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Reformed Experimental Activities (REActivities) lab workbook offers a student-guided and engaging approach to gaining organic chemistry bench skills. With dedicated practice time, lab partner and lab neighbor prompts, instructor check-ins, facilitated online resources, and numerous post-lab questions, students will develop a strong foundation for major concepts and synthesis techniques. With a low barrier for instructor training, REActivities is a robustly designed and time-tested method that has been tuned for student success. Its scaffolded approach will ensure a rich uniform student experience across all your lab sections.
Key Features for the Instructor:
REActivities use a small deliberate set of materials and reagents simplifying chemical stores and lab preparation. Updated- Dichloromethane has been eliminated as a solvent throughout the lab manual.
REActivities feature the signature self-start allowing students to begin working the moment they arrive in the lab. The self-start eliminates the need for pre-lab lectures and maximizes the use of lab time.
Stop sign icons are utilized to force student-instructor interactions. These structured occurrences are strategically implemented for technique validation or guided discussions.
Instructor manuals and online resources offer helpful guidance for institutions delivering many lab sections with a variety of instructors. The student-guided pedagogy ensures a uniform approach across sections and facilitates facile instructor training experience.
Three sets of post-lab questions are included for each REActivity allowing instructors to cycle through assigning different sets.
Benefits to the student:
REActivities has students work with the same compounds across both semesters mirroring more closely to a research experience. Comfort with the materials shifts the focus to the technique or reaction being conducted.
REActivities offers a value-added greener and sustainable laboratory experience. For example, synthetically prepared material is saved for another lab section to use when learning the recrystallization technique. It is not thrown away.
REActivities has incorporated practice time for each technique lab so students have the freedom to explore and gain confidence in their skills. Practice time reduces student instances of human error claims when analyzing the data. Students focus on more relevant concepts pertaining to the experiment given their comfort with the learned lab skills.
REActivities has students revisit techniques repeatedly throughout validating the importance of each technique covered. Repetition also gives students the opportunity to refine their laboratory notebook entries, aligning more with the practicing organic chemist’s notebook.
REActivities guides students through prompted partner work minimizing idle time and ensuring that the conceptual knowledge governing the lab activity is considered while performing the lab technique or reaction. The carefully timed in-lab questions help connect the students’ hands to their brains - why they are doing what they are doing in the experimental procedure.
REActivities offers an organized framework for comparing observations with neighboring student groups enriching the data collection for conclusion writing.
REActivities offers pre-lab videos so students can prepare or even follow along while conducting their own experiment.
Find out more about the unique features of Organic REActivities.
How are REActivities Unique?
The Self Start
Instructional Freedoms
Coordinating Lab Sections
REActivities: Organic Chemistry Lab Workbook
(Third Edition)
Authors: Christina Goudreau Collison and Jeremy Cody
NEW! Dichloromethane removed as a solvent!
285 Pages (shrink-wrapped loose-leaf pages with three-hole punch)
ISBN: 979-8-3851-7994-7
Price: $TBD
Organic Chemistry Lab Videos
If you are looking for resources that will help prepare lab instructors and/or augment the lab materials delivered to students as a pre-lab activity, or even need to assign a lab virtually to a student, REActivities has got you covered. Now available for each wet lab are accompanying videos for the students or newbie instructor to watch and follow along.
Sign Language Incorporation in Chemistry Education
American Sign Language (ASL) has the unique advantage of taking complex concepts and compacting them into a single sign or simple narrative. Our work has led to the creation, implementation, and evaluation of using these chemistry signs and expansions to augment the learning environment when being introduced to electron pushing mechanisms and transition state modeling.
Learn more about SLICE
REActivities Research
We are continually evaluating the effects of implementing REActivities in the lab. To learn about what we have discovered so far, click below to see the peer reviewed articles pertaining to this work.
What Students Have to Say about Organic Lab REActivities
"It has pictures that clearly demonstrate the technique that I need to do. It has clear step-by-step procedure. "
-Senior, Environmental Science major
"REActivities makes you take your time with the lab. You can’t just speed through it without stopping to answer questions and process what is actually taking place in the lab. It asks more compelling questions. They make me think more deeply about the actual science. "
-Sophomore, Chemical Engineering major
"REActivities can be more challenging than other labs but it is definitely more rewarding in the end because the concept is understood."
-Sophomore, Biomedical Sciences major
"The questions lead you to actually learn what you're doing rather than just preform a procedure. Interesting and unique way to teach lab. "
-Sophomore, Biomedical Sciences major
"I do like the fact that you get to do each technique twice, once as practice, then once as the real experiment. I like that the first time I try a new technique does not have to be perfect and it gives me a chance to figure out what I'm doing before the real deal that counts."
-Sophomore, Biomedical Engineering major
"There was more interactive questions along the way compared to just doing a procedure and getting data. "
-Sophomore, Chemical Engineer major
"I like the questions and graphics that guide you through the experiment. "
-Sophomore, Biomedical Sciences major
"The instructions try to make the concepts easier and include diagrams/scenarios to help students understand challenging ideas like polarity. "
-Sophomore, Chemistry major
"Some examples in the book really helped make the concepts make sense (the polar bears for example)."
-Junior, Biomedical Sciences major
"I like the self dependancy with this."
-Sophomore, Applied Math major
"I like that REActivities provides a guided learning experience whereas in my past lab experiences, you just come in and follow directions not really learning what's going on. "
-Sophomore Biology/Spanish major
"The REActivities lab book was enjoyable to use. The "rookie mistake" tidbits were also helpful to us on occasion."
-Junior, Biomedical Sciences
"I think there is a good balance of challenge and ease. I feel more independent while doing them, which can be slightly more challenging. In General Chem Lab, the instructor walked us through what we had to do before the lab, whereas in the Reactivates lab, we told to do it first and then ask if we need help. "
-Sophomore, Biology major
"I found it harder to answer some of the questions as the lab was being completed but I was able to ask questions and figure everything out. Overall it was one of the best lab experiences I have had in the lab-based classes that I have taken."
-Sophomore, Biomedical Engineering major
Contact Information:
Professor of Chemistry
Rochester Institute of Technology
585-475-2634
The REActivities team is grateful for the generous support of the National Science Foundation,Rochester Institute of Technology, and Monroe Community College.
The authors acknowledge our ancestors and their contributions to chemistry.
The REActivities team is grateful for the generous support of the National Science Foundation, Rochester Institute of Technology, the National Institutes of Health, the University of New Mexico, Northern Arizona University, and Southwestern Indian Polytech Institute for their generous support with our design and development of these materials.
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