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

合作研究：探索分子表示对有机化学学生解决问题的影响

• 批准号: 2142311
• 负责人: Melissa Weinrich
• 金额: $ 17.29万
• 依托单位: University of Northern Colorado
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-07-01 至 2025-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2142311&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Exploration; Impact; Molecular

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.

该项目旨在通过更好地了解大学生如何学习、解释和使用分子表示法来解决有机化学问题，从而服务于国家利益。化学家依靠表象来描述、交流和理解太小而看不见的粒子的行为。表示法的例子包括化学公式和图形表示法，它们使用线条和符号来显示原子的排列方式。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种表示法。这项NSF改善本科生STEM教育(IUSE：EHR)的项目将产生关于有机化学学生如何学习解释各种表示法并使用它们解决问题的新知识。项目团队将利用这项研究的结果来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。这项IUSE：EHR项目旨在系统地调查不同分子表征对学生成功解决有机化学问题的影响。将探索的表示类型包括化学公式、线角公式、球形图和棒形图以及静电势图。这项工作将在抽象框架、关于文本和视觉表征学习的多媒体学习理论和面向演员的迁移框架的指导下进行，以促进理解学生如何从每个表征中提取编码信息，与先前的实例建立联系，并推断这些知识以用于新的问题情境。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，为了确定哪些表示法最有助于学生成功地解决各种有机化学问题类型，学期末的学生将被随机分配到四个仅在所提供的表示法上不同的问题集中，并对结果进行分析。接下来，将使用有声思考协议进行学生问题解决课程，以生成关于特定表征如何促进学生成功的假设。这些分析的焦点将集中在不同的表征如何支持学生抽象以及从一个问题背景转移到另一个问题背景。最后，这些研究产生的假设将被用来开发和评估教学干预，其中将包括教学材料和在线模块的开发。该干预措施将根据其对学生学习的影响进行评估，这也将作为对假设关系的效用的衡量。开发的材料将被分发并免费提供给教授有机化学的教师。研究结果将在会议上和同行评议的期刊上公布。为了进一步扩大影响，项目团队打算举办四个研讨会，共有40名教授有机化学的教职员工参加。在研讨会期间，该小组将协助教员将项目材料和发现整合到他们所在机构的有机化学教学中。NSF的改善本科生STEM教育(IUSE：EHR)计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。