I describe the various ways that I've incorporated literature discussion learning objects (LOs) into my inorganic course in a BITeS blog post. I'm curious to hear more about what others have done.  Do you sprinkle discussions throughout the course?  (At the end of each section? How many?) Do you save them all for the end? Do your students work on articles individually or do you prefer to have the whole class read articles together?

Of course there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.... 

So I know we have LOs and discussions about what people do on the first day of class.  Does anyone do anything cool or interesting on the last day of class?  I have actually stayed on (actually even 1 day ahead) of my syllabus this semester and have some wiggle room to think about how to wrap up the semester.  Crazy and fun ideas welcome.  

How do you explain backbonding in phosphines?  Do you invoke d-orbitals?

Previously in the forums there was a place for 4th Ed typos. The 5th Ed has been out long enough that if there are typos, we have probably discovered them. As with Adam's post of the 4th Ed typos, I like the book. Gary and Paul have certainly been friend's of VIPEr throughout the years. These are just things that we catch that can hopefully make the 6th Ed.

Our department is working with facilities on our campus to develop plans to remodel the small classroom space we use to teach our inorganic lab course, capacity 12 students. 

Preamble This is actually a question geared towards analytical chemistry, but us analytical chemists are pretty introverted when it comes to on-line forums.  (Doubt me? Check out the Analytical version of VIPEr here. ) Besides, Inorganic chemists are bright, reflective and welcoming, so I'm confident that some of you have thought about this issue or one closely related.

FYI, a number of the large courses on our campus have started using a new system called Gradescope to help us grade short answer questions on exams and homeworks much more efficiently. In Chem 1a for example (~1300 students), we were able to get rid of MC (Scantron) questions entirely on exams (three midterms and a final). 

Their website (https://www.gradescope.com) has details on how the system works - it really is wonderful! I believe it's in public beta right now and is free to use.

So I've come to realize that my least favorite thing about teaching inorganic chemistry is grading their homework assignments.  I typically have about 15 students and in the past I have assigned weekly graded problem sets.  They are allowed to work together on the homework, but must hand in individual papers.  I get bogged down in the somewhat mindless repetitive task of grading their assignments.  That said, I do tend to try and challenge students through homework and it has typically been a reasonable chunk of their grade in this class (20%) which helps to balance the difficult exams.

Has anyone done the preparation and IR identification of Mo(CO)4(PR3)2 isomers (cis vs. trans)?  The complexes give me pretty much everything I want (relatively short syntheses and distinct differences in the number of IR peaks that students can analyze via group theory), but I'm not thrilled with the potential hazards of the starting reagents (Mo(CO)6 and piperidine).  I've also seen conflicting reports on whether or not the syntheses need to be performed under N2.  (One prep says yes, another mentions nothing about refluxing under N2.)  Should I go for it, or stay far far away?

Does anyone in VIPErland know anything about benchtop NMR systems? Such as: Magritek's Spinsolve, Thermo Scientific's picoSpin, Nanalysis' NMReady, Oxford's Pulsar, and Bruker's Fourier 60.

thanks,

Adam