UW-Madison Chemistry 103/104 Resource Book is a customized Open Education Resource (OER). Although some content is adapted from the original OpenStax General Chemistry OER from Rice University, the organization follows the Module/Quantum sequence of the Chem 103/104 curriculum. Content that lies outside of the UW-Chem 103/104 learning objectives has been stripped and some new content (e.g., mass spectrometry) has been added. The purpose of this condensed education resource is to support the activities of the pre-class, whole class, discussion, and laboratory gatherings of Chem 103/104.
Beginning in 2016, Chem 103/104 transitioned to a student-focused, active-learning philosophy. Students progress to mastery of the course learning objectives by engaging in frequent, structured activities. These activities may be performed individually (pre-class activities), in small groups (discussion, lab, and some whole-class activities), or with an entire lecture section with answers submitted via Top Hat student response system. A Module comprises a set of related content that generally approximates a traditional textbook chapter. Each module is broken into Quanta with distinctive pre-class (brief introduction to content followed by assessment quizzes) and whole-class (higher level content development, “ConcepTest” assessments of individual learning, and small group-oriented activities) activities. UW-Madison Chemistry 103/104 Resource Book supports these activities by providing learning objectives, in-depth descriptions of the content, many worked examples, practice problems, and a glossary for each quantum.
Student exposure to Chem 103/104 content is distributed over many types of activities. Therefore, content delivery takes many forms: quick-start readings for pre-class, slides for whole-class meetings, and structured problem packets for discussion sections. UW-Madison Chemistry 103/104 Resource Book backstops these distributed sources of content by providing individual students with in-depth explanations of important concepts and the opportunity to improve their mastery with problems.
