Transition Metal-Catalyzed Aerobic Dehydrogenation of Heterocycles and Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Student-Generated ChemWiki and its Impact on Student Performance

Section I describes progress towards the dehydrogenation of heterocycles, specifically tetrahydroquinolines and imidazolines. Chapter 1 details the development of an aerobic Pd catalyst system capable of aromatizing substituted tetrahydroquinolines in moderate to good yields. This catalyst system generally works well for substituted tetrahydroquinolines, although elimination of heteroatom substituents remains problematic. Chapter 2 describes the development of a copper-based catalyst system for the dehydrogenation of substituted imidazolines to imidazoles. This catalyst system is based upon the CuI/bpy/TEMPO/NMI system developed by the Stahl group, which has shown excellent reactivity towards alcohol oxidation. Efforts to adapt this system to imidazolines are described herein.;Section II details the development, implementation, and evaluation of a student-generated chemistry wiki in large general chemistry courses. Chapter 3 describes a theoretical framework based in constructivist epistemology for the use of wikis in chemical education and presents previous examples and limitations of wiki usage in chemistry and non-chemistry environments. Chapter 4 details the process of designing the ChemWiki experiment and the ChemWiki website itself. A detailed description of the assessments used to evaluate student performance is also presented. Chapter 5 describes two surveys designed to assess the qualitative aspects of the second generation wiki design. Additionally, an overview of participants' perception of the chemistry wiki and its utility as well as data tracking logs of participants' interactions with the ChemWiki are presented. Chapter 6 presents a quantitative analysis of the efficacy of the chemistry wiki on student posttest scores. Chapter 7 summarizes the findings of this thesis and includes recommended future directions for the use of ChemWikis in chemical education environments.