In Haverford College's course Chem 111:Structure and Bonding, we have included a workshop exercise that guides students through their first experience using electronic structure calculations.  We use the WebMO interface along with Gaussian03, but the exercise could be adapted for other electronic structure programs. The general structure of the exercise is as follows:

This Lewis structure and VSEPR problem is based on a paper from Inorganic Chemistry in 2010 reporting the crystal structures of a series of salts of the [XeF]⁺ cation.  The [MF₆]^– and [M₂F₁₁]^– anions (M = As, Sb, Bi) were used as counterions, and in all cases, the [XeF]⁺ cation interacts with the anion via a weak bond between the Xe and a fluoride of the anion to form an ion-pair in the crystalline solid.  These somewhat unusual ions provide an interesting application of the predictive powers of Lewis stru

This Lewis structure and VSEPR problem is based on a paper from Inorganic Chemistry in 2010 reporting the crystal structure of the carbonyl diazide molecule.  This relatively simple molecule provides an interesting application of the predictive powers of Lewis structures and VSEPR theory to molecular structure, backed up by experimental data on bond distances and bond angles.  Before tackling carbonyl diazide, the students warm up by considering the structures of hydrogen azide and the isolated azide ion.  The reference to the original paper is

For the past four years, I have required my inorganic students to write short 3-page formal lab reports in the form of communication to the Journal of the American Chemical Society.  This exercise has relieved some of the stress on my students who are writing reports of other science classes and simplified my grading.  Using Jeffrey Kovac's Writing Across the Chemistry Curriculum: An Instructor's Handbook as a starting point, I have developed a rubric to provide qualitative feedback to the stu