Organic Chemistry is a course in which students often perform poorly. Possible explanations for the poor performance could be due to the lack of developing a good conceptual understanding of key concepts and mastering ways to approaching problems and this creates challenges in learning. Studies show that some of challenges and obstacles are due to having misconceptions, a false or mistaken view, opinion, or attitude, about some of the topics. Our study examines students’ lack of understanding and misconceptions of resonance structures and acidity/basicity topics. These two topics play an important role in the learning of organic chemistry. Many common misconceptions were identified among both topics. A likert-type questionnaire, open ended-questions, and interviews were conducted as part of this study. Our study presents some of the misconceptions students possess about resonance structures and acidity/basicity topics and shows that different types of teaching and learning approaches are needed to address some of the misconceptions that students have about these topics and to improve learning and  performance.<br/>

Identifying and studying some of the students’ misconceptions in Organic Chemistry

256th National Meeting (2018)

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