CARBOHYDECK: A card game to teach the stereochemistry of carbohydrates

[Excerto] Identifying and differentiating monosaccharide isomers is a key to understanding carbohydrate structural and biological diversities. Introductory biochemistry courses should teach students to identify and classify monosaccharides according to their isomeric characteristics (1, 2). The traditional vehicle for instruction is lectures that recall relevant topics from organic chemistry (like the identification of functional groups, or Fischer representations) and introduce students to new structures. Some courses offer complementary laboratory classes on the identification of monosaccharides based on chemical reactivity (3–5). The relative ineffectiveness of lectures in developing students’ understanding and skills relative to active learning methods is well known (6–7) and also documented for biochemistry classes (8–10). Lectures also limit opportunities for the types of student–student and student–instructor interactions known to promote student learning and motivation (11). The author’s previous experiences with this teaching approach in introductory biochemistry for nonmajors showed that lectures have a low effectiveness. This outcome is not hard to understand. Biochemistry and organic chemistry are traditionally difficult courses for nonmajors (4, 11). Understanding monosaccharide isomers poses specific challenges: (i) an understanding of the underlying organic and general chemistry principles; (ii) a need for skills to infer three-dimensional structures from two-dimensional diagrams; (iii) motivating oneself to master topics of a very abstract and symbolic nature (12). [...