It is commonly known that students struggle with both verbal (Bhattacharyya and Harris, 2017) and symbolic (Flynn and Featherstone, 2017) communication of chemistry which is only made more difficult to improve by the interlanguage created on each individual campus. Through INCLD, online collaborative assignments (OCAs) have shown to promote communication confidence and improve communication performance in chemistry. Students were assigned a partner from another university (two in the United States and one in Canada) and were tasked to solve problems from six weekly assignments in organic chemistry, of which the role of each student shifted from learner to teacher naturally throughout. The main focuses of this intervention were to aid in increasing students’ communication skills both symbolically and verbally as well as developing their professional skills by introducing new ways of communication. The analysis of interviews, student written reflections, and surveys using thematic analysis showed how positively the OCAs had impacted students in their communication and professional growth. This work was implemented following the attendence of the cCWCS "Active Learning in Organic Chemistry" workshop.

Increasing organic chemistry students' communication and professional skills from INCLD: International Network for Chemistry Language Development

2019 Spring National Meeting

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