Research has shown that organic chemistry students struggle to develop deep conceptual understanding of reactions and attribute little meaning to the electron-pushing formalism within the traditional organic chemistry curriculum. At the University of Ottawa, a reformed curriculum was developed for organic chemistry in which students are taught the language of the electron-pushing formalism prior to learning about specific reactions. When students are taught reactions, the reactions are organized by type of mechanism rather than by functional group. To investigate how students make connections across reactions within the new curriculum, a card sort task was developed. The card sort task consisted of 25 cards, each depicting the reactant and reagents for a reaction taught during the two-semester organic chemistry sequence. The first part of the task asked participants to sort a 15 of 25 cards into categories. Then, participants were given the 10 remaining cards to incorporate into categories with the previous 15. Participants were asked to explain the characteristics of each category and their sorting process. During the fall 2016 semester, organic chemistry students (<i>N</i>=15) were interviewed and were asked to work through the card sort task. The students’ sorts analyzed based upon which cards were sorted frequently together, the underlying characteristics used to form the categories, and the participant’s sorting process. Results will be presented.

Patterns of reactions: A card sort task to explore students’ connections across organic chemistry reactions

253rd National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.