First year chemistry students need to rapidly learn the “language” of organic chemistry in order to be able to understand and interact with the material taught in thier courses. This involves students learning to recognise different representations of functional groups, systematic procedures for naming molecules, how to describe the structure of different chemical species and how to describe how a reaction proceeds. This can be an overwhelming task, in particular for students with limited chemistry experience. In our first year organic chemistry units, we are looking at new ways to deliver this content to students. that is engaging and provides rapid feedback. Our first attempt was to use an online adaptive learning tool, Cerego. Cerego is adaptive, timing the delivery of content to the students when they need it most, to enhance long term learning over short term activation (Fig 1). Cerego also provides feedback on their progress, reminders to continue their study, as well as providing analytics for the teaching team. Students engaged well with Cerego, with over two thirds of students using the tool as a formative study aid. There was a positive correlation between overall unit outcomes and a student’s use of the tool. Specific analysis of how students performed on nomenclature based exam questions will be discussed during this presentation. Results from a short survey showed that students had positive experiences, commenting that they enjoyed the repetition and ease of access. Some students became very engaged with the tool, finding it ‘rather addictive’, and one student even commented with, ‘love how it can replace Candy Crush’. Students really enjoy this digital and interactive style of learning. They like the accessibility, clean design and that it responds to their needs. They also enjoy the sociality of it, comparing “scores” and competing against each other. As a community, we need to continue developing more effective and better designed digital tools, to engage students on a higher cognitive level.

Getting students to speak our language:Aadaptive tools for teaching nomenclature

255th National Meeting (2018)

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