Regioselectivity in hetero Diels-Alder reactions can be observed in a simple reaction between a nonsymmetrical heterodiene and an unsymmetrical heterodienophile. A 9 h and easy to implement laboratory experiment is described, in which students can observe the regioselectivity of inverse "electron-demand" hetero Diels-Alder reactions of…

Typical laboratory exercises for undergraduate organic chemistry students involve bulk phase reactions with work up of product. In this study, students performed accelerated versions of the Katritzky reaction of para-substituted anilines with pyrylium salts in three ways: (i) by dropcasting reagents onto a paper surface and allowing solvent to…

The ACS Guidelines for bachelor's degrees in chemistry call for the curriculum to include polymer chemistry principles and the synthesis of different classes of macromolecules. Organic chemistry can provide an important introduction to polymer chemistry principles, and photochemically induced radical polymerization is one method for generating…

Scientific writing is related to the practice of communicating scientific knowledge. This study treats scientific writing as a social practice, taking as its premise the notion that participating in related activities such as reading, peer evaluation, and discussion would positively affect the competence of students' scientific writing, by…

Science education at the postsecondary level is essential to building a foundation for increasing support, participation, and interest in STEM occupations and careers. This current study uses a phenomenological approach to explore the lived experiences and perspectives of eight post-secondary science majors while enrolled in a university 200-level…

Educational Scaffolding was first mentioned in 1976 by Wood et al. Several examples for scaffolding in chemistry are also known from the literature. As written scaffolds, stepped supporting tools to support students while solving problems in organic chemistry were developed, applied, and evaluated. Although the students rated the tool as very…

Lewis structures are a very important, foundational concept in chemistry. Students usually acquire this knowledge in General Chemistry and need to review it in preparation for Organic Chemistry. However, many students find the task of drawing Lewis structures to be challenging, and not all instructors can budget enough time in class to review this…

IUPAC nomenclature competence (INC)--defined as the ability to name chemical structures using IUPAC rules and draw structures from IUPAC names--is considered a foundational skill in the training of professional chemists. For students of non-European language background, the challenge of acquiring INC is often complicated by the fact that IUPAC…

The course design "Training OC" for training the application of basic concepts consists of four topics: formula language, structure-property relations, reaction mechanisms, and complex tasks that the students should solve with the conceptual knowledge they acquired in the first three topics. A main goal of the course was to enable the…

To test the hypothesis that students who complete remote online tests experience an 'online grade penalty', we compared performance outcomes of second-year students who elected to complete exams online to those who completed face-to-face, paper-based tests in an organic chemistry course. We pursued the following research questions: (RQ1) Are there…

Due to the COVID pandemic, the introductory course on organic chemistry was developed and conducted as an online course. To ensure methodical variety in this course, educational games and quizzes have been developed, used, and evaluated. The attendance of the course, and therefore also the use of the quizzes and games, was voluntary. The quizzes'…

Student affect is an important factor in the learning process and may be especially important in gateway courses such as organic chemistry. Students' recognition of the relevance of the content they are learning and interactions with their peers can support their motivation to learn. Herein, we describe a study focused on how Writing-to-Learn…

Context-Based Learning (CBL) and learning through developing and using models are two important teaching approaches for chemistry conceptual understanding. We aimed to examine the influence of a CBL approach on students' understanding of Multiple Models of Knowledge Representations ("MMKRs") and "multiple molecular…

Within chemistry education, there are various curricular and pedagogical approaches that aim to improve teaching and learning in chemistry. Efforts to characterize these transformations have primarily focused on student reasoning and performance, and little work has been done to explore student perceptions of curricular and pedagogical…

Learning to reason through organic reaction mechanisms is challenging for students because of the volume of reactions covered in introductory organic chemistry and the complexity of conceptual knowledge and reasoning skills required to develop meaningful understanding. However, understanding reaction mechanisms is valuable for students because…