Organic Chemistry of the Cell: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Learning with a Focus on Reading, Analyzing, and Critiquing Primary Literature

A sophomore-level learning community entitled Organic Chemistry of the Cell has been designed that is comprised of two linked courses, Organic Chemistry I and Cell Biology, and an Integrative Seminar. The Integrative Seminar is grounded in the reading, critical analysis, and discussion of primary literature that ties together organic chemistry and cell biology. Each student takes on the roles of learner, facilitator, and research proposal writer throughout the semester. Students take an active role in their learning; student teams lead the class through an in-depth analysis of selected articles. This leadership role requires the students to understand and be familiar with the relevant background knowledge, the experiments conducted, the interpretation of data, and conclusions drawn from that data. The discussion leaders must also be able to organize and prioritize the information and their thoughts, and be able to clearly communicate to their classmates in an engaging manner. The seminar culminates with student teams developing research proposals that outline experiments addressing a specific area of interest on the boundary between organic chemistry and cell biology. The proposals are communicated in both written and oral forms allowing fellow students to evaluate and expand upon the proposed ideas.