Predictability of Organic Chemistry Students’ Final Course Grades Using Four-Week Averages

2012 ◽  
pp. 123-129
Author(s):  
J. T. Wasacz ◽  
K. A. O. Pacheco ◽  
J. O. Schreck
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Course Grades

The role of authentic contexts and social elements in supporting organic chemistry students’ interactions with writing-to-learn assignments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael N. Petterson ◽  
Solaire A. Finkenstaedt-Quinn ◽  
Anne Ruggles Gere ◽  
Ginger V. Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Peer Interactions ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Writing To Learn ◽  
Student Interest ◽  
Student Interactions ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Student Affect ◽  
Survey Responses

Student affect is an important factor in the learning process and may be especially important in gateway courses such as organic chemistry. Students’ recognition of the relevance of the content they are learning and interactions with their peers can support their motivation to learn. Herein, we describe a study focused on how Writing-to-Learn assignments situate organic chemistry content within relevant contexts and incorporate social elements to support positive student interactions with organic chemistry. These assignments incorporate rhetorical elements—an authentic context, role, genre, and audience—to support student interest and demonstrate the relevance of the content. In addition, students engage in the processes of peer review and revision to support their learning. We identified how the authentic contexts and peer interactions incorporated into two Writing-to-Learn assignments supported students’ interactions with the assignments and course content by analyzing student interviews and supported by feedback survey responses. Our results indicate that assignments incorporating these elements can support student affect and result in students’ perceived learning, but that there should be careful consideration of the relevance of the chosen contexts with respect to the interests of the students enrolled in the course and the complexity of the contexts.

Organic chemistry students’ challenges with coherence formation between reactions and reaction coordinate diagrams

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 732-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maia Popova ◽  
Stacey Lowery Bretz
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Reaction Mechanisms ◽  
Reaction Coordinate ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Student Difficulties ◽  
Need Support ◽  
Elimination Reactions

The purpose of this study was to elucidate and describe students’ thinking when making connections between substitution and elimination reactions and their corresponding reaction coordinate diagrams. Thirty-six students enrolled in organic chemistry II participated in individual, semi-structured interviews. Three major themes were identified that characterize students’ difficulties with integrating the information from the reactions and the reaction coordinate diagrams: incorrect ideas about the meanings of the reaction coordinate diagrams’ features, errors when examining reaction mechanisms, and an inability to assess the relative energies of reaction species. These findings suggest that students need support for coherence formation between reactions and reaction coordinate diagrams. Implications for teaching to address these student difficulties are suggested.

TMI (Too much information)! Effects of given information on organic chemistry students’ approaches to solving mechanism tasks

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria DeCocq ◽  
Gautam Bhattacharyya
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Instructional Materials ◽  
External Representation ◽  
Reaction Products ◽  
Representational System ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
Line Angle ◽  
Problem Solving Strategy

We report our qualitative study of twenty-four students enrolled in the second-semester of a second-year undergraduate (sophomore-level) organic chemistry course, Organic Two. We asked the research participants to propose the product and electron-pushing mechanism of elementary mechanistic steps in the absence and presence of the corresponding overall transformation. We also asked the students about their preferences of representational systems when working on tasks common to Organic Two to ascertain the extent to which an external representation, rather than a task, might evoke a problem-solving strategy. In addition to familiarity to instructional materials, the main reason for which the students preferred line-angle formulas for nearly all of the task types is that the representational system allowed them most readily extract relevant, or otherwise useful, information without distracting them. However, line-angle formulas did not seem to cue students to the three-dimensional attributes of molecules; only dash-and-wedge structures and Newman and chair conformers did so. For the electron-pushing tasks, the research participants’ reasoning processes included at least some chemical characteristics of the species involved in the transformation when they were not given the product of reaction. When provided with the overall transformation, however, the students changed their focus to getting to the product. Consequently, they replaced correct answers with incorrect ones when given the reaction products. These results raise the possibility that traditional mechanism tasks may mask students’ mechanistic reasoning ability.

How do general chemistry students’ impressions, attitudes, perceived learning, and course performance vary with the arrangement of homework questions and E-text?

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vickie M. Williamson ◽  
Caitlin J. Zumalt
Keyword(s):  
General Chemistry ◽  
Perceived Learning ◽  
Course Performance ◽  
First Semester ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Course Grades ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Level Of Understanding ◽  
Large Sections ◽  
Online Web

Two large sections of first-semester general chemistry were assigned to use different homework systems. One section used MindTap, a Cengage Learning product, which presents short sections of the textbook with embedded homework questions; such that students could read the textbook section then answer one or more questions in the same screen. The other section used Online Web Learning (OWL-version 2) also from Cengage Learning, which presents homework questions that contains links to open the textbook in a separate window. Findings showed no difference between the groups in any course grades, with both groups strongly indicating that they learned from their system. During a second-semester chemistry course taught by the same instructor, all students used OWLv2. At the end of the second semester, students who had used MindTap during the first semester were given a delayed survey, containing Likert-scaled and open-response questions dealing with students’ perceived learning/perceived level of understanding with each system, how easy each system was to use, and the advantages/disadvantages of each system. In addition, students were asked to compare the two systems giving their homework preference. Students were heavily positive towards the MindTap system. Further data was collected to compare students who used MindTap for the first semester and OWL for the second-semester with those who used the systems in reverse order, using the same survey. Results showed that students indicated significantly higher perceived learning with MindTap and better attitudes and opinions of MindTap, with its single window arrangement, often citing that they read more with MindTap.

Engaging Organic Chemistry Students Using ChemDraw for iPad

2015 ◽  
Vol 92 (8) ◽  
pp. 1402-1405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Layne A. Morsch ◽  
Michael Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Chemistry Students
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