Building Personal Connections to Organic Chemistry through Writing

Abstract

Organic chemistry courses enroll students from many majors with diverse interests. Although instructors may strive to appeal to these interests by relating course content to real life, it is challenging to intrinsically appeal to students at the personal level, particularly in high enrollment courses like organic chemistry. When students identify personal connections with course content, they may be more interested or motivated to continue learning course content. To help students identify connections, we designed and implemented a writing assignment prompting students to select an organic compound that personally relates to them and write about this personal connection. Herein, we discuss the implementation and evaluation of the assignment. Student feedback survey responses and interviews indicate that the assignment allowed students to identify how organic chemistry is relevant to their lives. We believe the assignment could be effectively implemented at other institutions and in other chemistry courses.

NanoAdventure: Development of a Text-Based Adventure Game in English, Spanish, and Chinese for Communicating about Nanotechnology and the Nanoscale

“…The relative simplicity of the programming languages available in Twine (Harlowe, Sugarcube) and wealth of resources suggest that it would also be feasible to have students develop their own chemistry-themed interactive texts. Write-to-learn (WTL) activities like this have been shown to enhance student engagement and learning in chemistry. , …”

“…Write-to-learn (WTL) activities like this have been shown to enhance student engagement and learning in chemistry. 37,38 Based on our experience with crafting NanoAdventure, we suggest that other topics in chemistry suited to an interactive text format include, but are certainly not limited to, chemical safety, forensic mysteries, and prelaboratory sections on new procedures and protocols. There are also several alreadypublished chemistry escape room activities that could also inspire or be adapted into interactive fiction.…”

Capturing students' identification of the relevance of organic chemistry in writing

“…A few years prior to data collection for this study, the primary instructor for the course (SCZ) designed the writing assignment to help students identify how organic chemistry was relevant to their daily lives. The assignment is described in Garza et al (2022) and presented in full in Appendix -writing assignment description; students were asked to identify an organic molecule that is important to their life and describe how it was related. Intended to be a low stakes assignment, it made up 8% of student's course grade.…”

“…The interviews ranged from approximately 10 to 20 minutes in length. The interview protocol was previously published in Garza et al (2022). Data from the interviews provided insight on each student's approach for identifying their molecule and describing how they saw chemistry as relevant outside of the academic course.…”

Who’s That Scientist? A Scientist Report Writing Assignment for General Chemistry Students

“…Recently, there has been information in the literature − regarding diversity, inclusion, access, and equity in the chemistry curriculum. The subject of cultural relevance and creating personal connections for students within the chemistry classroom is also a matter of discussion in the literature. − The list of scientists currently used for the Scientist Report assignment includes names historically mentioned during a typical general chemistry course. Additional names are being investigated for inclusion in order to create a more diverse list.…”