Rochester Institute of Technology is home to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). Over the last decade, the organic team at RIT has recognized the inherent difficulties of learning organic chemistry specifically for those who are deaf (D) and hard of hearing (HH) . A complicated vocabulary and a lack of dedicated signs in American Sign Language  (ASL) makes organic chemistry a challenge for D/HH students. Profound performance gains were observed after our team worked to develop, adopt and propagate a new sign language lexicon for organic chemistry terminology and, best of all, transition states.  Now, the team is investigating if the same learning gains can be achieved if these signs are also taught to hearing students taking the course. 

SLICE REActivities are organized by transition state motifs and can be done as workshops or as dry labs. It's important to note that we took some liberties in naming a few of the transition state motifs. This has helped students with categorizing the trends for electron pushing and helps when students try communicating what mechanism they are employing for a given reaction. Downloadable pdfs of each SLICE Reactivity and the videos for each motif are available below.