In a world facing complex global challenges, citizens around the world need to be able to engage in scientific reasoning and argumentation supported by evidence. Chemistry educators can support students in developing these skills by providing opportunities to justify how and why phenomena occur, including on assessments. However, little is known…

Research has shown that within a traditional organic chemistry curriculum, organic chemistry students struggle to develop deep conceptual understanding of reactions and attribute little meaning to the electron-pushing formalism. At the University of Ottawa, a new curriculum was developed for organic chemistry in which students are taught the…

Citizens in all roles need to be able to construct causal explanations of scientific phenomena and engage in coherent argumentation, supported by evidence and sound reasoning. These skills are needed in many contexts, from making everyday decisions to addressing complex global issues. One goal of instruction in this area is to get past assessment…

In this study, we investigated how students organized their knowledge about organic chemistry reactions in a transformed curriculum, including their choices, abilities, and changes over time. This transformed curriculum focuses on interpreting the underlying mechanistic patterns of chemical reactions and emphasizes the principles of reactivity in…

The concept of delocalization (i.e., resonance) is fundamental concept in organic chemistry but essential learning outcomes (LOs) have not previously been proposed nor has there been an analysis of how resonance is taught, despite indications in the literature that students have many non-canonical ideas about the concepts. To address this deficit,…

The goal of the present work is to extend an online reaction categorization task as a research instrument to a formative assessment tool of students' knowledge organization for organic chemistry reactions. Herein, we report our findings from administering the task with undergraduate students in Organic Chemistry II, at a large, research intensive…

Creating and using models are essential skills in chemistry. Novices and experts alike rely on conceptual models to build their own personal mental models for predicting and explaining molecular processes. There is evidence that chemistry students lack rich mental models of the molecular level; their mental models of reaction mechanisms have often…

In this study, we continue our efforts to address students' difficulties understanding organic chemistry, particularly in connecting structure to function and using the language of chemistry to explain how and why reactions occur. For the first time, we have characterized students' work and problem-solving strategies on familiar and unfamiliar…

Science is rapidly changing with vast amounts of new information and technologies available. However, traditional instructional formats do not adequately prepare a diverse population of learners who need to evaluate and use knowledge, not simply memorize facts. Moreover, curricular change has been glacially slow. One starting goal for curricular…

This study investigated students' successes, strategies, and common errors in their answers to questions that involved the electron-pushing (curved arrow) formalism (EPF), part of organic chemistry's language. We analyzed students' answers to two question types on midterms and final exams: (1) draw the electron-pushing arrows of a reaction step,…

In chemistry, novices and experts use mental models to simulate and reason about sub-microscopic processes. Animations are thus important tools for learning in chemistry to convey reaction dynamics and molecular motion. While there are many animations available and studies showing the benefit of learning from animations, there are also limitations…

To explore the differences between how organic chemistry students and organic chemistry professors think about organic chemistry reactions, we administered a card sort task to participants with a range of knowledge and experience levels. Beginning students created a variety of categories ranging from structural similarities to process oriented…

A significant redesign of the introductory organic chemistry curriculum at the authors' institution is described. There are two aspects that differ greatly from a typical functional group approach. First, organic reaction mechanisms and the electron-pushing formalism are taught before students have learned a single reaction. The conservation of…

We developed an online learning module called ''Organic Mechanisms: Mastering the Arrows'' to help students learn part of organic chemistry's language--the electron-pushing formalism. The module guides students to learn and practice the electron-pushing formalism using a combination of interactive videos, questions with instant feedback, and…

Research on mechanistic thinking in organic chemistry has shown that students attribute little meaning to the electron-pushing (i.e., curved arrow) formalism. At the University of Ottawa, a new curriculum has been developed in which students are taught the electron-pushing formalism prior to instruction on specific reactions--this formalism is…