FERNDALE – Rachele Downs, vice president of Entrepreneurial Strategy for Inforum, joined M2 TechCast co-Host Mike Brennan on the April 11 edition of the Internet radio show on the PodcastDetroit Network. With her was guest Julia Winter CEO, founder at Alchemie, which builds mobile games for higher education, beginning with a huge pain point, organic chemistry. This class stands in the path of students wanting to progress in careers in medicine, engineering, and science, with its 40 percent fail rate. The spatial understanding required for success in organic chemistry is not readily accessible via traditional textbook and lecture delivery systems.
With pressure to increase student retention, higher education institutions cannot allow organic chemistry to continue to be the roadblock to pre-professional students. Legacy textbook publishers have seen sales decrease due to competition from re-sellers and the multitude of other academic resources. All three of these groups, students, universities, and publishers, are affected by the difficulty of not only passing, but excelling, in organic chemistry.
Alchemie is putting a new method of learning, literally, into students’ hands by creating mobile puzzle games for organic chemistry. Players can practice the spatial ideas of organic chemistry to develop the intuitive skills necessary for success.
To learn more about this fascinating educational game developer, click on https://soundcloud.com/podcastdetroit/m2-ep-30-inforum-rachel-downs-with-julia-winter-of-alchemy?in=podcastdetroit/sets/m2techcast-on-podcastdetroit 
