Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants
Working memory and retrosynthesis in undergraduate organic chemistry: Does your brain work in reverse?
Department
Chemistry
College
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Date Range
2010-2011
Abstract
For many undergraduate organic chemistry courses, the design of reasonable syntheses is a capstone activity that ostensibly reflects students' knowledge of organic reactions. However, students with similar course grades show a wide range of aptitude for organic synthesis despite the common pedagogical practice of teaching retrosynthetic analysis as a problem-solving method. A recent study investigated the problem-solving methods of 22 "A-level" undergraduate students enrolled in the second semester of a full-year sequence in organic chemistry at a major research university. The findings suggest that working memory capacity is correlated with students' approaches to solving organic synthesis problems. Only students with the largest working memory capacities consistently applied retrosynthetic techniques when solving synthesis problems.
Conference Name
21st Biennial Conference on Chemical Education
Conference Location
University of North Texas, Denton, TX
ScholarWorks Citation
Barrows, Nathan and Bond Robinson, Janet, "Working memory and retrosynthesis in undergraduate organic chemistry: Does your brain work in reverse?" (2010). Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants. 65.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/fsdg/65
