CHEM 1421

I was a fully online student this semester so I did nothing in the lab. Spent the entire semester writing "plans" for experiments and then writing post-labs based on the pictures of data that the in-person people obtained. I know a lot of people didn't like the grading scheme they implemented this semester, but it worked out really well as long as you prepared well for and performed well on the knowledge quizzes. Honestly didn't feel like I learned very much at all in this class, but I'll bet that it's because of the online situation. The TAs were pretty helpful though, and I recommend asking them any questions you might have.
#tCFspring2021

Warning: take this all with a grain of salt because I was entirely online due to covid and me not being on grounds. I had the worst possible experience in this class. All I ever did was write plans and do post labs, while learning absolutely nothing. The grading system for this class was adjusted to be more "fair" but all it did was screw us online students over. The 4 knowledge quizzes outweighed the other 40+ assignments. The quizzes were impossible to get an 80% or higher (necessary for an A) and when we said to Lisa that it was unfair, she basically did nothing. My TA (Bi Youan Eric Tra) was also incredibly frustrating. He would take off points of all group members if he got an email about any assignments, which basically was his way of saying "if you need me, come to my 1 hour office hour once a week, otherwise don't contact me."
#tCFspring2021

This semester's class was very different with our in-person/online partner rotations and mastered/not mastered specifications grading, so a lot of this may not be applicable. Overall, the class was very similar to 1411. In my experience, I would say the course is not that bad. A lot of people had problems with the knowledge quizzes because they were a large portion of our grade, but I think if you make sure you understand the lab procedures/concepts she talked about in her lecture before each lab, you will get a decent grade. I would recommend taking notes during her lectures. Also, buy your lab equipment from Amazon and not the bookstore. #tCFspring2021

My TA this semester was great with grading. The specifications grading system and tokens to redo assignments reduce stress and makes it easy to get a A with minimal effort. That being said, the class is so poorly designed in regards to having students plan the experiments themselves. No one knew what they were doing most of the time and the TAs can't really help so I feel like I did not learn as much as I could have. Also, Microsoft Teams sucks. #tCFspring2022

This class is easy its just so much busy work. Everything is graded on a mastered or non mastered scale so if I'm being honest you really don't have to try that much. You also get a chance to redo like 6 assignments I think if you don't master them, but trust me you do not need to use all the tokens because the assignments at the beginning are so easy you will master them. The only thing is there is a 7 page lab report in the middle of the class, but again its graded on a mastery scale. The Ta's will literally just go through and make sure you have 80% of the requirements, and if you do you will get a mastered. The writing does not have to be good. Honestly that paper took me like 2 hours total, which is really good considering it was 7 pages long. #tCFspring2022

Lab is definitely not hard but your grade and the amount of work you put in depends heavily on your TA. Fortunately, my TA was super helpful and guided us in the right direction whenever we were confused or got stuck, but I know a few friends who weren't that fortunate. The labs are very simple though and there is not too much work outside of class outside of the postlabs and prelabs which dont take long and the one big lab report near the end of the semester. With the tokens, getting a good grade is not much of a challenge if you really want it!

This class really depends on the TA you get. My TA was fortunately extremely chill, nice, and really helpful when we were confused about what to do in the lab. However, I know some of my friends' TAs were a lot stricter and more nitpicky with their postlabs. The prelabs weren't too hard and I thought Professor Morkowchuk was really good at explaining the concepts in her videos.

I don't enjoy labs in general so I didn't enjoy this class. Taking it with Chem 1420 definitely helped or I would have been lost. The grading was straightforward, same as 1411 with the specifications grading, but I found the quizzes harder this time. Definitely understand all the subjects Professor Morkowchuk emails about saying will be on the quiz. The formal lab report was a lot longer this time and time-consuming to make, but not too difficult because it was mostly a summary of information from the postlab for your experiment. The labs themselves took longer than 1411 because it was just more stuff to do. Instead of 1 class being a lab and 1 class being a workshop, we often did the lab and the plan for the next week's lab in the same class, so usually we stayed for 1.5-2 hours. A surprising amount of work for a 1 credit class that can be annoying if you don't get a good group, but straightforward and easy to do well in.

Chem lab is graded by specification grading, which means you need about an 80% on an assignment to master it, and you need to master a certain amount of each category of assignment to get each specific letter grade. Along with this you are given tokens to re-do assignments or quizzes if you did not master them the first time. For each lab you must do a pre-lab, a plan (you must write your own procedure for each experiment), a summary, and a post-lab. Additionally, you have to complete quizzes, a formal lab report, and two presentations. The work was not too overwhelming but it is a lot for a one credit course. The TAs are super helpful and have office hours weekly if you need help with any of these assignments. They are also very helpful in lab. I personally never had many personal encounters with Lisa other than her doing "goggle checks" in my lab each week, but I thought her pre-lab videos were only mildly helpful in completing the pre-lab assignments.

I got an A+ in this class, and I found this semester much easier than last semester.

Grading:
This course uses mastered and not yet mastered grading. This means you only have to get an 80% on a certain number of assignment to get an A. If you want an A+, you only have to do one extra assignment. The writing assigment changed to a full lab report as oppposed to the two partial lab reports from last semester. You still have 6 tokens you can use to to redo assigments.

My advice:
1) Always check prelabs and postlabs with your friends and if you got the same things you probably will master the assignment
2) Something I didn't learn until later is you can use the postlab assignments to help write your plan. The postlab tells you exactly what tables you will have to make.
3) Quizzes: use her emails that say the main ideas on the quiz and make a document with the information you will need to know on the quizzes. You can use this document on the quiz. The quizzes can make or break your grade because you have to master all of them to get an A.

The class is annoying and way more work than a one credit course should be; still, it is not too difficult to do well if you do the assignments.

This class was not too bad at all. The labs are painful and sometimes confusing. But all assignments are absolutely doable, and it's easy to get an A, even an A+ in this class. The post labs are kind of different than semester 1 - they are heavily focused on data analysis, which meant there was a lot of step-by-step math and less conceptual explanations, which I actually thought was better and took way less time.

My only advice and something I did differently than 1410 was that I did actually watch the prelab vids. If they are 40 mins (1 or 2 were very long, I think titrations being one of them), just put it on double speed. These videos have all prelab answers (purposefully so that you watch), and if I hadn't watch, I definitely wouldn't have been able to complete the prelabs. The plans aren't bad, and the actual lab assignments aren't either. The quizzes were pretty difficult but as long as you have all of your info organized, and you took the time to understand each lab thoroughly, you will master it. They are pretty generous with grading in this class, allowing you to get a few wrong and still get a "mastered" grade (instead of grading on a numeric scale, you either get 0/1 or 1/1, with a 1/1 being that you got most of the questions right).

Overall I learned a lot and this class caused me minimal stress. I liked having the 2-5 slot more than the 9-12, but either way you really will only use 1-2 hours max each period (never the full 3), so don't worry too much about timing.