WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIVES OF THIS ORGANIC CHEMISTRY COURSE?

Only a few of you will have chosen to register in Chem 351 because you want to get a Chemistry degree. But the majority will have done so because someone (i.e. the University Calendar) has listed this course as a necessary pre-requisite for some other course which is much closer to your main professional career interest, e.g. medicine, dentistry, science degree, graduate school etc.In view of this, we have certain general objectives regarding what we feel it is appropriate that we all accomplish during the Fall semester.
These accomplishments fall into 5 general categories:

• Information acquisition (the organic chemistry itself)
• Laboratory skill acquisition (tactile skills as well as technical skills)
• Intellectual skill development (including problem solving, scientific thinking, studying, research etc.)
• Development of a scientific curiosity (thinking about how and why things happen in the way that they do)
• Team / cooperative skill development

The aims of Chem 351 and 353 are to give you a good, solid grounding in the basics of organic chemistry with a view to future application in other courses (e.g. biochemistry) and as a strong preparation for examinations such as the MCAT. We want you to be able to apply the knowledge in the future. Chem 351 is only the first half of this journey.  As such the content of the course reflects these targets and the time we have available to do it. 

Much of the pre-requisite status of organic chemistry derives from the acquisition of information that is relevant to higher courses in chemistry itself or cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, medical science, geochemistry, toxicology and so on. Organic molecules have the same structure and behaviour, whatever the context in which you are studying them.

Here are a couple of quotes that summarises the root cause of the problems students encounter with organic chemistry....
Consider them and how they relate to your study techniques and habits, and expectations for a course....

We are interested in this type of learning and it will serve you well for this course and way beyond, for the following reasons...

"What has been called "rote" learning or "conditioned-response" learning or "remembering-it-long-enough-to-pass-the-exam" learning is not learning at all in the meaning of our definition. This type of rigid-response conditioning is not desirable or useful in a human sense. The human is capable under certain severe pressures of doing a great deal of this kind of rote absorption but it is not really useful to anyone."

from Harvey Jackins, The Human Situation, Rational Island Publishers, Seattle, 1991.

How do these statements relate to Chem 351 ?

In the exercises that you are required to complete during the semester, be it in the laboratory, the CAL assessments, or in the mid-term and final examinations, many of the questions will involve applying the course materials to new situations that you have not specifically encountered before. This means that there is little benefit to be gained from memorising the answers to specific questions, but that you should be trying to learn how to apply the tools of organic chemistry to solve problems. This requires that you develop the skills associated with learning how to solve problems, as an example, from Chem 351: how to solve spectroscopy problems.
In organic chemistry, the temptation is to try to memorise reactions. This is very boring and not all that useful at the end of the day. It is much more valuable to try to recognise the type of reaction involved (e.g. nucleophilic substitution) and then think about what factors control that type of reaction and apply this to the question you are being asked. However, in order to be able to achieve this, it will require that you spend time working through examples and trying to recognise the similarities and differences between the various processes, before the "big picture" emerges that negates the need to memorise all the reactions.

See also our expectations (below) and some reasons why students under perform.

First, let's review our expectations of what a student should be able to do at the start of the course based on the prerequisites (General Chemistry such as Chem 201/203 or 211/213). 

A student is expected to have a good, working understanding of (this means the ability to use and apply) general chemical principles including (but not limited to):

• aspects of structure and bonding, especially Lewis structures, formal charges, hybridisation.
  
• general principles of acids and bases including definitions, pKa, structure - reactivity trends.
  
• general principles of resonance.
• general principles of oxidation and reduction including balancing redox equations.
  
• simple thermodynamics and kinetics : free energy, enthalpy, entropy, activation energy, equilibria and rates of reaction.
  
• anything to do with organic chemistry (e.g. nomenclature),

Now what about by the end of the CHEM 351 ?
Note that the amount of work required to meet these expectations is different for each student, and it is upto each individual to determine just what it will take for them to reach our expectations.

1. Given the structural formula or name of any of a large assortment of organic compounds, account for
(a) the complete detailed three dimensional structure of the molecule
(b) the relationship between starting materials, reagents and products arising from with a variety of reactions
(c) the way in which bonds are made and broken to bring about product formation in these reactions (that is, the reaction mechanism)
(d) the effect of structural variations on reactivity (rate or position of equilibrium) in these reactions.

2. Understand the language and diagrammatic notation of organic chemistry and be able to communicate and apply this knowledge.

3. Deduce the structural formula of an unknown organic compound from spectroscopic or chemical data.

4. Predict very roughly the physical properties of an organic compound given its structural formula.

5. Demonstrate some knowledge of the sources of and uses for organic compounds in the practical world.

6. Design reactions paths by which a great variety of moderately complex organic compounds could be prepared from simple, readily available compounds.

7. Be able to account for how reactions occur at the molecular level.

Laboratory Skills

The laboratory course is designed to offer you a variety of experiences - some are practice in techniques, others are more illustrative of concepts we will discuss in lectures, while others offer you the opportunity to work with some of the new instrumental techniques. The lab portion will be challenging because your experience in labs up to this point has not been so extensive. Many of you are planning a career as a practising lab scientist, and so I challenge you to seize this opportunity to develop manual manipulative skills. Some students find it difficult to complete experiments in the allowed time. The reasons for this are lack of confidence (which we will try to improve) and poor preparation (make sure you read the laboratory manual before each experiment).

Team / Cooperative Skills

In the market place more and more emphasis is being placed on the skills appropriate to the successful completion of team-based projects. This has not always been the main modus operandi in universities, where individual achievement is often recognised and rewarded. You will still be required to complete many of the exercises in this course by yourself. However certain course components have been designed that require a team effort for their successful completion.

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