’s ability to identify patterns. Until recently, I organized my course by functional group. It was only after I adopted Joel Karty’s approach that I recognized that the variety of reactions used to synthesize each functional group can vary widely and that this variance makes it … Continue reading Improvements on Retrosynthetic Analysis
The Benefits of a Mechanistically Organized Book When Teaching a 2-cycle Approach
Two-cycle organic chemistry is a pedagogical approach that has gained in popularity over the last couple decades. It’s a rather simple idea: The first semester course is treated as something of a survey, dealing primarily with the fundamentals, whereas the second semester revisits many of the same topics from the first semester, but treating them … Continue reading The Benefits of a Mechanistically Organized Book When Teaching a 2-cycle Approach
Liberation in the Laboratory
One of the unexpected benefits of Joel’s organization was the discovery that students, once they learn the elementary steps common in organic reactions, can perform a limitless—at least in theory—range of experiments in the lab. (In the upcoming textbook, elementary steps are discussed in Chapter 7, midway through the first semester.) Since students have examined … Continue reading Liberation in the Laboratory