Pedagogical games have been used for science teaching purposes and have yielded successful results in organic chemistry education. CHEMCompete-II, for example, is an organic chemistry card game designed to help students differentiate between substitution and elimination reactions of alcohols and proved to be an effective study tool for undergraduate students taking introductory organic chemistry. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the suspension of in-person academic instruction, it was impossible to administer and play CHEMCompete-II in-person. Here, we present the online version of CHEMCompete-II, which helps students predict the products of substitution and elimination reactions of alcohols, classify the type of these reactions, and draw reasonable mechanisms. Thirty-two undergraduate students taking introductory organic chemistry participated in this study in the spring of 2021 and 2022. Shortly after receiving two lectures on substitution and elimination reactions of alcohols, students attended one of two consecutive workshops to play the game, which occurred on the online-conferencing platform, Zoom. Pre- and post-gameplay surveys and quizzes were developed using Google Forms and employed for data collection. The surveys were administered before and after gameplay to assess student comprehension of substitution and elimination reactions of alcohols. Pre- and post-gameplay quiz scores were examined in four different ways. First, the total scores for both the pre- and post-gameplay quizzes were compared. Then, separate pre- and post-gameplay quiz scores were compared for product prediction, reaction classification, and mechanism components. Preliminary findings showed an increase in the mean score of the total quiz scores after gameplay, suggesting that the online version of CHEMCompete-II is a potentially effective study tool for learning substitution and elimination reactions of alcohols in the online learning environment. Finally, a comparison between the two formats (in-person and online) will be discussed.

Online version of CHEMCompete-II: A card game to differentiate between substitution and elimination of alcohols

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