Capstone and Writing Intensive Courses are recognized as High-Impact educational practices by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.  This talk will show how the design of a writing intensive capstone course in organic synthesis and spectroscopy is used to teach advanced NMR techniques and develop critical thinking skills.  The course begins with the students characterizing their starting materials using spectroscopy techniques learned in sophomore organic chemistry (IR, H1-NMR, and C13-NMR).  As the complexity of the reaction product increases, the students realize in their reports that they can’t unambiguously prove the structure of their molecule with these basic NMR techniques.  In response to the ambiguities, the instructors gradually introduce DEPT, COSY, HMQC, and HMBC experiments.

Using a multi-step synthesis and progressive paper to teach NMR spectroscopy in a capstone course

255th National Meeting (2018)

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