Students often struggle with interpreting symbolic representations in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic (STEM) courses. In organic chemistry, drawing and processing the information contained within different symbolic representations of organic compounds is critical for students’ success. To gain a better understanding of why students have difficulty with interpreting these symbolic representations and how this difficulty is related to information processing, we analyzed the specific types of errors students made when drawing Lewis structures. Data from this study was collected from an assessment quiz given on the first day of organic chemistry 2, to students who had completed organic 1 in either POGIL or lecture sections. Approximately 550 quizzes were analyzed for errors in drawing Lewis structures, to see if differences in student backgrounds influenced the types of errors they were making.

Identifying errors in Lewis structures and their connection to information processing

2019 Spring National Meeting

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