Collaborative Research: Organic Chemistry, Life, the Universe and Everything (OCLUE)

有机化学是一门广泛的学生必修的课程，他们中的大多数人不打算继续学习这门学科，也可能没有意识到它与他们的目标的相关性。这个EHR: IUSE项目将专注于将传统的两门课程的内容提炼成一套核心思想，这是理解有机化学的核心。新课程还将强调有机化学与其他学科之间的相关联系。化学和生物化学教师认为，在化学课程的前两年，有必要改进教学和学习，将根据他们的意见，编写各种学习材料，包括教科书、在线教程、视频、主动学习和课堂活动。这项工作的目标是设计一个连贯的教学材料和活动序列，为学生提供更深入学习有机化学的机会。新课程将以刘易斯酸碱化学为基础，介绍成功完成课程所必需的基本技能（通过机械顺序对反应进行分类，理解结构-功能关系，研究键合模型等）。此外，有机化学教师将能够指导学生在实践背景下应用概念，这些概念通常对所有科学家都很有用，如建模、论证、解释和解决问题。这种方法也应该更有效地吸引其他学科的学生，如化学工程、心理学和生物学。形成性评估将依赖于基于设计的研究方法，其中将发生持续的评估循环和对课程的反馈。将开发评估工具来衡量学生在与上述科学实践相关的一系列绩效期望中的学习成果。这些工具将在项目过程中进行试点测试和改进。此外，还将对传统课程的一组学生进行评估，根据先前的成绩、性别、ACT/SAT、MCA-i和其他相关数据与测试组进行匹配。然后将比较两组的评估结果。这项工作的初步结果将通过在化学教育会议（如美国化学会化学教育两年期会议）上的演讲和讲习班来传播。

Organic chemistry is a course that is required for a wide range of students, most of whom are not intending to pursue the subject any further and may not appreciate its relevance to their goals. This EHR: IUSE project will focus on distilling the content in the traditional two-course sequence down to a set of core ideas, central to the understanding of organic chemistry. The new courses will also highlight relevant interconnections between organic chemistry and other disciplines. A variety of learning materials including a textbook, online tutorials, videos, and active-learning, in-class activities will be created with input from chemistry and biochemistry faculty who appreciate the necessity for improving teaching and learning in the first two years of the chemistry curriculum.The objective of this work is to design a coherent sequence of instructional materials and activities that will provide students with the opportunity to learn organic chemistry more deeply. The new curriculum will use Lewis acid-base chemistry as the scaffold to introduce the fundamental skills necessary to be successful in the course (classification of reactions by mechanistic sequence, understanding structure-function relationships, investigating models of bonding, etc.). Moreover, organic chemistry faculty will be enabled to guide students as they apply concepts in the context of practices that are generally useful to all scientists such as modeling, argumentation, explanation, and problem solving. This approach should also more effectively engage students from other disciplines such as chemical engineering, psychology, and biology. Formative evaluation will rely on a design-based research approach wherein a continuous cycle of assessment and feedback into the curriculum will occur. Assessment tools will be developed to measure student learning gains in a series of performance expectations related to the scientific practices mentioned above. These tools will be pilot tested and refined during the course of the project. Moreover, assessment will also be done for a cohort of students in the traditional courses, matched to the test group based on prior achievement, gender, ACT/SAT, MCA-i, and other relevant data. The results of assessments from both groups will then be compared. The preliminary results of the work will be disseminated through presentations and workshops at chemical education meetings such as the American Chemical Society Biennial Conference on Chemical Education.