Much of organic chemistry presupposes knowledge of chemical structure; indeed structure is the foundation upon which mechanistic theory and chemical synthesis rest.  For a number of years we have been assessing which types of exam questions � those dealing with chemical structure, reaction mechanisms, and synthetic outcomes � students find most difficult, with the goal of designing an intervention that would address this difficulty.  One such intervention was the use of personal response systems ('clickers') to create a numeric representation of organic chemistry mechanism arrows (Ruder and Straumanis, J. Chem. Educ., 2009 , 86, 1392-1396).  Post-clicker introduction, we observed a significant improvement on mechanism-based exam questions.  More dramatic, however, was the observation that a student's score on structure-based questions is tightly correlated to their overall exam score.  This finding suggests that an increased emphasis in the classroom on the structure of organic molecules may be beneficial.

Organic chemistry and the "structure-mechanism-reaction" paradigm: Structure knowledge is a powerful predictor of student performance

244th National Meeting (2012)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.