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Dan Libby received a BA in Chemistry from Colby College and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Penn State University. He is currently Professor of Chemistry at Moravian. During the academic years 1978 through 1980, he developed a "learning cycle" based "active learning" approach to teaching introductory organic chemistry. Originally his class activities were used as the basis for instructor-facilitated whole-class discussions. He used this approach at Skidmore, Barnard, Colby College and it worked well in both large and small classes. Upon moving to Moravian College in 1992 and being influenced by members of MADCP, he reorganized his approach to use his activities for small-group discussions to help students more effectively develop their process skills. Over the past several years, he and a Moravian colleague, Carl Salter, have developed a qualitative theoretical approach to help introductory organic students understand chemical reactivity. The approach, Electron Energy Analysis, focuses on the relative energies of electrons in structures to assist students in predicting and explaining their reactivities. Electron Energy Analysis uses the highest energy electrons in a structure to explain or predict its reactivity. During the 2007-2008 academic year Dan introduced tablet PC’s (one per group) into his POGIL organic classroom to facilitate sharing group responses with the whole class and implemented a complete set of POGIL experiments for the laboratory portion of the course.Selected Publications"Piaget and Organic Chemistry: Teaching Introductory Organic Chemistry Through Learning Cycles", R.D. Libby, (1995) J. Chem. Ed. 72, 626-31."Piaget and Organic Chemistry: The Equilibrium-Kinetic Approach for Teaching Introductory Organic Chemistry", R.D. Libby (1991) J. Chem. Ed. 68, 634-7.
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