Prof Welch is probably one of the most easy going yet incredibly disorganized people I've ever met. His lectures are a little discombobulating, but he's always happy to help after class and during office hours. That being said, go to office hours! I learned most of the material by talking with him in office hours and really going through the material. Welch will be super understanding and he's always open to giving extensions on almost any assignment except for the exams (if you don't have a valid excuse). Speaking of exams, there are two big things: 1. Don't throw away your Part 2 (individual for group work); even though it's only 10% of your total exam grade, it makes a difference! and 2. always look over your exam immediately after it's returned and get those regrades -- Welch and the TAs don't do an awesome job of making sure Gradescope grades correctly, so get as many of those points as you can :)
#tCFfall2021

I love Kevin Welch. I took AP Chem in high school, but with this course it's really not needed all that much. The most difficult thing about this course was quantum numbers (which was in the beginning), but once you find a routine of balancing TopHat (the resource used for reading/homework/group work) readings/homework and real time lecture the class begins to make sense. Welch really wants students to understand the course content and succeed, but you need to pay attention in lecture to do so!!! Expo was not great but bearable. Honestly the TAs in Expo were not much help when my group didn't understand the chapter and apparently Welch was present in other Expo sections but not the one I was in. Your success in Expo is very greatly dependent on your knowledge of course material, how well you work with others, and the people in your group. I highly recommend taking this course with Kevin Welch!

Professor Welch was a fantastic professor for my first semester of college level chemistry. He made lectures pretty entertaining as far as chem lectures go which is no easy task. That being said, I didn't love the format of the flipped classroom with the TopHat textbook readings/questions, and the readings themselves were extremely over complicated and ambiguous. The expo session of this class was a little tiring but it was definitely helpful in reinforcing my understanding of the material. This class also had the most outside work out of all my classes this semester. If I was reading the chapter very thoroughly and taking good notes, it could take me anywhere from 1-3 hours. The LBLA and BIT got more routine and easier to complete for me throughout the semester. If I had to give a word of advice it would be to utilize the help of your professors and TA's! They are there to help. Lastly- the exams each had three parts to them, and took up basically and entire week each. These were definitely stressful, but if you know the material you will do well on at least the 1st and 3rd (group) portions. Good luck!

Professor Welch is a very nice guy who genuinely wants you to do well in his course and understand the material. Chemistry is hard, but he tries to communicate the information as clear as possible. There is a LOT of course work each week and you will be spending a lot of time on this class. Exams are extremely difficult and structured very uniquely. Chapter readings are due each Sunday in which you basically teach yourself the material and have to answer questions on it for a grade even though you're "not expected to have a full grasp on the material before it is taught". Along with lecture, there is lab, workshop, and expo for this class, which all adds up to a lot of work. It is manageable though if you work hard in this class. Go to lecture and take detailed notes. STUDY FOR EXAMS EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE OPEN NOTE AND OPEN RESOURCE!!! #tCFfall2021

This course review comes to you in three parts.

PART ONE: COURSE STRUCTURE

This course features a weekly lecture followed by an expo section a few days later. Prior to the lecture you complete a reading assignment in TopHat, which I will address shortly. I didn't always find the lecture 100% useful and ultimately stopped attending after about a month in favor of watching the lecture videos in the library afterwards. Between lecture and expo you complete an LBLA assignment which usually helps to prepare you for what happens in expo.

Expo was extremely challenging for me at first, largely influenced by the fact that I had a terrible group. Fortunately, I was able to switch. When Prof. Welch says to reach out to him with any concerns you have, he truly means it! During Expo you work on a series of challenging problems with your group. I strongly suggest buying some good whiteboard markers. After expo you complete the BIT assignment which includes work for your portfolio and questions to summarize that week's material.

PART TWO: COURSEWORK AND EXAMS

I'm going to be honest, the reading sections of this course are awful. The book does not explain the material well and the only way I managed to get through it was having someone else that could explain the concepts to me. I would suggest finding a YouTube channel you jive with to help understand the material. The LBLA assignments are extremely fair, make sure you do the work it tells you to do before expo, usually drawing structures or whatnot. BIT assignments are usually harder than the LBLA assignments but are extremely reasonable if you took your time on the content during the week. I strongly recommend keeping up with your portfolio each week, I waited until the last minute each time which was a mistake.

Now onto the exams. This course is unique in that it features group exams, which I also hated at first but grew to appreciate.

Part one of the exam usually had 8-10 questions (which wound up being around 25 questions when accounting for multiple parts). These questions are very similar to the questions asked in the BIT assignments during the week. The best piece of advice I can offer for preparing for part one of the exam is to go back through every single question in both TopHat sections and make sure that you understand how to do the problem, and why the answer is correct. Part one contains a mix of multiple choice, short answer, and explanation questions so being able to explain the concepts is crucial.

Part two of the exam consists of 5 multiple choice questions that are extremely long, difficult, and detailed. I'm not exactly sure what the best way to study for this part of the exam would be aside from making sure you have a firm grasp of the material. What I personally did for this section of the exam was export each question into Goodnotes on my iPad and go through the wording of each answer choice extremely carefully. I would highlight and annotate individual parts of answer choices to explain my reasoning for eliminating them. It is very important that you are able to defend your answer choice because of the structure of part three. Overall, I would suggest taking your time on these questions and allow yourself the time to pick apart the nuance in each answer choice.

Part three of the exam has you revisit the questions from part two with your expo group. As a group you decide on a first choice answer, a second choice answer, and an explanation for each of your first-choice answer choices. It is vital that you bring notes from part two of the exam to help write explanations for each of your group's answer choices. I suggest making an Excel sheet at the beginning of the expo block to aggregate your group's answers before you start working through them together.

PART THREE: THE INSTRUCTOR

Prof. Welch, while he has is flaws, is absolutely wonderful. I suffered a personal loss during the semester and he was very generous with extensions and giving me the opportunity to catch up. In terms of expo, go to him if you have a problem with your group. I had problems with my first group and he was kind enough to switch me to a different expo group. In terms of his lectures, I often had a hard time following them and would get frustrated by his tangents. Take advantage of the review sheets he posts. He didn't always do the best job of explaining certain topics or contextualizing them, so I usually turned to outside materials. Ultimately, Prof. Welch is an extremely kind, caring, and fair professor who wants to see his students succeed, you just need to put in the work.

And as a bonus I've included the grade breakdown:

5% | Portfolio completed during the semester
10% | TopHat Reading Sections
15% | TopHat Expo/LBLA/BIT Sections
45% | Three midterm exams each worth 15%
5%| Final Project
20% | Final Exam

Group Exam Breakdown:

Exam 1: 20% Part 1, 10% Part 2, 70% Part 3
Exam 2: 45% Part 1, 10% Part 2, 45% Part 3
Exam 3: 70% Part 1, 10% Part 2, 20% Part 3

If I did not have to take this course, I wouldn't have. Though Welch was an enthusiastic teacher and seemed very knowledgeable and approachable, I retained minimal information. Many questions were often answered with an, "I don't know," or, "You don't need to understand the reasoning behind the concept for this course," which I did not find to be helpful. I understand that it is difficult to teach such large groups of students (hundreds in the lecture and at least 70+ in workshops) and make sure everyone is understanding the material but most of the learning was incredibly individual. Taking AP Chemistry in high school may have helped, but with only having experience in pre-Chemistry in 10th grade, this course did not seem intro-level whatsoever.

I thought this class was pretty straightforward, although it took a few weeks to get used to the Expo/Lecture strucutre, I thought it ended up working pretty well. However, if your expo group is bad, that could screw you over since all three tests have parts where you work in your expo group. I liked my group, and the content wasn't too bad as long as you read the textbook. Honestly, other than the last unit, the lectures and textbook cover the same thing, so as long as you go to one you should be fine. (textbook is a lil better in my opinion) Welch is a good professor who is good at explaining abstract concepts. Overall, good class.

Amazing teacher! Made great study guides for each exam and held a review session during the last lecture before exam three. When talking to my peers he is arguably the best chem teacher and is very easy to reach out to about questions/concerns. Hard part about this course is that the Textbook is written in a way that is very difficult to understand, but all of the professors use it so there is no way around it. #tCFfall2021

Lectures are fun and super helpful! If you skip lectures and only read the textbook, you won't pass. TAs are great too. Practices and Textbooks are on TopHat. Weekly readings and expo questions consume time and energy. Start them as soon as possible is my advice. Good Luck!

I did not like this class. Professor Welch is a nice guy but a lousy teacher. Granted, I took this class during Covid times so it may be different for future students. Yes, he did lecture, and his lectures were good. However, he did not lecture enough. We were expected to teach ourselves chemistry using an online textbook that the intro chem teachers wrote for us. It has some typos and a lot of the content is not written with expectations that students have to teach themselves. I would spend 6-10 hours every weekend reading the textbook, taking notes on it, answering the TopHat questions (30-40 questions), watching his lecture, taking notes on that, and answering lecture questions. There are also textbook assignments throughout the week to do. I was so burnt out by the end of the fall and spring semesters solely because of the unnecessary workload of this class. My AP Chem knowledge definitely helped get me through this class.

I got an A in this class but it required too much time and energy. Take three sets of notes: one for the textbook, one for his lecture, and combine those two and make a study guide for the exam. These study guides will be what you study for the final. Redo all textbook, expo, and lecture questions in preparation for exams. I went to all TA reviews and actively participated in them. If they continue to run these, I would definitely make use of them and ask any questions you may have. The individual parts of the exams (Part 1) are usually pretty straightforward and doable, but the second and third parts are what will ruin your grade. I would spend hours working on the 5 MCQ part of the exam (Part 2) and still get a D on it, so don't waste your time trying to search the depths of the Internet for help on this part. Make sure that your expo group is smart because the third part of the exam revisits those 5 MCQ and your group has to answer those questions together.

If you're trying to choose between Welch and other teachers, I'd probably go with Welch because he is the kindest of the options. Even though his email communication is really slow and sometimes nonexistent, he's pretty understanding if you can't make a deadline or something. Make sure to have a group chat or some friends to check work/ask questions with since the class is heavily reliant on teaching yourself.