The Michigan instructors, Seyhan Ege and Brian Coppola, teach an introductory organic chemistry course called "Structure and Reactivity." They do not grade on a curve, and they do not threaten students with the warning, "Look to your right and to your left; only one of you will pass this course." Instead, Ege and Coppola tell students that "we are here to help you succeed."
Coppola says his strategy is to encourage students to take responsibility for what they learn, and his goal is to teach them how to learn rather than to deliver large amounts of information about organic chemistry.
In the laboratory, for example, students are given a set of unknown materials. Their assignment is not to determine the identity of the compound, but to find another classmate with the same unknown. To accomplish this goal they must cooperate and pay attention to the chemical characteristics of their compound ...
