WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIVES OF THIS ORGANIC CHEMISTRY COURSE?

The majority of Chem 353 students are registered in the course 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. medicince, 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 Winter semester.
These accomplishments fall into 5 general categories:
        Information acquisition
        Laboratory skill acquisition
        Intellectual skill development (including problem solving)
        Team/cooperative skill development
        Development of a scientific curiosity

The aim of Chem 353 is to build on Chem 351 to provide a good, solid grounding in the basics of organic chemistry with a view to 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 353 is the second 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 353?

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 Chem 353 : how to design efficient syntheses of simple organic compounds.

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 and some reasons why students underperform.

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