Building reasonable scientific arguments is a fundamental skill students need to participate in scientific discussions. In organic chemistry, students’ argumentation and reasoning skills on reaction mechanisms are described as indicators...

In chemistry, building arguments and applying concept knowledge is closely linked to evaluating claims, supporting claims with evidence, and justifying the linkage of evidence to claim with reasoning. However, previous studies revealed that, when building arguments, students experience challenges either in differentiating between argument components, in applying concept knowledge, or in building multivariate arguments. Scaffolding may remediate these challenges by supporting students as they focus on the expected argument structure and/or activate the required concept knowledge. As students enter the classroom with different prior knowledge, supports need to be adapted to students' needs. Thus, we designed a two-part argumentation training. The first part is a diagnostic training, in which students receive training for building arguments while their performance is analyzed. The second part consists of four trainings, adapted to the area in which each student experienced the greatest challenges, e.g., (1) in differentiating between argument components, (2) in applying concept knowledge, (3) in both areas, or (4) in building multivariate arguments. The tasks in the trainings center on building arguments on alternative reaction pathways in organic chemistry and combine a multitude of chemical concepts, such as nucleophilicity, basicity, enthalpy, or entropy. There were 64 students enrolled in an Organic Chemistry II course who participated in the training. Evaluation of the two-part training revealed (a) the effectiveness of the training and (b) how students evaluated the training themselves.

No abstract

Although many studies have used interviews to explore how students' reason about organic chemistry problems, less is known about how students learn in-the-moment in natural settings, such as during discussions in active learning settings. In this chapter, we draw on practical epistemology analysis (PEA) to define in-the-moment learning as the noticing of gaps, i.e., students' needs to make something intelligible to be able to progress in an activity, and the filling of these gaps with relations, i.e., connections between what is in question and prior conceptual knowledge or familiar skills. Through analyzing video recordings of students in an interactive general chemistry lecture working on organic chemistry content in groups facilitated by learning assistants, we demonstrate the power of PEA as a tool to make student learning during collaborative group discussion visible. By doing so we aim to provide a lens for practitioners who teach organic chemistry to notice how students' in-the-moment learning progresses and how their facilitation relates to that progression and for researchers to make this progression as it occurs in the moment accessible for their own investigation.