CHEM 370M: Organic Chemistry Laboratory
Catalog Course Description
This course offers an in-depth laboratory experience in organic chemistry for chemistry and biochemistry majors. Students are introduced to and become competent in modern laboratory techniques, including handling air-sensitive reagents and column chromatography. Students also get hands-on experience with advanced instrumentation.
The course is required for a major in Chemistry, Biochemistry, or Microbiology (CLS option). It is also required for a minor in Chemistry or Biochemistry.
Course Modality
CHEM 370M is our second-semester organic chemistry lab course for students majoring in chemistry and/or biochemistry. Its curriculum is designed to give students a research lab-type of experience. After meeting in-person twice in Week #1, the labcourse had to move online. The online lab then went primarily synchronous over Zoom and met twice a week for up to three hours each time. A few asynchronous activity days were interspersed throughout. The curriculum was comprised of four different multi-week experiments, and each experiment had all of the following components:
videos
virtual activities
hands-on activities to complete at home
Each experiment comprised its own learning module on Blackboard, to which relevant material was added as needed.
Student Engagement
Video Days
Videos of a student carrying out each experiment were filmed and edited using Camtasia.
On video days the class began with a live pre-lab lecture over Zoom. This was essentially the same lecture that would have been delivered in-person.
Students then got off Zoom to watch the video independently. This was done to avoid the noticeable lag and jumping when screen-sharing videos over Zoom.
All videos had TONS of on-screen questions.
The class then reconvened after a break to watch the video again and discuss on-screen questions.
Virtual Activities
These activities provided students experience using software programs that are regularly utilized in the field of organic chemistry.
The activities were mostly completed asynchronously with some lab days devoted solely to their completion. In the future, these lab days will instead be held synchronously to increase engagement.
Activity examples include:
Hands-On Activities
These activities were recreations of some aspect of the original experiment for students to carry out themselves at home.
Synchronous completion of the activities was far superior to asynchronous due to enhanced interaction among students and the instructor.
For the final experiment, students worked in pairs to carry out a completely independent at-home experiment. Students were given literature samples and had to choose the variables and troubleshoot their procedures.
Other activity examples include a small-scale flash column and a serial dilution.
How Learning Was Assessed
All assignments from the original syllabus for the in-person lab were still utilized even after going online.
Before video days, pre-lab notebook entries with calculations and a proposed procedure were due on Gradescope before the lab period. Students later submitted full notebook entries with thorough details of what took place and a summary of data analysis.
Mandated completion of the virtual and hands-on activities was seamlessly integrated within original assignments from the syllabus such as lab notebooks, experiment report write-ups, and a weekly worksheet.
All assignments were graded like any other semester and used essentially the same rubrics.
Student Feedback
Informal feedback from the course's six students was sporadically integrated into a weekly worksheet assignment.
All students said they would recommend the course to their peers.
Students did not have a preference of learning activity - either video, virtual, or hands-on.
Many students mentioned their appreciation for the videos and several were grateful for the associated notebook requirements.
A couple students expressed their dislike of the final experiment due to the significant troubleshooting involved. However, this experiment was completely carried out at-home and having students troubleshoot for themselves was the entire point of the experiment.
Challenges
Unfortunately, it is impossible for an online organic labcourse to replicate the in-person experience. By completing the course virtually, students are not able to learn how to physically carry out the common tasks that organic chemists do everyday. Therefore, students are unable to effectively acquire many lab skills:
handle and use proper glassware
safely handle chemical reagents
carry out synthetic reactions and compound isolations
collect spectral data on large instruments
The primary effort to teach these skills was through detailed videos with exhaustive on-screen questions. These videos took hours to film and many more hours to edit. Unfortunately though, a video cannot and should not replace physically carrying out laboratory tasks and the learning they enable.
Thankfully, the online lab experience does still enable students to acquire the skills to effectively carry out field-related tasks executed outside of the lab. Hopefully students exit the course stronger in these skills as compared to students who took the course in-person:
Data processing and analysis
Searching the primary literature
Scientific writing
While I have no data to support this, it is my opinion that students who complete this course online are not as prepared for subsequent in-person labcourses and are not as prepared for independent research when compared to students who complete the course in-person. Essentially, despite the effort put forth by the instructor and students, completing the course online is unavoidably detrimental to the students.
Go Virtual Course Design
Go Virtual provided several ideas for creating authentic laboratory experiences in an online environment.
The accompanying lecture course, CHEM 370 - Organic Chemistry II, was also redesigned for online delivery through Go Virtual as described in my Go Virtual Video.
Tools and Software
Zoom
Camtasia
Microsoft Office