Organic Chemistry

What This Organic Chemistry Course Is All About

Hey there! Welcome to my Organic Chemistry Course.

This course aims to give you all the information you’ll expect to see in a typical sophomore organic chemistry course and has all the information you need to pass your exams with flying colors. I’m also planning to include some advanced topics in it to expand your knowledge or organic chemistry and challenge your understanding of the subject.

You’ll also see sections for all organic chemistry topics that you will need to successfully pass your MCAT, PCAT, DAT, and any other exam of the sort. However, as I’m not specifically targeting those exams in this course, the material may be presented in more depth and from the organic chemist’s perspective rather than a health professional.

Updates

I’m developing this course as a result of my 19 years of teaching experience working with organic chemistry students all over the world. I’m constantly adding new things to it such as topics, quizzes, practice questions, clarifications, explanations, etc. I’m also editing topics based on how they are presented within the scope of the course and your feedback as time passes. As I routinely review the textbooks as the new editions come out, I add and expand my teaching materials and implement new teaching strategies.

Your feedback is one of the most important things for me in my list of priorities. This course is first and foremost for YOU. So, I want to hear what you want added or edited, what makes sense and what doesn’t, what is helpful and what is a waste of time. Lessons and topics have a feedback form. You can use those forms at the end of lessons and topics to send me suggestions and ask me questions directly!

When the Complete Organic Chemistry Course Is Going To Be Available?

The Organic Chemistry “course” is an ongoing effort. There will never be a “finished” version that I’ll stop developing and adding new materials and reworking the old ones. My goal is to have this “course” as a constantly evolving body of knowledge and skill-development resource to help students with Organic Chemistry as the curriculum and students’ needs evolve over time. I started adding lessons and topics at the beginning of the Fall 2019 semester. In the Fall semester of 2023 I started a massive overhaul of the course content, so I’m currently re-working and editing most topics and am adding a ton of new content including members-only quizzes and practice workbooks. You can see the currently available lessons and topics below.

Are There Any Other Benefits from Being a Member?

You’ll get access to the answers to all workbooks and practice problems along with members-only practice quizzes. I also prioritize any questions and comments that members leave under the tutorials.

By becoming a member you’re also helping me to keep the lights on and keep developing new materials and add more content to the website. The more members we have in this cozy community, the more materials and tutorials I can develop!

Course Requirements

Learning organic chemistry is a journey and you will need some stuff along the way!

Pen & Paper. Lots and lots of paper!

Organic chemistry is first and foremost a practice-heavy subject. You are expected to work through a ton of practice questions and mechanisms. Just reading a textbook (or this course materials) is not going to be enough. So, order some writing paper of amazon and get some pens or pencils for you to work through those problems. To make the material more relevant and applicable, I will be teaching many topics via the quizzes, so expect to see quizzes as an integral part of the learning experience and not only a way to check your understanding and get more practice.

Organic chemistry notes will be helpful, especially if you combine my notes with your own you will be taking while working through the topics in the course.

I always encourage my students to make their own notes. The process of active writing is indispensable when you're learning organic chemistry. I do have a whole set of organic chemistry notes that you can download from this site and use as a blueprint for your own study and summary notes.

Basic understanding of the general topics such as atomic structure and bonding, equilibrium, thermodynamics, chemical kinetics, and acid-base chemistry.

While I do expect you to know at least some chemistry, I do not expect you to be an expert in every topic covered in general chemistry. So, I'll be giving you the background information and knowledge that you'll master each topic in this course. Thus, you don't actually need to have much of a chemistry background.

How You Can Check Your Understanding

Most lessons and topics have associated guided, practice, and mastery quizzes associated with them or sets of practice questions with answers available for you to check your understanding. I also make some quizzes to have previous quizzes as prerequisites to make sure you're actually learning material and building a strong foundation of organic chemistry concepts before moving to the next more complicated level of material.

As this course is in the stage of development right now, I don't have too many quizzes available, so check in regularly!

What is a guided organic chemistry quiz?

A guided quiz is an integral part of the topic mastery process. Instead of just adding information to the lesson or a topic, I present it in a form of an interactive quiz. As the old saying goes: it's better to see once than hear a hundred times. I believe the same is applicable to many topics and concepts in organic chemistry. So I present it as a series of guided questions that allow you to explore the topic via doing it and building the skill at the same time!