Students learn most effectively when they engage earnestly in solving problems, and receive immediate assessment of their work while their thoughts are still fresh. That is why I moved to a flipped classroom years ago, where I have students prepare for each class by reading about a dozen assigned pages from the textbook. In class, … Continue reading Higher-impact Teaching of Mechanisms in Class: Next Level with Smartwork
Consistency is Key
When I talk to other faculty who are using the Karty book I find that we share a love of Chapter 7. In this chapter, the most common elementary steps are presented, those being proton transfer, biomolecular nucleophilic substitution, coordination, heterolysis, nucleophilic addition, nucleophile elimination, biomolecular elimination, electrophilic addition, electrophile elimination, and carbocation rearrangements. Every … Continue reading Consistency is Key
A, B, C’s of Williamson Ether Synthesis
Williamson ether synthesis at the basic leave is rooted in the conditions of an SN2 reaction. However, students still struggle with the content. I have found myself trying to remind my class of the basics. I am quite fond of the Karty text, and have tried to compliment the book mechanics with some organically-flavored A … Continue reading A, B, C’s of Williamson Ether Synthesis
How to Help Students See Patterns of Reactivity: My Experience with Karty’s Text
One of my most common refrains in my organic chemistry classes is that students should strive to understand and apply the foundational principles, as opposed to trying to memorize each example reaction that they’ve encountered. I strongly believe that a mechanistic organization discourages the memorization behaviors that students are almost forced to adopt in a … Continue reading How to Help Students See Patterns of Reactivity: My Experience with Karty’s Text
Has It Really Been Six Years?: Part I
I have a photo of me and my oldest son taped to a shelf in my office. In the picture, I’m holding him up and we’re wearing matching red bandanas. He was about 3-years-old at the time (he's 13 now), and I had a full head of bright red hair. But today, it’s almost all … Continue reading Has It Really Been Six Years?: Part I
Mechanism Problems with Numerous Teaching Moments
Each year, as my students complete Chapter 8, I find tremendous value in assigning a handful of written mechanism problems that not only challenge students, but also reinforce important lessons about mechanisms that we learned throughout Chapters 7 and 8. This year, I assigned the following two mechanism problems (not found in Chapter 7 or … Continue reading Mechanism Problems with Numerous Teaching Moments
Proton Transfer Reactions and Thinking Like a Chemist
Teaching students how to think like a chemist is a challenging, but necessary feature of any organic chemistry course. A seemingly simple question such as, “How will these two compounds react when I mix them?” can stump even the best students. Since it is impossible to memorize every possible reaction combination, students must rely on … Continue reading Proton Transfer Reactions and Thinking Like a Chemist
Ten Elementary Steps Are Better Than Four
Mechanisms can greatly simplify learning organic chemistry because the hundreds of reactions that students need to know have mechanisms that are constructed from just a handful of distinct elementary steps. This is easy for us professors to see—after all, we’ve been through the year’s reactions and mechanisms multiple times. Students, on the other hand, must … Continue reading Ten Elementary Steps Are Better Than Four
A Racemization Revelation
In my experience, when students are writing a reaction mechanism, the most common error is to form a strong base under acidic conditions or vice versa. I stress the importance of paying attention to reaction conditions in lecture, but the “function group” based textbook previously used at Western Washington University did not contain a section … Continue reading A Racemization Revelation
Seeing the Big Picture
As the semester comes to a close, I have been reflecting on my lectures and experiences with a mechanistically organized course. The Karty text has presented many different types of reactions; from all of the reactions, I want the students to be aware of the central theme in ALL organic mechanisms. In every step, there … Continue reading Seeing the Big Picture