INTRODUCTORY ORGANIC CHEMISTRY FOR FOOD SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY
J.A. Llorens-Molina
Universitat Politècnica de València (SPAIN)

Abstract
The design of a short-term course for the introduction of organic chemistry in a 1st grade course in
Food Science and Technology faces some challenges such as high heterogeneity of students with
respect to their previous knowledge, need to further the development of specific and transversal
competences, adaptation of students to a more autonomous learning environment as the university
one and specific conceptual difficulties of the subject.
For this purpose, a blended learning model is presented in this contribution. Their main guidelines are
the following: (a) Attention is paid to prior knowledge and misconceptions. (b) Design of resources for
students’ knowledge updating in the first weeks of term is emphasized. (c) The learning-teaching
process is established based on the progressive introduction of non-face-to-face work, as transition
towards a flipped learning model. (d) Integration of experimental work in the whole context of term. (e)
Development and assessment of some transversal competences. (f) Essential role of formative
assessment which is developed by means of different resources and activities and (g) Specific
requirements owing to need of put in context the organic chemistry in Food Science and Technology
framework.
Keywords: Organic Chemistry, Food Science, curriculum design, formative assessment, blended
learning.

1 INTRODUCTION
To design a short-term course for introducing organic chemistry at the beginning of Food Science and
Technology degree faces up several challenges related to changes derived from the European Higher
Education Area (EHEA) development.

These challenges can be summarized as follows: a) High heterogeneity of students in terms of their
initial level of competences, that requires performing effective updating activities during a short period
of time b) Suitable design for promoting student self-paced learning, which requires enhancing
formative assessment, c) Several topics in introductory organic chemistry show specific learning
difficulties which are mainly related to coordination among the three levels of description of matter
structure: symbolic, macroscopic and atomic-molecular. In that way, several misconceptions related to
chemical bond theory can be highlighted, d) The convenience of introducing new technologies both as
user and creator of digital products, e) The subject-matter content should take into account the specific
characteristics of degree, in this case, Food Science and Technology.

In order to meet these challenges, a model of introductory organic chemistry short course is proposed
in this contribution. The involved educational resources are, for the most part, freely available on the
web. The main characteristics which define it are the following:

Blended methodology. As a consequence of the teaching organization in the EHEA, face-to-face and
non-attendance learning must be carefully structured to obtain an adequate design of ECTS credits
(European Credit Transfer System). For this purpose, the introduction of online educational resources
becomes essential in such a way that a coherent learning sequence be achieved. This should be
based both on face-to-face work (conferences, teamwork assignments and their discussion in the
classroom and laboratory work, mainly) and on-line activities (homework, teamwork, self-assessment,
etc.). This way of course design has been successfully introduced in similar educational contexts as
described in the literature[1-8].
Special attention to initiation stage. Students who begin their university studies come from very
different educational contexts. A great heterogeneity due to their levels of prior knowledge, laboratory
skills and competences in new technologies may be expected. In addition, specific attention should be
paid to misconceptions or lack of knowledge of basic prerequisites. Indeed, as reported by many
authors [9-13], one of the key difficulties to understand the principles of chemistry is the coordination
among the three levels of matter description: symbolic, macroscopic and atomic-molecular levels. A
significant expression of this sort of obstacles is the noteworthy difficulty, even in higher education
courses, to interpret physical and chemical properties from atomic and molecular interactions. This
way, misconceptions such as the association between phase changes and covalent bond breaking or
the ambiguous use of term stability referred both physical and chemical context, have a significant
occurrence, the same way as the learning difficulties concerning the concept of chemical bond [14-15].
Indeed, some particularly relevant difficulties can be outlined as the tendency to relate state changes
to covalent bonds breaking or the right interpretation of dissolution processes based on nature of
intermolecular forces [14-18]. In the same way, difficulties, when understood Lewis structures and
resonance, can also be founding such a way that some proposals for their introduction have been
reported [19-20]. On the other hand, although they cannot be considered as prerequisites,
stereochemistry topics are also characterized by difficulties when related 2D and 3D molecular
representations. It is specifically relevant in order to assign absolute configurations to stereocenters.
Some contributions have been proposed in order to improve their introduction in the classroom [21-
24].

Assessment process. It is referred to its different aspects: prior, formative or summative and agents,
involving co-assessment and self-assessment.

Transversal competences. Despite this subject was selected for specific assessment of transversal
competences: Knowledge of contemporary problems and Specific instrumental [25], other ones are
developed by means of course activities, mainly, effective written and oral communication, teamwork
Ethical, environmental and professional responsibility and planning and time management.

Enhancement of new technologies. Students are encouraged In this course to use specific software
for drawing chemical structures, making screencasts presentations and, above all, to use properly the
online platform Poliformat [26].

Introduction of specific conceptual approaches. Some conceptual issues as the introduction of

electrostatic potential maps [27] or parallel thermodynamic and atomic-molecular discussion
concerning topics as resonance energy or angular strength [28].

2 METHODOLOGY

2.1. Context

This contribution is related to a 1st term of 10 weeks long dealing with an introduction to organic
chemistry in Food Science and Technology at the Universitat Politècnica de València. (2-3 weekly
sessions of 75 min. and four laboratory sessions of three hours). This term is the third part of a
compulsory subject which is completed with other two terms about thermodynamic and chemical
equilibria and kinetics, with other three laboratory session both of them. The described course model
has been implemented progressively from 2013-14 on and the number of students has oscillated
between 80 and 100 during these last four years. They have been divided into two similar groups for
lectures and classroom activities and four for the laboratory sessions.

As aforementioned, an educational platform called PoliformaT is widely used to share information and
educational resources by teachers and students at Universitat Politècnica de València.

Despite the fact of a relatively high mark is required to register for this degree in the University Access
Examination from Secondary School, the prior knowledge concerning organic chemistry is generally
poor. These topics are, at best, taught quickly at the end of the last year of secondary school and tend
to focus exclusively on basic questions of formulation and nomenclature

2.2. Activities development.

The timeline of term is displayed in Fig. 1 in which subject content, educational resources,
methodology and assessment activities are related. The term syllabus is composed of two units:
a) general topics related to molecular structure, formulation and nomenclature, isomerism and general
principles of reactivity and b) study of the most important organic families. Two resources for carrying
out the first unit are available to favour autonomous learning: hypermedia online course whose content
matches with the attending sessions and a SPOC (small private online course) whose objective is to
achieve a homogeneous level of competences regard to basic formulation and nomenclature. (Link:
https://upvx.es/courses/poc/introformulacion/2015-01/about). During these 2-3 first weeks, the tutorial
attention is focused on individual coaching in which students with previous difficulties are given priority
attention.

Resources for the rest of the course consist of solved activities sheets and power-point presentations.
All of these have embedded learning objects named “Polimedia” [29] (videos less than 10 minutes
long) which aim is to reinforce the most essential or difficult topics or developing applied aspects of
subject-matter extending them (e.g. those related with food and agricultural aspects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmpMQj2ImLA. These have been designed as little lectures or with
some degree of interactivity as the linked by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBCkLrWAXdQ. All
of them can be accessed through https://media.upv.es/#/portal, by means the appropriate keyword
and name of the author of this contribution.

After the introductory first session, an attending activity concerning five essential issues are dealt with
as course introduction: a) Making and interpretation of Lewis structures, b) Differences between
covalent and intermolecular bonding, c) Molecular polarity and its influence in physical properties, d)
Types of C-C bonds and molecular structures to which they give rise; e)Meaning of different formulas
and molecular representations and the extent in which they describe the reality. This activity can be
linked by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpNjNosPRKE. In parallel, as no attending activity, a
complimentary session (video + test online) show a short historical introduction to organic chemistry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD60M3GuM-g
The laboratory work is carried out by students in pairs over four sessions of three hours. The first one
deals with basic techniques related to the handling of glassware, balances, etc., as well as safety
rules. In the second one, the separation and quantification of caffeine in a cola drink by liquid-liquid
extraction is performed. The third session consists of the synthesis of acetylsalicylic acid and the
evaluation of its purity by thin layer chromatography. The last session concerns different assays
involving the recognition of the most important functional groups, as well as the determination of
melting interval of the acetylsalicylic acid obtained in the previous session. Each laboratory activity is
preceded by a prelab whose main objective is to integrate this activity in the context of the subject. It
includes a brief video presentation of its theoretical foundations, as well as relates it to interesting
aspects of Food Science and Technology. The experimental sequence is also briefly discussed. Each
video is associated with an online test whose mark is valued in the final grade. Along with the written
material provided as working guide, a report model is proposed in such a way that the students must
present their results at the end of the session. The same way, questions involving the relationship
between each laboratory task and the theoretical content of the course are also proposed. These
questions are presented for their grading after the last session. As for specific safety rules and
material handling, they are explained “in situ” at the beginning of each activity. The links of two
representative prelabs (caffeine extraction and melting point determination, respectively), are the
following:https://media.upv.es/player/?id=17513eff-94c9-da40-bce5-8b3c3f9dbd7e,
https://media.upv.es/player/?id=a7c1c6c2-ba36-9e4b-9d2f-20a7f1c18ad5.

Tranversal competences development is put into practice along the treatment of ordinary contents as
far as possible. Indeed, “specific instrumental” is closely related to many aspects of laboratory work,
both from the content and assessment point of view. Anyway, for this purpose, a teamwork activity is
carried out by groups composed by three students. It consists of producing a short screencast (5 to 10
minutes long) whose objectives are the following:
1. To describe in detail the chemical composition of a vegetal food.
2. To represent the molecular structure of five of the main components, using the skeleton formula and
a three-dimensional model using specific computer software.
3. To specify in these molecules what functional groups treated in theoretical subject content are
represented.
4. To relate some nutritional or medicinal properties of the food with the chemical composition.

It should be noted that six tutorials (as well as screencasts) are available so that the students could
become familiar with the ChemSketch® software. The corresponding links are:

ChemSketch. Herramientas básicas y estructuras

https://media.upv.es/player/?id=8d5a5e80-20b8-11e6-acdb-7ff9538171bf
ChemSketch. Introdución de grupos funcionales
https://media.upv.es/player/?id=8d5a3770-20b8-11e6-acdb-7ff9538171bf
ChemSketch. Nomenclatura, representaciones 3D y exportación a otras aplicaciones
https://media.upv.es/player/?id=8d5a8590-20b8-11e6-acdb-7ff9538171bf
ChemSketch. Cómo modificar y animar las representaciones tridimensionales
https://media.upv.es/player/?id=3e54e110-2db5-11e7-a50a-535b6ca67416
ChemSketch. Inserción de textos
https://media.upv.es/player/?id=e62d4860-2db4-11e7-a50a-535b6ca67416
ChemSketch. Movimientos en el plano y tridimensionales de fórmulas y gráficos.
https://media.upv.es/player/?id=b178b2d0-2db4-11e7-a50a-535b6ca67416

Formative assessment is performed by means of weekly online multiple choice tests and other ones
by mobile-phone in attending sessions with Socrative® tool, both with immediate feedback. Although
in a little amount, these marks are considered in the final grading.

The screencast activity is carried out along 4 weeks, during which the students can ask for support to
teacher staff. Once the videos are produced, they are hosted on the platform https://media.upv.es/, so
that all students could access them for evaluation. The co-assessment was carried out online by the
teacher and by three students from other groups, according to a random distribution communicated
through the platform PoliformaT. It is performed by means of a rubric. It can be downloaded from:
https://poliformat.upv.es/x/ug7POE

The mark for summative assessment is obtained by value at 50% the score given by the teacher and
the average of those made by the students.

Several assessment tasks contribute to final grading: two written examinations whose content is:(1)
Basic principles, organic molecules structure and hydrocarbon formulation and nomenclature (30 % of
final mark) and (2) food and agricultural issues, interpretation of physical properties from molecular
structure, isomerism and stereochemistry, chemical reactivity and nomenclature and formulation of
organic families (70 %). The marks of self-assessment and screencast activities improve the final
grading increasing up to 20 % of the examinations marks, according to their quality level, provided that
the mean score of examinations be more than 4.0. On the other hand, the assessment of screencast
affects to CTs evaluation. The mark of laboratory work is accounted when the course ends
contributing to the final grading of the subject.
Figure 1. Timeline of term development showing subject content, methodology, educational resources and assessment.
3 RESULTS
The most innovative aspects have been evaluated along the four last years in which this matter has
been taught. The evolution and results of the introduction of audiovisual resources is explained in
detail in this online communication: https://media.upv.es/player/?id=0564bef0-34ab-11e7-8aa7-
5b2740a8fd5f .[30] Other contributions report results from evaluation of the most innovative resources
put into practice: laboratory reports assessment [31], self-assessment tests [32] and prelab activities
[33, 34].
Results from institutional surveys answered by the students of concerned matter are displayed in
Fig.2. They are referred to next three aspects which are closely related to aforementioned innovations.

Methodology. The applied methodology and the carried out activities help students for subject
learning.
General resources. The proposed educational resources (bibliography, any type of documents and
resources, etc.) are a great help for the subject learning.
PoliformaT Resources. The teaching materials enabled in PoliformaT for this subject are coherent with
the syllabus contents, and they are an important help for their learning and subject objectives’
achievement.

Results of students' surveys over period 2013-2017

10
9
8
Score from Likert scale

7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17

Methodology General Resources PoliformaT

Figure 2. Results of students’ survey concerning methodology and educational resources over the
period 2013-2017. Values ± SD from a Likert scale are displayed (totally disagree: 0, rather disagree:
1, indifferent: 2, rather agree: 3, totally agree. 4). Values expressed on a maximum of 10.

As observed in Fig.2, the data from students’ surveys show a great variability in such a way that no
statistically differences can be found. Nevertheless, a progressive increase is noted from the first year
up to the third one, in which all the referred innovations were implemented. It is worth to highlight that
“Poliformat resources”, in which the discussed innovations have been implemented, always achieves
the maximum score.
As observed in Fig.2, the data from students’ surveys show a great variability in such a way that no
statistically differences can be found. Nevertheless, a progressive increase is noted from the first year
up to the third one, in which all the referred innovations were implemented. It is worth to highlight that
“Poliformat resources”, in which the discussed innovations have been implemented, always achieves
the maximum score. Results from the last course show a slight decrease which it will be worth to
analyze accurately according to the results of the current year.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The proposed model for subject development has been able to integrate the different aspects of the
evaluation process, the same way that the transversal competences and their assessment. As it is
shown in surveys results, it seems that a high level of students’ satisfaction is achieved. In summary, a
subject planning based on the coherent integration of topics selection, resources design and
assessment activities seems to be a key factor for a successful learning process. Some challenges
arise as a starting point for future researches:
Introducing new technologies is generally well-received by students. They are, in short, digital natives,
so an easy adaptation to the use of online resources can be expected. However, the need of
designing specific helping resources as tutorials for using chemical software is clearly.
The use of educational resources must be subjected to a rigorous analysis. This comment mainly
concerns to online resources and, even more, to those audiovisual type, about which scarce
information on how are used is available.
The work to be developed by the students and the level of knowledge they must acquire seem to be
excessively high with respect to the available time. Perhaps, the greatest difficulty with which the
development of this course model is faced is the difficulty to adequately coordinate the attending and
non-attending activities. This is especially important in order to ensure that students are able to
organize and plan their work in order to develop a self-paced learning.
An effective feedback is indispensable. Taking into account the working rhythm and the course
timeline for the whole subject, activities as screencast production or laboratory tasks are not
sufficiently profitable from the point of view of learning because they do not have spaces dedicated to
reflection and discussion.

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