Chem 336 - Spring 2000
Organic Chemistry III
Dr. Carl C. Wamser

The O-Chem CD Project

The NSF grant has been submitted. Thanks for your help - your responses were thoughtful and useful.

Check here for updates if you're interested.

To the O-Chem class:

Actually I would like to ask the class for some help, but I decided to
throw in a 2-point extra credit bonus too (maybe you would have done me
the favor anyway).

I am in the process of writing an NSF grant which would assist me with
transforming my class website onto a CD. So I'm asking you as students
and representative users of such a CD - what would be really helpful to
you to have on such a CD?

A major constraint is the capacity of a CD - the current website about
half-fills a CD - so you can't wish for really huge things. Also I
would like the CD to be independent of any particular text, so I expect
to organize it in a couple of different ways by topics and by skills.
Think about features that might help you study or practice or learn or
even enjoy organic chemistry.

What gave me this brainstorm is that the class responses on the textbook
reviews were so thoughtful that I realized I needed to go right to the
experts on what students need - at this stage, that's you! You could
think back to features of the texts that you liked and imagine how they
could be done usefully in a CD. Incidentally, Dr. Lutz and I plan to
write an article for the Journal of Chemical Education about the
textbook review process and results. The decision seems to be coming
down to Carey or Solomons for next year - you can check the summary of
results and all of the comments, which are on the class WebCT site.

The grant proposal is due Tuesday, June 6 (yeah, I put things off to the
last minute like everyone else), so I need your responses by e-mail no
later than noon Monday, June 5 (just after our final exam). You'll see
your 2 points appear in the "reviews" column of the e-mail molecules
extra credit. Thanks, and good luck with the last two exams. (Think
now, what would you like to have to help with studying for those?)