PowerPoint lectures.

PowerPoint lectures so to give you the same advantage with this online course, I’ve added narration to those PowerPoint lectures. It will be just like sitting in the classroom with the advantage that you can do it
at a time that’s convenient for you. The course schedule has specific chapters listed on specific days, but that is simply
an indication of when you should be working on that chapter. You can go through the lecture material anytime that you
want, so if the schedule shows, for example, a new chapter starting on a Monday and then another on the following
Wednesday, feel free to go through that material at the end of the prior week or over the weekend if you want do to it
in advance.
Quizzes
There will be 15 quizzes, and the 5 lowest grades will be dropped. As I mentioned, the primary purpose of a quiz is to
tell you if you are prepared for the exams, or if you need to spend more time working on that chapter. These quizzes
are on a specific schedule and must be taken at the day/time listed.Exams
The exams are designed to match the topics covered in this course. There will be two exams on organic chemistry, two
exams on biochemically important organic compounds, and one exam on biochemical energy production and metabolic
processes. Just like the quizzes, the exams are on a specific schedule and must be taken at the day/time listed.
Covering 15 chapters in just 8 weeks makes the timing very tight, and as a result I do not include a final exam in the
Summer Semester.
Homework
This course uses an online homework system called OWL (Online Web Learning) that I’ve discussed. It works in
conjunction with the textbook, although some of the terminologies does not match exactly. Keep in mind, OWL was not
developed by Cengage for this textbook. It was developed by the Chemistry Faculty at the University of Massachusetts
(my alma mater, but don’t blame me if you don’t like OWL) and Cengage simply lined up questions with the material in
each chapter and added some of their own material. When there is a difference in terminology between the textbook
and OWL, I will point that out in my lecture material.
You don’t want to fall behind, and you should set up your OWL account no later than the first day of the semester. If
you will not be able to buy the required access code right away, you can take advantage of the free trial that is on the
Cengage website.
Homework assignments will be posted for each chapter in the book, and they will show up on your Current Assignment
list when that chapter is covered in class. Please note, each assignment has a required completion date, and that will be
just before the scheduled quiz for that chapter. I have set the number of allowed attempts for each question at the max
that is allowed (10), so there is no reason why you can’t get 100% of the homework points.
A critical part of any STEM course is working problems over and over until that concept is mastered. When you get to an
exam or quiz, you want to look at each question and say “I know how to do this”. If instead your answer is “I need to
think about this”, then you’ll find that you don’t have enough time to do it. That is especially true with the short amount
of time you will have for online testing. There are two suggestions relating to working problems over and over. First,
don’t wait until the last minute to do the OWL assignments. This is the biggest student weakness I see. Instead, plan on
submitting your answers early, and then you can go back through the questions again. OWL has a nice question bank, so
for many questions you will see a different set of questions when you go through it again. Second, the ebook includes
end-of-chapter questions with answers. Use these as another source of problems to work on.
Laboratory
This is the biggest ch