No abstract

Research in Organic Chemistry education has revealed students’ challenges in mechanistic reasoning. When solving mechanistic tasks, students tend to focus on explicit surface features, apply fragmented conceptual knowledge, rely on...

Drawing is a fundamental skill in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines to express one’s reasoning and externalize mental models in problem-solving. Although research has highlighted the effectiveness of drawing as a learning strategy and the importance of drawing accuracy for learning success, little is known about learners’ actual drawing process. However, especially in organic chemistry, the investigation of drawing processes is of great importance as generating different representations, such as structural formulas, is inherent to problem-solving in this visual-laden discipline. Resonance structures, for example, are often used to estimate reactive sites in a molecule and to propose reaction pathways. However, this type of representation places a high cognitive demand on learners, which, besides conceptual difficulties, leads to drawing difficulties. To support learners in drawing and using resonance structures in problem-solving, it is necessary to characterize how they generate their drawings. To this end, a qualitative, exploratory study has been conducted to investigate undergraduate students’ (N = 20) drawing processes of resonance structures while solving an organic case comparison task. Using eye-tracking, the characteristics regarding the construction of productive and unproductive drawings became visible. Results indicate that unproductive drawings often stem from integrating and connecting unrelated information during the drawing process. Further, the results show that the productivity of a drawing depends on learners’ flexibility in information selection. Implications for supporting learners’ drawing process and using eye-tracking for characterizing drawing processes in other STEM disciplines are discussed.

With advances in digitization, learning processes can be supported in many ways. The expectation that pre-service teachers learn to design, choose, and use appropriate digital multimedia in their prospective teaching also increases. A university course should thus help student teachers develop their intention and behavior for the future use of digital media in teaching by reinforcing their attitude, subjective norm, and self-efficacy. A crucial aspect when using digital media for teaching and learning purposes is to understand how learners perceive and learn with them. Assessing perceptual processes in multimedia learning with eye-tracking technologies can serve as a means to support student teachers in evaluating learners’ perceptions and cognitive processes. This might initiate a meaningful reflection about multimedia design and could positively influence student teachers’ behavioral intention for future use of digital media. We present a new course design that was implemented and explored with a cohort of advanced chemistry student teachers. Participants in this course (a) created learning materials respecting multimedia design principles, (b) investigated the learning processes with these materials in a small empirical eye-tracking study, and (c) reflected on purposeful design of teaching materials in scientific posters. The overall course design, evaluation results, and impact on student teachers’ attitude, subjective norm, and self-efficacy expectations toward the use of digital media in teaching are given. Implications for implementing multimedia learning with eye-tracking in a student teacher course are also discussed.

No abstract