One of the course learning objectives (CLO) for Organic Chemistry course is that students should achieve proficiency in solving spectroscopy problems. Despite introduction of spectroscopy (IR and NMR) in Organic Chemistry (I and II) lecture courses, students taking organic chemistry laboratory courses (in parallel or one semester later) struggle with elucidating structure of an unknown compound using spectroscopy. Many students have difficulty in integrating the results from various tests and spectroscopy data to find the unknown during their Organic Chemistry II laboratory course. The ability to use stepwise problem solving is crucial to identifying unknowns in a mixture and writing good lab reports. Use of active learning techniques using i-Clickers and problem based learning that are used to create a student centered learning environment during recitations that accompany the laboratory course will be presented. Analysis of i-Clicker, Multiple Choice (MC) and Free response (FR) exam data from Organic Chemistry II laboratory courses have been used to determine the concepts where students exhibit misconceptions and deficiencies while solving spectroscopy problems. Data have been collected from the following three sources to identify and examine common misconceptions: (1) use of an auto grader application called Gradescope for grading free response (FR) questions (2) Data from the electronic voting system (i-Clickers) (3) MC (item analysis) data from Scantrons. Analysis of all three provides valuable formative & summative assessment data that provide valuable feedback on student misconceptions & provide instructors a mechanism to identify areas to reinforce during lecture/ recitations and encourage students to seek help. Techniques to design active learning activities to alleviate these misconceptions in solving spectroscopy problems will be proposed.

Investigating student misconceptions in solving spectroscopy problems (NMR & IR) in undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory courses

2019 Spring National Meeting

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