Inverting Organic and Biochemistry: A Curriculum Tweak That Benefits All

Abstract

The need to educate future chemists does not mean that chemistry teachers should pay no attention to the needs and interests of biology students…It is important for chemistry teachers to take into account the interest of all their students, and not pretend that they are all chemistry majors. Despite a number of options available, including beginning organic chemistry fall semester freshman year (2, 3), spring semester freshman year (4), and several more innovative integrated curricula such as those in operation at Illinois Wesleyan and Oberlin, it remains true that the vast majority of U.S. colleges and universities still teach chemistry in a more-or-less standard approach: one year of general chemistry, one year of organic chemistry, and one year of physical chemistry, in that order. Most institutions also require analytical, inorganic, and/or instrumentation courses, and recently, due to new requirements from the ACS Committee on Professional Training (5), a biochemistry course, of probably one-semester in the junior year. On top of this there are usually electives and sometimes other requirements.In this commentary I want to focus on the two courses, organic (full year) and biochemistry. A typical organic chemistry course, as taught from almost any of the many standard textbooks, consists of a brief review of the relevant general chemistry, a discussion of organic structure, and a long list of functional group properties and transformations. These days, instead of memorizing a list of reactions, students are encouraged to understand reactions through mechanisms, using arrow pushing and kinetic and thermodynamic concepts. In addition, students learn to combine reactions in multistep syntheses, and the standard forms of structure identification are discussed. Typically the list of reactions discussed is thorough, since in most departments this is the last organic chemistry course that students are required to take, and therefore they try to cover all reactions that are important for chemists to know. I am guessing, but many conversations have confirmed my guess that the cost of this thoroughness is that most courses run out of time before finishing the text, thus leaving out coverage of the final several chapters, including significant discussion of the important biomolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates. Of course these topics are covered quite well in the follow-up biochemistry course. Thus all important aspects of organic and biochemistry are covered when both courses are taken.

Personnel Psychology: Performance Evaluation and Pay for Performance

“…The rapid growth of "risky" pay, in combination with the dramatic fluctuations in stock value and profits in recent years, suggests that this may be an individual difference variable of considerable importance. More generally, the increased risk of job loss at all employment levels (Reingold 2004) may also make risk an important topic in future investigations of PE, although it has not been so to date. Psychologists would seem well suited to take on this challenge.…”

Measuring student performance in general organic chemistry

“…Examples include curriculum and course content development (Reingold, 2004;Grove et al, 2008;Lopez et al, 2011;Flynn and Biggs, 2012;Raker and Towns, 2012), incorporation of active learning strategies (Paulson, 1999;Muthyala and Wei, 2013), implementation of peer-led team learning (Gosser and Roth, 1998;Tien et al, 2002), the use of in-class technology (Derting and Cox, 2008;Flynn, 2011;Ryan, 2013) and electronic and online homework systems (Dori, 1995;Penn et al, 2000;Chamala et al, 2006;Chen and Baldi, 2008;Chen et al, 2010;Parker and Loudon, 2013).…”

What Are They Thinking? Automated Analysis of Student Writing about Acid–Base Chemistry in Introductory Biology

“…This call for integrating physical sciences and mathematics with biology is echoed by college instructors ( Bialek and Botstein, 2004 ). Although there have been efforts at the undergraduate level to integrate chemistry and biology during laboratory exercises and attempts at combining chemistry and biology courses and/or curricula ( Wolfson et al , 1998 ; Barreto, 2000 ; Schwartz and Serie, 2001 ; Reingold, 2004 ; Wenzel, 2006 ; Abdella et al , 2011 ), there have been few studies of students’ ability to transfer knowledge and/or skills between these specific disciplines. However, there are some reports that indicate potential problems students have with concepts such as free energy, oxidation–reduction, and equilibrium ( Schwartz and Serie, 2001 ).…”