APOC Social – Advanced Problems in Organic Chemistry
Our highly interactive, responsive, and user-driven learning environment empowers students to tackle organic chemistry's most challenging problems on the go. In the app, ETH students access a breadth of topics, practice with quizzes, and discuss tough exercises with peers in real-time. Individual curricula are generated using an algorithm that takes strengths and weaknesses into account. Users are encouraged to track and share progress in the classroom and within a global community of young chemists.
Keywords
Course description
Project description
The current curriculum for organic chemistry can seem highly static. Learning organic chemistry in all cas
- features outdated content and is mostly limited to chemistry discovered decades ago
- therefore ignores frontiers in this science and recent publications
- is limited to only a tiny fraction of transformations due to time constraints
Students’ new cultural language is rooted deeply in technology and revolves around online-based services and media. Personalized media of all sorts and online social networks are what students carry with them: on their smartphone inside of their pocket.
We have identified that in organic chemistry lectures, there may not be enough time for detailed discussion of mechanistic problems. A single lecturer has no ability to teach a group of students details of close to a thousand organic chemistry problems. This problem has previously been battled by Prof. Dr. David A. Evans at Harvard university and led him to develop a database of problems for Harvard students to practice for exams. We envisioned to combine students’ connectedness through their smartphones with our unique ability to provide a carefully curated and insightful library of mechanistic problems of organic chemistry. Our free Apoc Social app contains methods for discussion and research details about every single one of the 958 questions currently embedded.
PROJECT GOALS:
Building on our initial development of Apoc, the guiding principle of our project remains to provide students and lecturers at ETH with new functionalities that both enhance and drastically modernize the teaching-learning experience. By utilization of the ever-expanding capabilities of mobile technologies and online social connectivity of the students, we have
- enabled seamless group participation within the app framework of 958 chemistry problems
- created a global classroom for problem solving of organic chemistry’s toughest mechanisms
- provided personalized supplementary curricula and metrics to individual users in real-time.
We have successfully augmented the repository of questions and solutions to the massive number of 958, sourced from various topics and reaction modes in varying difficulty levels. We have created a lively discussion board in the form of a Sub-Reddit and a deeply integrated Twitter outlet, which allow to effortlessly share and discuss problems from within the app with peers. Most discussion takes place on Reddit, where we have set up and maintain a vibrant discussion forum for Apoc Social and its content, a so-called Sub-Reddit. We have enabled an automated performance assessment for users, implemented the ability to create personalized question streams and problem suggestions for self-study based on machine-learning principles, and we have added numerous functionalities associated with keeping track of one’s very own personal progress in studying mechanistic organic chemistry.
FOR STUDENTS:
We have provided an interactive environment accessible in and outside of the classroom, where they may build upon in-class learning to further develop their understanding of demanding research topics, practice relevant problems, track their progress, engage in group solving and discussions of the former. With our project, we foster interest and motivation among students to pursue organic chemistry, maybe as a career! Specifically, on our discussion boards, students who feel more familiar with the content may begin suggesting problem solutions. Weaker students can then easily profit from their colleagues’ knowledge and begin asking questions surrounding the topic.
FOR LECTURERS:
For lecturers, Apoc Social provides a vast amount of highly relevant problems suitable for discussion in the classroom or to pose during problem sessions. With a chat room provided through the Apoc Social Sub-Reddit (r/apoc_chemistry), a virtual workspace for teamwork and collaborative idea-finding is provided around the clock and open to access by anyone. Outside of the classroom, instructors may view and actively participate in student discussions to clarify areas of misunderstanding and to address such points later on in class. A simplified mechanism for lecturers is currently being developed, enabling them to propose additional content and problems for the learning environment’s database.
FOR THE DEGREE PROGRAMME:
The overarching objective of Apoc Social continues to involve the development of an app that enables enhanced interaction and connectivity for team-based problem solving. As such, we have constructed a mobile app for iOS and Android devices as well as a desktop version, which may also prove useful in many other classes at D-CHAB and other departments at ETH in a similar form
Our software, which is available to anyone free of charge and completely open-source, is currently being used on 11’489 mobile devices with the busiest of all days having been July 9th, 2019 (259 sessions on iOS devices, alone) and during preparation for written and oral examinations in the related courses at ETH Zurich.
Contact information
Publications:
Chimia Research Article “Apoc Social: A Mobile Interactive and Social Learning Platform for Collaborative Solving of Advanced Problems in Organic Chemistry”
N. Sievertsen, E. M. Carreira Chimia, 2018, 72, 43–47 contains screenshots of a prototype with fully integrated message boards and groups