scholarly journals The Impact of Supplemental Instruction on the Learning Achievements and Attitudes of Organic Chemistry Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. e2232
Author(s):  
Issa I Salame
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Supplemental Instruction ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
The Impact

Analysing the impact of a discussion-oriented curriculum on first-year general chemistry students' conceptions of relative acidity

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 543-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Shah ◽  
Christian A. Rodriguez ◽  
Monica Bartoli ◽  
Gregory T. Rushton
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
General Chemistry ◽  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Item Analysis ◽  
First Year ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Primary Determinant ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Relative Acidity

Instructional strategies that support meaningful student learning of complex chemical topics are an important aspect of improving chemistry education. Adequately assessing the success of these approaches can be supported with the use of aligned instruments with established psychometrics. Here, we report the implementation and assessment of one such curriculum,Chemical Thinking, on first-year general chemistry students' conceptions of relative acidity using the recently-developed concept inventory,ACIDI. Our results reveal that, overall, students performed significantly better onACIDIfollowing instruction, with scores consistent with those previously reported for students who had completed one semester of organic chemistry. Students performed equally well on a delayed post-test administered ten weeks after final instruction, which suggests that instruction promoted a stable conceptual reprioritisation. Item analysis ofACIDIrevealed that students generally made conceptual gains on items where inductive effects were the primary determinants of conjugate base stability and relative acidity. However, students overwhelmingly struggled on items where resonance was the primary determinant. Analysis of student–student arguments in active learning settings provided evidence for how the quality of student arguments impacted their conceptions. Overall, these findings suggest that students were able to avoid several superficial misconceptions cited in the literature about relative acidity, and that this topic, traditionally taught exclusively in organic chemistry, may be introduced earlier in the sequence of curricular topics. Implications for future studies on the role of argumentational aspects of student–student conversations and facilitation strategies in promoting or hindering meaningful learning are discussed.

Exploring the impact of the framing of a laboratory experiment on the nature of student argumentation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Petritis ◽  
Colleen Kelley ◽  
Vicente Talanquer
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Substitution Reaction ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Laboratory Frame ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Chemical Concepts ◽  
The Impact

Research on student argumentation in chemistry laboratories has mainly focused on evaluating the quality of students’ arguments and analyzing the structure of such arguments (i.e. claims, evidence, and rationale). Despite advances in these areas, little is known about the impact of activity framing on the nature of student argumentation in laboratory settings. In this research study, we analyzed the arguments generated by college organic chemistry students working on a substitution reaction experiment that was framed in two distinct ways: predict-verify and observe-infer. The arguments constructed by students in their post-laboratory reports under each laboratory frame were characterized by paying attention to both domain-specific and domain-general features. Our analysis revealed significant differences in the chemical concepts and ideas that students under the two conditions invoked, as well as in the level of integration, specificity, alignment, and type of reasoning observed within and across different argument components. Our findings highlight the importance of paying attention to how experiments are framed in terms of the goals, procedures, information, and tools available to students as these decisions can have a major impact on the nature of the claims students make, their use of evidence, and the approach to reasoning that they follow.

Location-thinking, value-thinking, and graphical forms: combining analytical frameworks to analyze inferences made by students when interpreting the points and trends on a reaction coordinate diagram

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander P. Parobek ◽  
Patrick M. Chaffin ◽  
Marcy H. Towns
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Rate ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Reaction Rates ◽  
Reaction Coordinate ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Qualitative Research Study ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Analytical Frameworks ◽  
Chemical Representations

Reaction coordinate diagrams (RCDs) are chemical representations widely employed to visualize the thermodynamic and kinetic parameters associated with reactions. Previous research has demonstrated a host of misconceptions students adopt when interpreting the perceived information encoded in RCDs. This qualitative research study explores how general chemistry students interpret points and trends on a RCD and how these interpretations impact their inferences regarding the rate of a chemical reaction. Sixteen students participated in semi-structured interviews in which participants were asked to interpret the points and trends along provided RCDs and to compare relative reaction rates between RCDs. Findings derived from this study demonstrate the diversity of graphical reasoning adopted by students, the impact of students’ interpretations of the x-axis of a RCD on the graphical reasoning employed, and the influence of these ideas on inferences made about reaction rate. Informed by analytical frameworks grounded in the resources framework and the actor-oriented model of transfer, implications for instruction are provided with suggestions for how RCDs may be presented to assist students in recognizing the critical information encoded in these diagrams.

scholarly journals The Impact of Supplemental Instruction on the Performance of Male and Female Engineers in a Freshman Chemistry Course

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Wisniewski ◽  
Rachel Shapiro ◽  
Emma Kaeli ◽  
Kristen Coletti ◽  
Paul DiMilla ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Supplemental Instruction ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Impact

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document