Aiming to prepare a community college students for research program at universities, an open ended research laboratory for organic chemistry –II course was developed during spring semester of 2018. The main objective of the course was to better prepare them for research programs, by introducing students to experimental design, literature review, and data analysis.  In this course, instead of doing separate experiments over the course of the semester, students had an overarching goal for the semester, and each experiment they performed was toward completing this objective. The students utilized various laboratory techniques to synthesize a compound from starting materials and analyzed its purity and characteristics using NMR, IR, and GC instruments. Students were challenged to critically analyze the physical and chemical characteristics of the synthesized compounds and compare their results to findings published in current literature. The goal of this class was to teach students how to understand and extrapolate from experimental data and perform close readings of published papers. At the end of the semester, the students were required to make research presentation, poster presentation during poster session and submit detailed final research report. The research laboratory course was very successful, students enjoyed the course throughout the semester and all the students commented the course as a very good learning experience.<br/>

Open-ended research laboratory course at community college

2019 Fall National Meeting

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