Course Website: http://webct.utep.edu/ Instructor: Luis Martínez, Ph.D. Phone: 747-5944 Office: Physical Sciences 411D Email: luisem@utep.edu Office Hours: By appointment Teaching Assistants: Ms. Nancy Martinez Email: nemartinez1@miners.utep.edu Mr. Andrew Pardo Email: apardo@miners.utep.edu Class Meetings: Scheduled: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:30 AM LA 318 (All cell phones and pagers should be turned off during class) However, this is a technology enhanced course. After the first week of classes, only workshop attendance is required. MANDATORY CLASS MEETINGS (WORKSHOP): Friday 10:30 AM LA 318 Exam Week: Wed 10:30AM LA 318 (9/19/07, 10/10/07, 11/14/07, 12/05/07) Lecture Text: Smith, Janice G. Organic Chemistry 1 st Ed.(Hardcover or Softcover); McGraw Hill: New York, 2006 ISBN 0-07-239746-2 Study Aids: Smith, Janice G. Study Guide/Solutions Manual to accompany Organic Chemistry, 1st Edition; McGraw Hill: New York, 2006 ISBN 0-07-239747-0 Molecular Models (Available in bookstore or directly from http://www.darlingmodels.com) Publisher s Course Website: http:// www.smithorganic.com/ Software: A chemical drawing software package is extremely helpful in communicating about chemistry. All majors should have their own copy of some type of chemical drawing software package. Some are free and a variety are available for purchase: IsisDraw 2.5 http://www.mdli.com/ Free-Registration Required ChemSketch 5.0 http://www.acdlabs.com/products/chem_dsn_lab/chemsketch/ Freeware ChemDraw Ltd. 7.0 (Download version) http://www.chemstore.com Student Price $20 ChemPen http://www.chempensoftware.com/ $39 Chemistry 4-D Draw Lite http://www.cheminnovation.com Student Price $49 Course website: The course website is an integral part of this course. EVERYTHING is on the website, including static lectures covering that week s material, weekly quizzes, assignments, your grades, sample exams, an online discussion page, external organic chemistry links, group chat rooms etc. It is not expected that you will attend class on Mondays and Wednesdays but you are expected to be on the website at least 2-4 hours a week. Please note: This is a work in progress and it will be under construction during the semester. Visit http://webct.utep.edu. Furthermore the publisher has a very useful site at http: http://www.smithorganic.com/ Your textbook purchase gives you a code for access the extra material and online quizzes. You should plan on logging in and taking the sample exams.
Course Grading: Final grades in the course will be based upon an absolute (percentage) grading system of 2700 points where class grades will not be curved; therefore, it possible for every student to earn an A in this course. You are not in competition for grades with your fellow students! Exams Exam 1- Friday 9/21/07 Chpts. 11-14 300 points (11%) Exam 2- Friday 10/12/07 Chpts. 15-17 300 points (11%) Exam 3- Friday 11/16/07 Chpts. 18-22 300 points (11%) Final Exam- Fri. 12/14/07 10:00am comprehensive ACS 600 points (22%)* *Note: Student exam performance often improves on the final exam. Accordingly, if your normalized final exam score is better than your lowest class exam score, your normalized score on the final will replace that low score, accounting for 33% of your grade. You can only replace 1 exam. Weekly Online Quizzes max 20 points each (.74%) Total: 20 x 15= 300 pints (11%) Weekly Group Workshops max 25 points each (.93%) Total: 25 x 15= 375 pints (13.9%) Weekly Group Reflection Exercises 25 points each (.93%) Total: 25 x 15= 375 pints (13.9%) Weekly Postings/Online Discussion/etc 5 points each max of 10 per week (.37%) Total: 10 x 15= 150 pints (5.6%) Grades will be posted on the course website after each assignment. Final grades will be assigned according to the following tentative scale: 2700-2350 points: A 1999-1650 points: C below 1294 points: F 2349-2000 points: B 1649-1295 points: D You can check on the progress of your grades by accessing the My grades section of WebCT for the course. Exams: The exams will test your ability to apply the concepts of organic chemistry to new and unfamiliar situations. Letter grades will not be assigned for individual examinations, only exam mean and range values will be determined for any individual examination. There will be no make-up exams in this course. The Final Exam is the standardized ACS Exam in Organic Chemistry. The exam covers both semester of Organic Chemistry, so you should plan on reviewing the material from the first semester. Many students choose to purchase the official ACS Exam guide in Organic Chemistry for review. The guide can be purchased from the ACS at http://www4.uwm.edu//chemexams/guides/ for $18 plus shipping. Please go over your exams after it is handed back and especially check for adding/grading errors. Appeals for a regrade are allowed for one week after exams are returned. Except for clerical errors, regrade requests will be a reevaluation of the entire exam. Suspected cases or acts of alleged scholastic dishonesty will be automatically referred to the Dean of Students Office.
Weekly Online Quizzes: There are weekly quizzes on the website on each chapter (Chapters 11-25) each worth a maximum of 20 points. Each quiz must be taken by 12:00noon Thursday of that week. You have 3 tries and only your best score will be saved. After the quiz window for a particular chapter quiz is closed you will be unable to go back and take it. Groups: Group based cooperative learning is an important aspect of this course. You will all be randomly assigned to a group of three students at the beginning of the semester. This group will be the group that you will attend with in workshop and do reflection and workshop problems. You will have your own discussion board on the website where you can discuss among the three of you, post assignments, etc. Be active in your own learning! See each other as resources to mater the material! Ask each other for help and work with each other to deepen your understanding of the material! Learning does not come from one outside source (i.e. the instructor) but from multiple avenues. You should aim at meeting at least once a week outside of class in your learning group. This is another opportunity to discuss and work on the problems at the end of the chapter. Weekly Group Workshops: Every week there will be weekly problem solving workshops. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND WORKSHOP. At the beginning of workshop, please write your group number and those in attendance at the top of your first page and write your group number on every page that you turn in. Workshop is an integral and essential component of this class. The purpose of the workshop is to distill what you have been doing all week (reading the book, doing problems at the end of the chapter, taking quizzes, reviewing the lectures, etc) and focus you on actually applying concepts to assigned problems related to the content of that week/chapter. Students are responsible for attending workshops regularly and knowing the material covered for that week. This includes not only the material covered on the posted lectures, but also all content in the textbook, any group exercises, the weekly quizzes, weekly online discussions and problem solving sessions and group reflection exercises. On workshop days (every Friday except on exam weeks) you will all receive a set of problems you are expected to do during the class period. This is your opportunity to practice using the concepts and transformations covered in the class. These problems are multi-conceptual and usually more difficult than those on the exams. THESE WORKSHOPS ARE NOT EXAMS OR QUIZZES. While getting the answer is important, it is how you attempt to answer the question that is the most important. You will be guided towards solutions for the problems by the TAs if you assistance but they are not there to provide the answer, the goal is for the 3 of you to come to some kind of solution to the problem. Whether you get the problem right or wrong (there are no penalties for wrong answers) the most beneficial aspects of the workshop is that it will: 1. Help you identify what you need to go back and study 2. Help you see what you don t understand 3. Help provide you with guidance on how to approach the problems regardless of whether you get it right on this first attempt. 4. Provide instant feedback from trained experts in Organic Chemistry
5. Help you cooperatively work with other members of your group to find the solutions to the problems. 6. Have you practice what you ve learned 7. Demonstrate to the instructor the degree of mastery and level of understanding of the material in ways that go beyond just a weekly quiz or test where the emphasis is on getting the right answer instead of the have you learned the material 8. Provide your instructor with a weekly record of your performance and how your understanding increases during the semester 9. Provide you with direct feedback on the class solution for the problem that week and comments from the instructor on good approaches, common misconceptions, and problematic strategies. At the end of the workshop, you will turn in the sheets your group used with the problems you attempted to the TAs and they will be posted on the website with my comments. You will all have access to the workshop problem solutions that your group and others attempted. Everyone in your group will earn 25 points each week if your group attendance at that workshop is 3 people, 16 points if your average group attendance Workshop is 2 people, and 8 points if your attendance is 1 person. Only those people in attendance will receive those points. If you are going to be absent, please inform your group members and have your group indicate that you are absent on that workshop. If you must miss a class, you need to make a special effort to learn what occurred during your absence. (It will however be posted on the website..) Reflection Assignments: There will be a group reflection assignment assigned every week that will cover the material for the week. The deadline will be posted and you will usually have a week or two to work on them. These exercises may be problems to solve, comments on previously solved problems, comments and reflections on the readings and/or lectures, discussions on your and/or common misconceptions or areas of misunderstanding, concept maps, listing of reactions and their applications in problems, concept identification on problems, discussion on common solutions, etc. You will be expected to work on these assignments as a group during the week as you progress through the material and post one solution for your group on the website. If there are disagreements on the solutions of the answers I encourage you to include all permutations or answers that your group has come up with. Again, the right answer is important but so is how you get there to the answer and what you disregard in answering the problem. These reflection exercises are worth 25 points each. Weekly Postings/Online Discussion/etc: The website is an active an integral component of the course. I want you not only to see the course website as just a place to get the lectures and take the quizzes but also as a common resource that you visit daily, maybe multiple times daily! In order to help this interaction with each other and the material, you will get points for posting material on the website, participating in online discussions, participating in the online help sessions, attending online office hours, taking surveys and extra quizzes, posting your solutions to various problems and sample exams, sharing your notes of the material, etc. You get 5 points per posting, with a maximum of 10 points per week for these kinds of interactions. Any other postings beyond the first 2 that are required per week will earn you 1 point (see extra credit)
Online Problem Solving Sessions: Starting in the 2 nd or 3 rd week we will have online problem solving sessions where I will be webcasting and having a simultaneous chat session on the material. The goal is to provide a means for you to interact with me and each other in a way that mimics a one-on-one meeting in my office, working on a problem that you have. The hope is that I will be webcasting audio, you will be able to participate in an online chat IM environment and all will have access to some kind of whiteboard/webcast of me working through the solution. These will be on various times and dates during the week so please check the website for when they will occur. This is perhaps the most experimental component of the class. We haven t quite figured it out and we may not get it completely right so please bear with us You can get 5 of your weekly points (with a max of 10 if you participate twice in a week) if you log in. Extra Credit: There will be a couple of opportunities for extra credit I want you to help each other and see each other as resources for understanding the material. No one here should feel that she/he is working alone. You will get 1 point per posting a follow-up or new discussion thread on the discussion board once you have meet you 10 points posting minimum. There are unlimited points per week you can earn, the only limitation is that it must be course related. Filling out surveys and additional feedback on the course will also count as 1 point once your 10 points minimum are completed. You can earn 20 extra points per quiz if you take the online quizzes for Chapter 26-28 Online Lectures: Powerpoints for all lecture material is available online. These will be available in pdf format for print out, non-audio Powerpoint format, and audio recorded versions of the lecture(s). Withdrawal Policy: The last day for you to withdraw from any course with an automatic "W" is November 2. Please note that it is the student's responsibility to officially withdraw from a course or to request that professor to drop him/her. Class Attendance: This is a technology enhanced, hybrid course. Class attendance is only required on all Fridays and the Wed of the week of Exams. Tutoring: Please seek out the members of your learning/study group for help first. If needed, individual tutoring is available through ACES and the Tutoring and Learning Center (TLC) in the Library. The ACS student affiliates also has a list of chemistry majors who tutor for a fee. Schedule: We will be covering a Chapter a week. Please see the class website for assignments, lecture material, quizzes, reflection materials, discussions, sample exams, and on-line problem solving sessions. Week Chapter Assignments 1 Mon. 27-Aug-07 Fri. 31-Aug-07 11 2 Mon. 3-Sep-07 Fri. 7-Sep-07 12 3 Mon. 10-Sep-07 Fri. 14-Sep-07 13 4 Mon. 17-Sep-07 Fri. 21-Sep-07 14 Exam 1 5 Mon. 24-Sep-07 Fri. 28-Sep-07 15 6 Mon. 1-Oct-07 Fri. 5-Oct-07 16
7 Mon. 8-Oct-07 Fri. 12-Oct-07 17 8 Mon. 15-Oct-07 Fri. 19-Oct-07 18 Exam 2 9 Mon. 22-Oct-07 Fri. 26-Oct-07 19 10 Mon. 29-Oct-07 Fri. 2-Nov-07 20 11 Mon. 5-Nov-07 Fri. 9-Nov-07 21 12 Mon. 12-Nov-07 Fri. 16-Nov-07 22 Exam 3 13 Mon. 19-Nov-07 Fri. 23-Nov-07 23 14 Mon. 26-Nov-07 Fri. 30-Nov-07 24 15 Mon. 3-Dec-07 Fri. 7-Dec-07 25 Friday 14-Dec-07 Final Exam