Examining some of the challenges students face in learning about rearrangement reactions in organic chemistry

Abstract

Organic chemistry course is considered one of the most difficult courses students have to take as part of their academic science and engineering requirements. The purpose of this research project is to examine students’ perceptions about the challenges they face in learning about rearrangement reactions and their approaches to improve their learning and performance in the concepts while learning organic chemistry. The research investigation took place at the City College of New York, a minority serving, commuter institute in an urban environment. The research participants were students who have completed at least one course of organic chemistry. The research instrument used in this investigation consisted of a questionnaire that was made up of Likert-scale and open-ended questions. The Likert-type questions were on a five-point scale that were converted into numerical, and the averages of the students’ responses were taken. For the open-ended, the data was coded and compiled based on categories and similarities, converted into percentages and used to create bar charts. Our research findings suggest that students face challenges in learning about rearrangement reactions and their mechanisms and that relying on memorization and rote learning to solve them hinders the development of conceptual understanding. The data seem to suggest that students do not understand the significance of energy as a driving force in the transformations and pathways from reactants to products. Lastly, the data reveal that students lack the ability to apply the correct knowledge to solve problems involving rearrangement reactions and mechanisms, which inhibits their meaningful learning and conceptual understanding development.

Assessing conceptual difficulties experienced by pre-service chemistry teachers in organic chemistry

“…This finding provides further support for previous claims made by various authors regarding difficult topics in organic chemistry. These topics include the description and representation of organic compounds (Salame & Khalil, 2023), the characteristics of organic compounds (Anderson & Bodner, 2008), and the study of stereochemistry (Durmaz, 2018).…”

“…In recent years, there has been a noticeable inclination toward research in chemistry education, with a specific focus on organic chemistry due to the identification of student difficulties and misconceptions, and the underlying causes of these challenges (Anim-Eduful & Adu-Gyamfi, 2022b; Ayalew, 2015;Salame & Khalil, 2023).…”

Exploring the Inductive Effect through Computational Modeling: A General and Organic Chemistry Lab Experiment

“…The application of acid–base concepts in organic chemistry requires both memorization and the ability to reason through structural effects on acidity and basicity. Previous research , demonstrated students have a substantial preference to rely on memorization of acid–base examples in both general and organic chemistry. Students preferred to analyze reactions and mechanisms as a simple recombination of atoms versus thinking through the conceptual logic of transformations in hand.…”

CR322: A Web-Based Board Game for Aiding Students in Reviewing Chemical Reactivity

“…Organic reactions and their mechanisms are considered some of the most challenging topics in organic chemistry courses due to the large number of chemical reactions covered in the discipline. This immense amount of information can discourage students, leading to a significant proportion experiencing ineffective learning and ultimately dropping out at rates ranging from 50% to 60%. − …”