An Early Emphasis on Symmetry and a Three-Dimensional Perspective in the Chemistry Curriculum

McKay, Scott E.; Boone, Steven R.

doi:10.1021/ed078p1487

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Most activities and resources currently available to teach symmetry are designed to check for student understanding rather than challenging the students to develop their own ideas. − We wanted to design a hands-on learning experience for students to explore symmetry operations and symmetry elements. We chose to create a process-oriented, guided-inquiry learning (POGIL) activity as there are currently no publicly available POGIL activities for teaching symmetry operations.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Symmetry POGIL Activity for Inorganic Chemistry

2011

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The goal of this project was to create an inquiry activity to teach symmetry elements and symmetry operations in an inorganic chemistry course. Many students experience difficulty when building and mentally manipulating three-dimensional mental models from two-dimensional images, causing difficulty when learning symmetry. Process-oriented, guided-inquiry learning (POGIL) was used to structure the activity using a learning cycle paradigm consistent with research on how students learn as described by Novak's human constructivism theory. The activity familiarized students with symmetry terms as students actively engaged in finding symmetry operations in a variety of molecules. The symmetry activity was classroom tested and student and POGIL expert feedback were used to improve the activity.

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Symmetry POGIL Activity for Inorganic Chemistry

2011

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“…4 The sound understanding of symmetry and 3D orientation of chemical compound and reaction contributes to students' success in learning other chemi-cal concepts. 5 It is the building blocks for understanding modern molecular chemistry. 6 Difficulty in understanding symmetry contributes to the barrier to understand other chemical concepts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding of Symmetry: Measuring the Contribution of Virtual and Concrete Models for Students with Different Spatial Abilities

Thayban

Habiddin

Utomo

et al. 2021

ACSi

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Virtual and concrete models have been of interest in chemistry teaching to improve students’ understanding of a three-dimensional representation of chemical concepts such as symmetry. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of using concrete and virtual models on students’ understanding of symmetry. Students’ understanding was also explored in light of their spatial ability. The study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design with 62 students as participants. Two different instruments, spatial ability and understanding of symmetry tests, were employed for data collection. Data analysis was performed using the Pearson product-moment correlation and two-way variance analysis test. The results showed the virtual model’s contribution to improving students’ understanding of symmetry is higher than that of the concrete model for both students with high spatial ability (HSA) and low spatial ability (LSA). Also, the better students’ spatial ability, the better their understanding of molecular symmetry.

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“…More common are studies that report tools to help students visualize elements of symmetry and identify point groups. These include activities using various objects (Herman and Lievin, 1977;McKay and Boone, 2001;Flint, 2011), shapes (Gallian, 1990), artwork (Glasser, 1967), dice (Grafton, 2011), and guided inquiry activities (Luxford et al, 2012;Rattanapirun and Laosinchai, 2021) and virtual visualization tools (Cass et al, 2005;Korkmaz and Harwood, 2004;Meyer and Sargent, 2007;Tuvi-Arad and Gorsky, 2007;Sein, 2010;Tuvi-Arad and Blonder, 2010). Additionally, a virtual tool has been developed to help students understand how inter-molecular symmetry can be invoked to relate collections of molecules (Ruiz and Johnstone, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%