Designing undergraduate-level organic chemistry instructional problems: Seven ideas from a problem-solving study of practicing synthetic organic chemists

The development of curricular problems based on the practice of synthetic organic chemistry has not been explored in the literature. Such problems have broadly been hypothesized to promote student persistence and interest in STEM fields. This study reports seven ideas about how practice-based problems can be developed for sophomore-level organic chemistry courses; these ideas are the result of an investigation of the problem-solving experiences of eight practicing synthetic organic chemists.