Teaching Introductory Organic Chemistry: 'Blooming' beyond a Simple Taxonomy

Abstract

Undergraduate students often experience fear and trepidation when studying introductory organic chemistry: the majority of these students use a memorization approach to the material, sacrificing understanding. This paper describes one way the problem can be resolved. The cognitive working level we emphasize in our teaching practice involves making the necessary connections between the general chemistry principles that students have learned (or at least have been exposed to in their senior high school years and have revisited again in their university freshman year) and the many reactions and mechanisms they will encounter in organic chemistry. Educating students early in the course about the various levels of the cognitive process and the necessary working level of cognition for success in organic chemistry teaches connections between the general chemistry principles and reaction mechanisms. This empowers students to approach the subject from a perspective of understanding rather than memorization, and replaces fear and trepidation with confidence. In addition, this can help narrow the gap between what instructors expect from their students and what their students think is sufficient to master the course content.

Student Interpretations of Phylogenetic Trees in an Introductory Biology Course

“…Another 4–13% of responses provided incorrect answers with mixed reasoning, which also indicates some degree of memorization without understanding. Shallow learning strategies are very common in the sciences ( Elby, 1999 ; Pungente and Badger, 2003 ; Tomanek and Montplaisir, 2004 ) and can be attributed at least in part to assessment practices ( Momsen et al , 2010 , 2013 ) and frequency, type, and student use of feedback ( Hattie and Timperley, 2007 ).…”

Student Perceptions of Online Homework Use for Formative Assessment of Learning in Organic Chemistry

“…2 Further, Ferguson and Bodner stress the need for “process-oriented” skills in organic chemistry relative to the “product-oriented” skills of general chemistry, 3 perhaps due to organic chemistry involving learning at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. 4 As such, students who more fully understand the underlying organic chemistry concepts, 5,6 steadily building up their conceptual knowledge base throughout the semester, 7 enabling them to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate, are rewarded on organic chemistry course assessments. Moreover,

an understanding of external representations (symbolic visualizations) used in chemistry, 8

competence in communicating chemistry knowledge using external representations, 8

an ability to formulate internal representations (mental models), 8

the ability to interconvert readily from one representation to another (e.g., line structure to condensed structure, internal to external, two-dimensional to three-dimensional, verbal/linguistic to symbolic), 8–10

facility in representational processing (e.g., use of curved arrows to document mechanisms), 11,12 as well as,

facility in spatial reasoning skills 13 (e.g., mental rotations, three-dimensional visualization from two-dimensional representation)

also affect learning of organic chemistry.…”

Using a knowledge learning framework to predict errors in database design

“…In summary, like other disciplines that use RBT [33,[46][47][48], data modeling research can use the MEF to measure learner expertise levels, classify error types, predict mistakes, and provide tailored feedback for training to raise expertise levels. This type of feedback has been shown to be effective for instructors because the recipient is aware of the link between the action and the advice [49].…”