From the pocket to the classroom

In contrast to the dynamic technologies ever-present in today’s world, current methods in organic chemistry education have changed little, relying on textbooks and conventional lecture formats that limit communication among students and teachers. At ETH, only a small subset of the field’s pioneering problems are taught due to time constraints of the semester and a limited means to adequately discuss these topics. We created a prototype of our mobile app Apoc (Advanced Problems in Organic Chemistry), which provides a quick and easy way for students to practice questions (from a repository of several hundred and growing) on the go, whether it be on the bus to class, waiting in line, and so forth. Building upon this, we plan to provide ETH students and lecturers and worldwide with the toolbox needed to enhance the teaching-learning experience of organic chemistry. We plan to expand our problem repository to several thousands through curation by renowned professors around the globe, and potentially by users. Apoc is responsive in real-time and offers an algorithm-driven personalized learning material for students at various stages in their curriculum, as well as progress-tracking through dynamically-updated performance assessments. It enables users to freely access and work on problems individually or as part of a group through private and public discussion boards. Foundational to the app, this interactive system enables individuals to share ideas, and fosters a global community of young chemists.

The proposed app is responsive in real time and offers an algorithm-driven personalized learning material for advanced organic chemistry. It enables users to freely access and work on problems individually or as part of a group while providing a highly curated database of advanced problems in organic chemistry in an intuitive way. In a classroom setting, the project allows instructors to assess the students understanding of course concepts by posing custom sets of questions as homework (which can be accessed from students on the go).

As the first mobile library for advanced problems in organic chemistry comprising of more than already a thousand tough questions from curated by leading research groups, the proposed app enhances the way students engage and learn organic chemistry. In a fun and supportive environment, hundreds of different topics are at your fingertips. Learners are encouraged to make use of the deeply integrated and user-driven content-moderation system to help share and approach with their solutions a nurturing community of young chemists both locally at ETH and around the globe.

The app may be improved by the addition of more problems and additional keywords to facilitate browsing. Additionally, we plan to implement a way of suggesting new problems via an email form and are currently improving the internal mechanism by which new problems are suggested to individual users.

“Great problems! Great interface.”
“Great app for the lovers of organic Synthesis Thank you for your time in developing such an useful app for organic chemists.”
“Thank you so much for spending the time and effort on making this great app. I’ll share it with all of my friends. Thanks again :)”
“Mind blowing”

• The free APOC (Advanced Problems in Organic Chemistry) app may easily be chosen to supplement organic chemistry classes for undergraduate courses. It is available for both iOS and Android.
• APOC fosters a community of enthusiastic students of organic chemistry. Teachers may find problems within the app and highlight them to their own students or choose those that have previously been highlighted by the community.
• Self-study is recommended with APOC. Usage of APOC allows our algorithm to find suitable problems from within the app to keep students excited and motivated as they earn achievements and learn (by suggesting more relevant exercises based on one’s history and skill level)

• ETH Tag 2015 – Presentation