An understanding of acid–base reactions is necessary for success in chemistry courses and relevant to careers outside of chemistry, yet research has demonstrated that students often struggle with learning acid–base reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry. One response to this challenge is the development of educational applications to support instruction and learning. The development of these supports also creates an opportunity to probe students’ thinking about organic chemistry reaction mechanisms using multiple modalities—
Organic chemistry is a required course sequence for many STEM students, however research indicates that organic chemistry reaction mechanisms are especially challenging for students due to a mixture of underlying conceptual difficulties, the process-oriented thinking inherent to the discipline, and the representations commonly used to depict mechanisms. While student reasoning about many of the reaction types covered in the organic chemistry curriculum have been studied previously, there is minimal research focused specifically on how students think about the mechanisms of addition reactions. This study addresses that gap by probing first semester organic chemistry students' thinking using think-aloud interviews as they worked through two different addition reactions. To elicit a range of thinking, students worked through the mechanisms using either paper and pencil or an app that dynamically represents the molecules. Overall, students were able to identify the steps of the two addition reactions but did not always successfully apply chemical thinking during the mechanistic steps. Specifically, both groups of students struggled with the concepts related to carbocation stability, frequently misapplying stabilization via substitution and demonstrating difficulty in identifying the potential for resonance stabilization. Our results suggest that instructors should emphasize the conceptual grounding directing mechanistic steps, in particular when determining carbocation stability.
Lewis structures are fundamental to learning chemistry, yet many students struggle to develop a complex understanding of its meaning and uses. Writing-to-Learn supports students in developing a deeper conceptual understanding of the topic, making it an ideal pedagogy to apply to student learning of Lewis structures. One difficulty often associated with classroom writing is the capacity of instructors to provide feedback to each student on their written work; however, this practical constraint can be mitigated through incorporating peer review. Peer review and revision are known to support conceptual learning and yet are underutilized in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) classrooms. Additionally, peer review is an authentic, common, and necessary practice in chemistry research, which warrants its incorporation early on in chemistry courses. A major concern regarding the use of peer review-based feedback is the ability of students to provide concept-based feedback that is both correct and detailed enough to enhance student understanding and support substantial revisions. In response, this work investigates the relationship between revision and the characteristics of students’ peer review comments in the context of a Writing-to-Learn assignment focusing on student understanding of Lewis structures. Chemistry students wrote a summary of Lewis’ 1916 paper introducing Lewis structures, participated in peer review, and revised their work in response to a structured prompt detailing specific chemistry concepts to be covered. The peer review comments and students’ revisions were thematically analyzed. The peer review comments were deductively analyzed according to an analytical framework to characterize the usefulness of comments. The extent and type of student revisions were also analyzed and paired, if relevant, with the associated peer review comments. Results indicate that students provided both detailed and conceptually focused comments on their peers’ work, irrespective of specific chemistry content being addressed. Although the assignment and peer review rubric were content focused, students made a mixture of editing and content revisions following peer review. These results suggest that further scaffolding of what constitutes good feedback and revision may further promote student learning.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.