Thinkwell Chemistry -- compatible with AP version

[HeatherInWI]

I'm trying to make another curriculum decision, as the chemistry course we'd chosen (textbook based) doesn't seem to be sparking much interest around here. I'm considering Thinkwell, but am unsure because

in standard, quality, chemistry courses, there's a lot of quantitative homework doing such things as balancing equations. All the sample material seemed to be qualitative, but that was only the first two chapters. What does Thinkwell have/do to give students practice in this sort of thing? Does it do the job adequately? How was your experience with Thinkwell?

[emubird]

The exercises are somewhat mediocre. Sometimes they're great, match the lecture perfectly, and are just the review the student needs. Other times, the questions aren't well correlated with the lecture, are just too hard, or there aren't enough of them for practice.

 

We've found that the exercises corresponding to the lectures by Gordon Yee are better. The ones for the other guy (can't remember his name) aren't so useful. (Actually, the Yee lectures in general are just better.)

 

We found that we had to find supplementary problems for a number of the topics early on -- because these tend to be the most computational. As the course progresses, it gets more qualitative so we haven't needed as much supplementation.

 

The lectures have been helpful at just getting concepts across, but you may need to find more problems to do in the more computational areas.

 

We've been doing some math with Khan Academy (which is free). The Thinkwell lectures seem to be somewhat better, but the supplementary exercises at Khan are far and away better for the math we're doing. You might look into the chemistry on that site. It could be that the lectures at Khan may be enough to get you through the chem text you have, and the exercises might be useful for more experience.