The Use of Linked Multiple Representations to Understand and Solve Problems in Chemistry

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9353614 Kozma To most students, chemistry consists of memorized, isolated facts and quantitative calculations,; they typically do not have an integrated or deep understanding of how these relate to the chemical phenomena they represent. In our first study, we will look at how chemistry faculty members understand chemical equllibrium, particularly as it is expressed in various qualitative and quantitative representations, and compare this to the way of college students represent their understanding. In our second study we will look at how the understanding of students can be improved by using multiple linked representations. We have developed a prototype interactive multitmedia environment called MultiMedia and Mental Models in Chemistry ($M:Chem). It allows users to operate on chemical systems and observe the results in multiple, dynamic, synchronized windows which include a video of the reacton as it occurs on the lab bench., verbal descriptions, molecular-level animations, and dynamic graphs. We will use this to see how student understanding might be improved by promoting linkages among multiple representations of chemical phenomena. We will also investigate how professors and students use it in lecture and laboratory classrooms. Potentially, our findings will contribute to a theory of multimendia concept formation and use, and to changes in colloege chemistry curricula, pedagogy, and assessment. ***