[Dan]

I'm going to start doing some teaching this coming academic year. I'm giving a series of classes in organic chemistry to a small group of first year biochemistry undergrads. I've not got much experience with teaching, obviously I have professors and post-docs with lots of teaching experience to consult, but I was wondering if any of you have any general teaching tips for organic chemistry. I think that perspectives from chemists who educate and have been educated in a variety of institutions would be valuable.

I'll just roughly outline what I'm planning at the moment, which is to basically mimic the way my organic tutor taught me.

- Set work: Short notes on the topic, problem sheet (the problem sheets will be largely recycled from my first year)
- During the class: Go over problems in the set work that they struggled with, discuss general concepts with them, and if there's time spring some unseen problems on them. I will have them drawing all mechanisms on the board themselves.
- I am toying with the idea of giving them a copy of brief answers to the set problems at the end of the tutorial for their future reference. I had a physical tutor who did this, and it was quite useful.

The group(s) will be small, I will probably not take more than four in each class, so this will be a more personal tutorial rather than a large class seminar/lecture feel.

Any advice/criticism is greatly appreciated.

[Yggdrasil]

A writing up a detailed solution to the most challenging problems may be more useful than brief outlines of the solutions to all the problems.

[Custos]

I think an interesting context is valuable in teaching organic chemistry. So for example if you are teaching nitration with fuming nitric acid you could explain the nitration of benzene to give nitro benzene. Or you could use the nitration step in the synthesis path of Viagra as your example. Or if you are teaching reductive amination you could use benzaldehyde to benzylmine, or alternatively the reductive amination of piperonyl acetone with methylamine to give MDMA (ecstasy). Using real-world examples teaches the same reactions but grabs the attention better and helps students retain the information.

[Mitch]

Throwing out candy works wonders...