We present example assessments featuring spectroscopic unknown puzzles, where the solution to the puzzle is the outcome of a known chemical reaction. These spectroscopic exercises engage students in a substantially more authentic manner than the conventional structure elucidation puzzles that are ubiquitous in organic chemistry instruction.…

Student engagement in evidence-based argumentation plays a central role in science education. These skills can be developed when identifying organic molecules from the spectroscopic data. Molecular structural analysis fosters deep procedural knowledge, as it involves (i) flexibly applying a set of procedures to extract information from spectra,…