Understanding Oxidation - Reduction in Organic Chemistry

Several years of teaching organic chemistry at the introductory level have made it obvious that understanding oxidation - reduction can be a difficult and sometimes traumatic experience for students. Mastery of the concepts and definitions of oxidation as the loss, and reduction as the gain of electrons is relatively simple (and comforting). However, the realization that the application of this knowledge is not intuitively transferable in organic chemistry can be most disconcerting and often frustrating to beginning students.