Students’ & Faculty Members’ Attitudes Towards Learning and Teaching Reaction Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry

Abstract

Organic Chemistry has typically been identified as a difficult course for many undergraduate students and has a notoriously high failure rate. The part of the subject dealing with reaction mechanisms is considered the most challenging area, and several papers have been published on how to facilitate students’ understanding of mechanisms. During Fall 2022 and Spring 2023, we surveyed 127 students, and interviewed 3 students and 5 faculty members about their opinions towards teaching and learning Organic Chemistry, especially reaction mechanisms. The students’ attitudes were surveyed through the Attitude towards the Subject of Chemistry Inventory (ASCIv2), and its relationship with grades was also investigated. The results show that most students have negative attitudes towards Organic Chemistry; however, those with more positive attitudes performed better in the course. Students mostly viewed Organic Chemistry as a course required for their major/degree or professional exams without knowing the actual applications of the subject in their respective fields. Professors were able to relate organic chemistry to other fields besides chemistry (Health Science) but found it difficult to give examples of where else reaction mechanisms would be used outside of Organic Chemistry. A suggestion for a change of Organic Chemistry course is discussed in the conclusion of this study.

1. Introduction

Organic Chemistry has typically been identified as a difficult course for many undergraduate students and has a notoriously high failure rate (Barr et al., 2010; Dwyer & Childs, 2017; Paulson, 1999; Szu et al., 2011). Many STEM fields, besides Chemistry, require Organic Chemistry as a prerequisite, including Health Sciences such as Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Nursing. Since this is a difficult course, it has been regarded as one of the barriers preventing students from accomplishing their goals, as many fail the course and some even lose interest in pursuing what they originally planned (Gupta & Hartwell, 2019; Zhang et al., 2020). The question of exploring why this course is so hard for most students has long been a research interest for Chemical Education community researchers. As studies found, multiple factors affect students’ perceptions of the course, such as the content of the course, the approach students take to tackle the course’s content, instructional approaches, etc. Collini et al. (2024) explored students’ attitudes before and after the course and analyzed the themes that shaped students’ attitudes (Collini et al., 2024). They found that students tend to link Organic Chemistry with difficulties, memorization, and the large volume of material students had to work on. “Educators” also appears consistently as a theme across their data, affecting the students both positively and negatively. Vilia et al. studied the relationship between attitudes and reasoning abilities and found a positive correlation between the two (Vilia et al., 2017). Dwyer & Childs (2017) investigated perspectives through evaluations of content difficulties from students and teachers. There were agreements about what topics were easy or hard, but the reasons given by the teachers and students are vastly different (Dwyer & Childs, 2017). Other studies found that students don’t approach Organic Chemistry as an abstract subject but utilize a more rote memorization approach (Anzovino & Bretz, 2015; Henderleiter et al., 2001; Hermanns & Kunold, 2022). These articles also pointed out that students who studied Organic Chemistry by rote memorization of the details tended to perform worse than those who understood the materials and applied them as abstract concepts. To battle these problems, instructors and educators have taken different approaches to enhance students’ performance in Organic Chemistry. Many of these approaches resulted in better student perceptions, better interest in the course, and higher grades. Some examples include utilizing virtual reality for immersive learning (Dunnagan et al., 2020; Edwards et al., 2019), active learning (Crimmins & Midkiff, 2017), metacognition enhancement (Blackford et al., 2023; Blackie et al., 2023), etc. A study in 2022 found that a little over half of Pre-Medicine students do not view Organic Chemistry as an important prerequisite for their intended career path (Dixson et al., 2022). Summarizing all the ideas together, these above-mentioned studies do agree with the premise that students’ perceptions in Organic Chemistry play a vital role in their outcomes for the course.

It is important to note that among students taking Organic Chemistry, there are a lot of students who are not Chemistry majors. There is also a widely accepted notion that teaching the subject to non-Chemistry majors is harder compared to Chemistry majors (Henary et al., 2015; Zotos et al., 2021; Yearty & Morrison, 2019). Nevertheless, studies have been performed to facilitate students’ learning and performance in Organic Chemistry, whether for Chemistry or non-Chemistry majors. In studies where the focus of improvement is on the subjects’ content, reaction mechanisms, a major content area of the course, is considered the most challenging (Anzovino & Bretz, 2015; Hermanns & Kunold, 2022; Zotos et al., 2021; Schweiker, 2020). Recent studies mainly focused on trying to help students understand “reaction mechanisms” better (Anzovino & Bretz, 2015; Hermanns & Kunold, 2022; Zotos et al., 2021), but very few have investigated the importance of these “reaction mechanisms” topics to students outside of the Chemistry major. A commentary on Premedical curriculum suggests that students taking second-semester Organic Chemistry can choose between two options: One focuses on bioorganic (and is encouraged for medical students) and the other focuses more on mechanisms and physical organic chemistry (Shulman, 2013). This approach has been taken by Oberlin College for more than 30 years, and it promptly suggests that an advanced understanding of reaction mechanisms is not necessary for medical students. Another study of Organic Chemistry in Medical Education found that the course helps improve students’ critical thinking and provides basic understanding for future courses in the medical field, but the article did not touch on reaction mechanisms (Dixson et al., 2022). It is undeniable that Organic Chemistry helps a lot for medical students, as research has proven (Barr et al., 2010; Higgins & Reed, 2007; Shulman, 2013), but there is no study on the same question for reaction mechanisms. Hence, there exists a need to explore this gap in teaching Organic Chemistry into the question of whether non-Chemistry students, especially premedical students, should study every bit of reaction mechanisms, their perceptions of Organic Chemistry, and how it affects their performance.

Students’ attitudes and perceptions in Organic Chemistry and in General Chemistry courses had been evaluated through different instruments, mostly Likert-scale surveys. Attitude towards the Subject of Chemistry Inventory (ASCI) is a typical Likert-scale instrument that measures different aspects of how students feel about Chemistry, including difficulty (easy–hard), complexity (simple–complicated), challenging nature, clarity, etc. This instrument has been validated and used in many studies in the literature (Chang & Menke, 2022; Xu et al., 2015; Xu & Lewis, 2011). There are currently three versions of this instrument. The first version (ASCIv1) includes 20 items with 5 factors, while the second version (ASCIv2) includes only 8 items corresponding to 2 factors. Both versions have been validated, tested for reliability, and are supposed to convey similar information. Thus, ASCIv2 is an easier scale to administer as it has fewer questions, takes little time, and is more convenient than the first version (Xu & Lewis, 2011). The third version (ASCIv3), however, is not a fully reworked version but a version with a different item order from ASCIv2. In ASCIv2, Item 2 is Complicated–Simple, and Item 8 is Chaotic–Organized. In ASCIv3, Items 2 and 8 switch places. This change was made to avoid potentially inflated measurement errors when three items that belong to a single factor are shown in a row (Mooring et al., 2016; Rocabado et al., 2019). However, such errors have not been investigated thoroughly in these articles. A few other instruments to measure students’ attitudes towards Chemistry have been developed, such as the Attitudes Toward Chemistry Lessons Scale (ATCLS) (Cheung, 2009) and Meaningful Learning in the Laboratory (MLLI) (Galloway & Bretz, 2015). The ATLCS is a modification of the previous attitude-measuring scale. It consists of 12 items of a 7-point Likert scale, with 4 dimensions for interest in chemistry: theory lessons, lab work, beliefs about school Chemistry, and behavioral tendencies to learn Chemistry. However, the scale was created for high school students and was only used and validated in Hong Kong and China instead of the United States of America. The MLLI scale measures students’ cognitive and affective perceptions about their learning experiences in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory with 31-question pre- and post-surveys. This instrument focuses more on the meaningful learning outcomes from students instead of their attitudes or perceptions during laboratory sessions. However, these scales do not appear to be used as frequently in studies as the ASCIv2 scale. Other researchers prefer asking students to comment about their attitudes or perceptions without sending out Likert-scale surveys (Dunnagan et al., 2020; Dwyer & Childs, 2017; Edwards et al., 2019). In various studies, attitudes towards Chemistry (measured by ASCIv2) are often linked to other aspects of learning. Nennig et al. measured students’ attitudes in a lecture-only Inorganic Chemistry course and compared them between online and in-person courses. The research found that no matter how the course was offered, online or in person, students have comparable intellectual accessibility and emotional satisfaction towards Chemistry (Nennig et al., 2020). Another study by Kahveci, conducted on high school students, formulated that attitudes and performances in Chemistry are positively related (Kahveci, 2015). Among studies using the ASCIv2, there is one study that proved that students’ attitudes and achievement are not correlated (Damo & Prudente, 2019) or are weakly correlated (Brown et al., 2015). Nonetheless, this study prefers working with the ASCIv2 because it brings about the information we need, because it has been validated, and because of its common use in recent literature.

While the existing research provides valuable insights into the perspectives and experiences of organic chemistry students, it has been pointed out that the content of reaction mechanisms for non-Chemistry majors and the students’ perceptions of this area haven’t been looked at in the literature. This study aims to investigate students’ and instructors’ attitude towards Organic Chemistry (particularly reaction mechanisms), and qualitatively assess the necessity of such content for non-Chemistry students. In detail, we seek to answer the following research questions:

(1)

What are students’ attitudes about studying Organic Chemistry reaction mechanisms and the subject’s importance for non-Chemistry major students?

(2)

What are students’ perceptions of the role that learning Organic Chemistry plays in their major and future career?

(3)

What are instructors’ perceptions towards teaching and learning Organic Chemistry mechanisms?

The completion of this project will provide a view from both learners and teachers about Organic Chemistry courses and how “reaction mechanisms” relate to the students not majoring in Chemistry. From that base, depending on the results, teachers or curriculum organizers may change their work or methods accordingly.

2. Materials and Methods

To understand students’ attitudes, surveys were sent to students in West Virginia University (WVU) throughout 2 semesters, Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. The questions on the survey included demographic information, students’ attitudes using ASCIv2 instrument (Xu & Lewis, 2011), Likert-scale questions on their attitude towards reaction mechanisms, some short-answer questions, and a question about whether the student would be interested in a follow-up interview. In Fall 2022, the survey was incorporated as an email sent from the CHEM233 (Organic Chemistry 1) course instructors to the students, with no form of compensation. In Spring 2023, the survey was distributed through the MIX Survey Tuesday channel of WVU (a channel that supports survey research by automatically sending surveys requested by researchers to all WVU students every Tuesday), also with no form of compensation.

Table 1. Responses received from surveys sent in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023.

Semester	Fall 2022	Spring 2023
Responses with at least one Organic Chemistry course(s) taken/ongoing	73	54
Responses with no Organic Chemistry courses taken/ongoing	0	17
Total responses	73	71

shows the number of responses received:

The data were then divided into quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data were analyzed with SPSS (version 27), using ANOVA and t-tests with a significant level of 0.05 (Wainer & Robinson, 2003). The students were grouped in many ways: by their demographic data, their current performance in Organic Chemistry, and whether they had taken an Organic Chemistry course or not. Three students expressed interest in a follow-up interview and were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview for further exploration of their survey responses. The interview data were then combined with the quantitative data from the survey, analyzed using thematic coding (identifying common themes between interview scripts), and searched for any notable information.

Regarding instructors, emails were sent to instructors to invite them to a semi-structured interview. Faculty members at the Department of Chemistry who have taught Organic Chemistry and in the School of Pharmacy were selected, as these are professionals who have had academic experience with Organic Chemistry. Invitations were sent to more than 30 faculty members, but only 5 instructors responded and agreed to participate. The interview included questions on how the faculty members conduct their teaching in Organic Chemistry, what they think about students non-Chemistry majors learning the mechanisms, and their perceptions of whether these students need the mechanisms for their future classes and careers. The interview was then transcribed and analyzed to find information that provides answers to the research questions.

A summary of the responses from the survey in Fall 2022 is listed in

Table 2. Demographic data of Fall 2022 survey responses.

	Response	Number of Respondents	Percent
Gender	Female	30	41.1%
	Male	23	31.5%
	Prefer not to say/Unanswered	20	27.4%
	Total	73	100%
Race	Asian	1	1.4%
	Middle East/North Africa (MENA)	1	1.4%
	White	50	68.5%
	Two or more races	2	2.7%
	Unanswered	19	27.4%
	Total	73	100%

.

The Spring 2023 survey responses had 22 (31.0%) entries that did not have demographic questions answered. A summary of the responses from the survey in Spring 2023 is listed in

Table 3. Demographic data of Spring 2023 survey responses.

	Response	Number of Respondents	Percent
Gender	Female	29	53.7%
	Male	8	14.8%
	Non-binary	2	3.7%
	Prefer not to say/Unanswered	15	27.8%
	Total	54	100%
Race	Asian	4	7.4%
	Black or African American	0	0%
	Hispanic	3	5.6%
	Middle East/North Africa (MENA)	1	1.9%
	White	30	55.6%
	Two or more races	1	1.9%
	Unanswered	15	27.8%
	Total	54	100%

.

The demographic data of the Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 survey responses do not match WVU’s demographic data, and as such, the responses are not representative. The sample size of each survey when divided into smaller groups is not sufficient (n < 30) to get a reliable result for statistical tests, so the data needs to be combined. Considering this and the fact that this study focused on students who have experiences with undergraduate Organic Chemistry, analyses were performed on each group and the combined group of Fall 2022 data (n = 73) with Spring 2023 data (n = 54).

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. What Are Students’ Attitudes About Studying Organic Chemistry Reaction Mechanisms and Its Importance for Non-Chemistry-Major Students?

A summary of descriptive statistics of responses for Likert scale questions (importance of Organic Chemistry in life, importance of Organic Chemistry in your major, importance of Organic Chemistry mechanisms, and seven scales of attitudes using ASCIv2) is presented in

Table 4. Descriptive statistics of responses for Likert scale questions.

Question	Scale	Fall 2022		Spring 2023		Combined Data
		Mean	SD 1	Mean	SD 1	Mean	SD 1
Importance of Organic Chemistry in life	1–5	3.04	1.207	2.59	1.055	2.85	1.162
Importance of Organic Chemistry in major	1–5	3.51	1.120	3.11	1.192	3.34	1.163
Importance of Organic Chemistry mechanism	1–5	2.99	1.124	2.59	1.325	2.82	1.224
ASCIv2: Easy–Hard	1–7	5.21	1.213	5.43	1.207	5.3	1.112
ASCIv2: Simple–Complicated	1–7	4.97	1.536	5.37	1.186	5.14	1.407
ASCIv2: Clear–Confusing	1–7	4.47	1.684	4.46	1.610	4.46	1.647
ASCIv2: Comfortable–Not comfortable	1–7	4.10	1.757	4.17	1.891	4.13	1.808
ASCIv2: Satisfying–Frustrating	1–7	3.93	2.016	3.78	2.080	3.87	2.037
ASCIv2: Not challenging–Challenging	1–7	5.56	1.354	5.96	1.027	5.73	1.237
ASCIv2: Pleasant–Unpleasant	1–7	4.16	1.667	4.22	1.890	4.19	1.758
ASCIv2: Organized–Chaotic	1–7	3.22	1.592	3.26	1.925	3.24	1.734

¹ Standard deviation.

.

The Cronbach’s alpha values for the importance of Organic Chemistry during Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 are 0.726 and 0.716, respectively. The Cronbach’s alpha values for the ASCIv2 questions are 0.835 for Fall 2022 and 0.896 for of Spring 2023. Considering these values, the score reliability is acceptable. Regarding the importance of Organic Chemistry, the results show that students tend to think of Organic Chemistry in real life and reaction mechanisms as of below average importance. Comparison between the Fall 2022 data and the Spring 2023 data shows that the Fall 2022 students think of Organic Chemistry as more important in life than the Spring 2023 students. However, when it comes to the importance of Organic Chemistry in their major, the results show a higher value (3.51 for Fall 2022, 3.11 for Spring 2023, and 3.34 in the combined data) than other questions of importance of Organic Chemistry. This suggests that students taking this course think of Organic Chemistry as just slightly more important to their major than in other aspects of their lives. The statistics of significant results are shown in

Table 5. Statistics of t-test comparing Likert scale questions between data set.

Variable	Data Set	n	M1 − M2	df	t	p	Cohen’s d
Importance of Organic Chemistry in life	Fall 2022	73	0.449	125	2.182	0.031	0.392
	Spring 2023	54
ASCIv2: Not challenging–Challenging	Fall 2022	73	1.120	3.11	1.192	3.34	1.163
	Spring 2023	54

and

Table 6. Statistics of t-test comparing different perception of importance of OC within data set.

Data Set	Variable	n	M1 − M2	df	t	p
Fall 2022	Importance of OC * in major	73	0.466	72	3.006	0.004
	Importance of OC * in life
	Importance of OC * in major	73	0.521	72	5.325	<0.001
	Importance of OC * mechanisms
Spring 2023	Importance of OC * in major	54	0.519	53	2.604	0.012
	Importance of OC * in life
	Importance of OC * in major	54	0.519	53	5.109	<0.001
	Importance of OC * mechanisms
Combined data	Importance of OC * in major	127	0.488	126	3.989	<0.001
	Importance of OC * in life
	Importance of OC * in major	127	0.520	126	7.364	<0.001
	Importance of OC * mechanisms

* OC = Organic Chemistry.

.

Students’ attitudes towards Organic Chemistry were mostly negative, as seen by the fact that most mean values (Table 4) are higher than 4, which is the neutral average for 7-point Likert scale questions. There was no answer that regarded Organic Chemistry as extremely easy (1 on the Easy–Hard scale) or not challenging (1 on the Not challenging–Challenging scale). The results in all three data groups suggest that most students think of Organic Chemistry as hard, complicated, and challenging. When compared between semesters, the Fall 2022 students tend to think Organic Chemistry is less challenging than the Spring 2023 students. The statistics of significant results are shown in Table 5.

Grouping students by gender or race did not give any significant results. When grouped by performances on Organic Chemistry 1, Fall 2022 students (results shown in

Table 7. Statistics of t-test comparing students grouped by performances within Fall 2022 dataset.

Variable	OC * 1 Grade	n	M1 − M2	df	t	p	Cohen’s d
Importance of Organic Chemistry in major	90% and above	26	0.678	43	2.125	0.039	0.641
	70–79%	19
	80–89%	22	0.766	39	2.296	0.027	0.719
	70–79%	19
ASCIv2: Easy–Hard	90% and above	26	−1.073	43	−3.469	0.001	−1.047
	70–79%	19
ASCIv2: Comfortable–Not comfortable	90% and above	26	−1.063	43	−2.206	0.033	−0.666
	70–79%	19
	80–89%	22	−1.311	39	−2.448	0.019	−0.767
	70–79%	19
ASCIv2: Satisfying–Frustrating	90% and above	26	−1.822	43	−3.425	0.001	−1.034
	70–79%	19
	80–89%	22	−1.234	39	−2.141	0.039	−0.670
	70–79%	19

* OC = Organic Chemistry.

) with higher grades (as self-reported by respondents in groups of 10% range) seem to think of Organic Chemistry as more important than lower-achieving students. Students with better performances also had more positive attitudes: They tended to view Organic Chemistry as easier, more comfortable, and more satisfying. The combined dataset gives a more complicated result (

Table 8. Statistics of t-test comparing students grouped by performances within the combined dataset (data from both Fall 2022 and Spring 2023).

Variable	OC * 1 Grade	n	M1 − M2	df	t	p	Cohen’s d
Importance of OC * in major	90% and above	35	0.717	60	2.638	0.011	0.676
	70–79%	27
Importance of OC * mechanisms	90% and above	35	0.705	60	2.509	0.015	0.643
	70–79%	27
ASCIv2: Easy–Hard	90% and above	35	−1.109	60	−4.064	<0.001	−1.041
	70–79%	27
	80–89%	34	−0.587	59	−2.221	0.030	−0.573
	70–79%	27
ASCIv2: Clear–Confusing	90% and above	35	−0.852	60	−2.247	0.028	−0.576
	70–79%	27
ASCIv2: Comfortable–Not comfortable	90% and above	35	−1.026	60	−2.407	0.019	−0.616
	70–79%	27
ASCIv2: Satisfying–Frustrating	90% and above	35	−1.234	67	−2.797	0.007	−0.673
	80–89%	34
	90% and above	35	−1.835	60	−4.130	<0.001	−1.058
	70–79%	27
ASCIv2: Not challenging–Challenging	90% and above	35	−0.686	60	−2.078	0.042	−0.532
	70–79%	27
ASCIv2: Pleasant–Unpleasant	90% and above	35	−0.955	67	−2.440	0.017	−0.588
	80–89%	34
	90% and above	35	−1.366	60	−3.490	<0.001	−0.894
	70–79%	27

* OC = Organic Chemistry.

) but holds true with the idea that students who performed better showed more positive attitudes. It is unknown whether the attitude affects the performance, the performance affects the attitude, or it is a bidirectional relationship. It is also worth noting that the number of students who had an Organic Chemistry 1 grade lower than 70% was too low (less than 10 in each case) to be considered for statistical analysis.

On the other hand, grouping students by their performances on Organic Chemistry 2 did not give any significant result, which can be attributed to the low number of responses that have finished Organic Chemistry 2 (n = 26). The data from the Spring 2023 respondents were also omitted, as the component groups by either Organic Chemistry 1 grades or Organic Chemistry 2 grades had fewer than 13 entries. Similarly, analyses when grouped by instructors or majors do not give statistically significant results. The statistics of significant results are shown in Table 7 (Fall 2022) and Table 8 (combined data of both semesters).

Regarding effect size, Cohen’s d values were calculated (Table 7 and Table 8). The absolute values of Cohen’s d ranged from about 0.3 to about 0.7, with some results boasting Cohen’s d values of around 1.0. Considering this, students’ attitudes and their perception towards the importance of Organic Chemistry might moderately affect the students’ performance or vice versa.

3.2. What Are Students’ Perceptions of the Role That Learning Organic Chemistry Plays in Their Major and Future Career?

When interviewed, students mainly stressed the challenging nature of Organic Chemistry mechanisms. One student said, “The course content is… challenging to me right now, but I believe I can ace it”; and another student commented, “The mechanisms are really challenging. I find it very hard to remember everything”. These notions agreed with the qualitative data from the first research questions that students mostly view Organic Chemistry as hard, complicated, and challenging. The three students also expressed the importance of Organic Chemistry for their majors and future careers, especially for further courses and as a requirement to get into medical school. They said “I think it will probably be helpful. I actually want to go to medical school”, and “It’s a requirement for med school, so it must be sort of important…”. From these answers, it is reasonable to say that these students don’t necessarily know why Organic Chemistry is important, but they thought that it must be crucial since it is a prerequisite. They also revealed that they were having good experiences with Organic Chemistry, which can be related to the positive attitudes that they had towards the course. A student expressed, “I think it’s like pretty good, and it’s set up in a way that pretty much anyone could pick it up and learn it and understand it”. They all acknowledged that “Organic Chemistry… kind of… use, like everyday, like, like the foods we eat, and like the products we use like on our skin, or anything like that”. However, they cannot give an example where Organic Chemistry or reaction mechanism is applied in their major or future work.

Overall, it can be said that the students in this study acknowledge the difficulty of Organic Chemistry mechanisms, but view Organic Chemistry more as a requirement than as a preparation for their future career.

3.3. What Are Instructors’ Perceptions Towards Teaching and Learning Organic Chemistry Mechanisms?

Of the 5 instructors interviewed, 4 were instructors from the Department of Chemistry and had various experiences in teaching Organic Chemistry. The other instructor was a clinical pharmacist who also worked as an instructor at the School of Pharmacy, but he had no experience in teaching Organic Chemistry. Overall, the responses from the instructors were similar. They all agreed that Organic Chemistry provides fundamental knowledge for courses in Health Science, and that learning reaction mechanisms helps improve problem-solving skills. One of the instructors commented, “It’s less about the mechanism itself and more about kind of a thought process and the problem solving that goes into how to approach a problem”. Another instructor also stated, “They may not necessarily need the mechanisms for their future life, but I think it gives them a way to problem-solve and work through things”. When asked to give examples of Organic Chemistry applications, they were all able to relate Organic Chemistry to fields other than chemistry, like “drugs that can be R and S, forms of drugs where one of them is a drug that you would want someone to take, whereas the other form is, you know, maybe cancer causing” and “how some are fat, soluble, and some are water soluble”. They thought that reaction mechanisms may be applied in medical school, “It still is part of the MCAT, and it’s because… the logic that goes into deducing mechanism in organic chemistry is similar to the logic that is going to be applied later in medical school or dental school”. However, they found it difficult to give specific examples where knowledge of reaction mechanisms would be applied outside the field of chemistry.

To summarize, the faculty members interviewed in this study had a good understanding of how Organic Chemistry is related to other fields requiring the courses, but were unable to connect reaction mechanisms to those fields.

4. Limitations

One key limitation of this study is the low sample size that was surveyed. Although the population is large enough to get more data, it is likely that the students were not interested in filling out the surveys. Low sample size limits the statistical power of the qualitative analysis, making the results from this paper hardly generalizable. Thus, the qualitative results from this study are only applicable to the samples investigated, which are not representative of any other broader populations.

As this study includes quantitative data from interviews, it may also include the researcher’s bias towards the topic. Although steps were taken to minimize bias, the potential for researcher’s subjectivity remains. The authors’ perspectives may have inadvertently influenced data interpretation, even though efforts were made to remain objective throughout the study. Another source of bias in this study is the self-report bias through the surveys. Students’ opinions on the degree of importance of Organic Chemistry can be different, and the responses they selected may not objectively reflect their perspectives. Since the questions were based on Likert scales, there may be interpretation variability between respondents, and measurement errors can emerge from the differing backgrounds of the students.

5. Conclusions

This study can set the stage for future studies revolving around how Organic Chemistry is taught. Although there are minor differences between the answers of students and faculty members, they all converge towards a main theme: Organic Chemistry is related to health science (medicine and pharmacy), but reaction mechanisms are not frequently used outside the field of chemistry. Further studies need to be carried out to confirm or refute these findings; however, regardless of the results, lecturers and curriculum organizers should reconsider the setup of Organic Chemistry courses, and think about why reaction mechanisms are taught, and how to connect them to students’ future courses and careers. More survey data and more interviews need to be conducted to further explore this idea, as the more data are present the more reliable the results will be.

If these findings are further confirmed with broader populations, the Organic Chemistry curriculum should be revised and changed accordingly, preferably splitting the subject into two different course paths: one for Chemistry majors, and one for non-Chemistry majors. The path for Chemistry majors should be kept as it is with a major focus on reaction mechanisms, but the path for non-Chemistry majors should be changed. From the results of this study, a suggestion worth considering is that Organic Chemistry for non-Chemistry majors should shift the focus away from reaction mechanisms and towards applications outside of Organic Chemistry. This could be achieved by introducing only basic concepts of a reaction mechanism instead of going into deep understanding of the content and incorporating more examples for different majors to relate Organic Chemistry to their intended careers. For example, on the topic of nucleophilic substitution, the course pathway for Chemistry majors may focus deeply on the detailed mechanisms, different reaction rates across different chemical species, and exploring uncommon reactivity such as Bredt’s rule or anchimeric assistances. On the same topic for non-Chemistry majors, such as Pre-Pharmacy or Pharmacy majors, a brief overview of unimolecular (S_N1) and bimolecular (S_N2) nucleophilic substitution should be presented, but lecturers should not go into too much depth about the reactivities. Instead, the time spent on this content may be used to explore the applications of nucleophilic substitutions in the human body, such as how S-Adenosyl Methionine (SAM, an antidepressant) expressed its pharmaceutical activity (Lee et al., 2023) or how 3-MCPD (3-monochloropropane-1,2-diol, a food processing contaminant) is processed in the human body (Hamlet et al., 2002). These approaches, if applied correctly, will help students broaden their knowledge of the respective fields and may encourage students to be more interested in the subject. It is also worth noting that these suggestions are subjectively based on the authors’ knowledge of Chemistry and Pharmacy. Teachers and instructors may find better approaches through their own experiences or from literature in the respective fields, making suitable changes considering the compositions of their students’ majors.