Collaborative Research: An Exploration of the Impact of Molecular Representations on Organic Chemistry Students’ Problem Solving

该项目旨在通过更好地了解大学生如何学习、解释和使用分子表征来解决有机化学问题，从而为国家利益服务。化学家依靠表征来描述、交流和理解那些太小而看不见的粒子的行为。表示法的例子包括化学式和图形表示法，它们使用线条和符号来表示原子的排列方式。参加有机化学课程的大学生在学习复杂的化学过程的同时，必须学会解释和使用这些表征。这个NSF改善本科STEM教育（IUSE: EHR）项目将产生关于有机化学学生如何学习解释各种表征并使用它们来解决问题的新知识。项目团队将利用这项研究的结果开发和评估教学模块，以更好地支持有机化学学生的学习和解决问题。这个IUSE: EHR项目旨在系统地研究不同分子表征对学生成功解决有机化学问题的影响。将探讨的表示类型包括化学式、线角式、球形和简笔形以及静电势图。这项工作将以抽象框架、文本和视觉表示学习的多媒体学习理论和面向参与者的迁移框架为指导，以促进学生如何从每种表示中提取编码信息，与先前的实例建立联系，并将这些知识外推到新的问题环境中。该项目团队计划在北科罗拉多大学和南佛罗里达大学进行的三项研究中使用混合方法。首先，为了确定哪些表述最能帮助学生成功地解决各种有机化学问题类型，在学期末，学生将被随机分配到四个问题集中的一个，这些问题集只在所提供的表述上有所不同，结果将被分析。接下来，将使用有声思考协议进行学生问题解决会议，以产生关于特定表征如何促进学生成功的假设。这些分析的重点将是不同的表征如何支持学生的抽象和从一个问题上下文转移到另一个问题上下文。最后，从这些研究中产生的假设将用于开发和评估教学干预，包括教学材料和在线模块的开发。干预措施将根据其对学生学习的影响进行评估，这也将作为假设关系效用的衡量标准。所编写的材料将免费分发给讲授有机化学的教师。研究结果将在会议和同行评议的期刊上发表。为了进一步扩大影响，项目小组打算举办四个讲习班，共有40名教授有机化学的教员参加。在研讨会期间，该小组将协助教师将项目材料和研究结果整合到他们所在机构的有机化学教学中。美国国家科学基金会的改善本科STEM教育（IUSE: EHR）项目支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by better understanding how college students learn about, interpret, and use representations of molecules to solve organic chemistry problems. Chemists rely on representations to describe, communicate about, and understand the behavior of particles that are far too small to be seen. Examples of representations include chemical formulas and graphical representations that use lines and symbols to show how atoms are arranged. College students enrolled in organic chemistry courses must learn to interpret and use such representations at the same time they are learning about complex chemical processes. This NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE: EHR) project will generate new knowledge about how organic chemistry students learn to interpret a variety of representations and use them to solve problems. The project team will use the results of this research to develop and evaluate instructional modules to better support organic chemistry students’ learning and problem solving.This IUSE: EHR project intends to systematically investigate the effects of different molecular representations on students’ success in solving organic chemistry problems. The representation types that will be explored include chemical formulae, line angle formulae, ball and stick figures, and electrostatic potential maps. The work will be guided by an Abstraction Framework, the Multimedia Learning Theory on Learning with Textual and Visual Representations, and the Actor-Oriented Transfer Framework to facilitate understanding of how students extract encoded information from each representation, make connections to prior instances, and extrapolate that knowledge for use in new problem contexts. The project team plans to use a mixed method approach across three studies conducted at the University of Northern Colorado and the University of South Florida. First, to identify which representations best facilitate student success in solving a variety of organic chemistry problem types, end-of-semester students will be randomly assigned to one of four problem sets that differ only in the representations provided and the results will be analyzed. Next, student problem-solving sessions using think-aloud protocols will be conducted to generate hypotheses regarding how particular representations facilitate student success. The foci of these analyses will be on how the different representations support student abstraction and transfer from one problem context to another. Finally, the hypotheses generated from these studies will be used to develop and evaluate an instructional intervention that will include the development of instructional materials and online modules. The intervention will be evaluated with respect to its impact on student learning, which will also serve as a measure for the utility of the hypothesized relationships. The materials developed will be disseminated and made freely available to faculty teaching organic chemistry. The research results will be presented at conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. To broaden the impact even further, the project team intends to conduct four workshops involving a total of forty faculty members who teach organic chemistry. During the workshops, the team will assist the faculty members in integrating project materials and findings into organic chemistry instruction at their institutions. NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE: EHR) program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.