Development of the Reaction Coordinate Diagram Inventory: Measuring Student Thinking and Confidence

Abstract

The Reaction Coordinate Diagram Inventory (RCDI) has been developed to measure student thinking and confidence with reaction coordinate diagrams (RCDs) and their correspondence to reaction mechanisms. The RCDI was designed using a sequential mixed-methods protocol, such that the questions and distractors in the instrument were generated based on an analysis of qualitative semi-structured interviews in which general chemistry and organic chemistry students were asked to describe the concepts embedded in the surface features of RCDs and to use the mechanistic information encoded in RCDs. The RCDI was administered to second-semester general chemistry students (n = 443), second-semester organic chemistry students (n = 227), and second-semester physical/biophysical chemistry students (n = 45). Descriptive statistics and item function are presented for each of the three samples. Qualitative and quantitative evidence for the validity and reliability of the data generated by the RCDI are also presented. Major categories of misconceptions assessed by the RCDI and data demonstrating the prevalence of these misconceptions for all three groups of students are presented.

The Coordinate Reaction Model: An Obstacle to Interpreting the Emergence of Chemical Complexity

“…[26,27] The success in the simultaneous use of the three former models converted organic chemistry into a discipline that could be taught and learned easier, and last, but not least, loved easier by chemistry students. [28] One co-author remembers well, the impact made in 1959 of the surprising and beautiful Cram and Hammond text book, [29] that had broken the tradition [30] to learn organic chemistry through exhaustive memorization of synthetic facts and reaction names. [31] Furthermore, astonishing reports showed that the fate and selectivity of the elementary reactions could be described through the interactions of frontier molecular orbitals, [30,32] and that this also explains reactions (pericyclic reactions) which do not follow the Bell-Evans-Polany principle.…”

“…The success in the simultaneous use of the three former models converted organic chemistry into a discipline that could be taught and learned easier, and last, but not least, loved easier by chemistry students [28] . One co‐author remembers well, the impact made in 1959 of the surprising and beautiful Cram and Hammond text book, [29] that had broken the tradition [30] to learn organic chemistry through exhaustive memorization of synthetic facts and reaction names [31] .…”

Response Process Validity Evidence in Chemistry Education Research

“…From CER literature describing the use of cognitive interviews, sample sizes have ranged from 5 to 25 (Supporting Information). 9,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43] Recommendations from other sources range from 5 to 15, [44][45][46] with some research suggesting that increasing sample sizes beyond this range does not seem to uncover new response process problems. 47 Using sequential rounds of interviewing can also be advantageous when collecting evidence of response process, 28,36 as some have done in CER.…”

“…4 As DBER has grown, so too have the number of instruments designed to investigate different variables of interest. [5][6][7][8][9][10] Those instruments need to generate data of high validity and reliability. However, resources describing how to collect validity evidence in DBER contexts are limited.…”

Development of the Water Instrument: a comprehensive measure of students’ knowledge of fundamental concepts in general chemistry

“…The chemistry education research (CER) community has developed many assessments that have been used to evaluate instructional and educational interventions, and measure students' understanding of specific chemistry concepts (Mulford and Robinson, 2002;Wren and Barbera, 2013a;Taskin et al, 2015;Atkinson et al, 2020). The most common form of these assessments are concept inventories (Chandrasegaran et al, 2007;Sreenivasulu and Subramaniam, 2013;Wren and Barbera, 2013b;Bretz and Murata Mayo, 2018), which have been used in CER for over 30 years (Treagust, 1988).…”