Using data-driven activities with ChemEd X Data to practice structure-property relationships in General Chemistry

Abstract

General Chemistry covers a wide variety of structure-property relationships that rely upon electronic, atomic, crystal or molecular factors. Giving students experimental data will allow them to identify the structure-property patterns as well as identify the limit of predictability of such patterns. “ChemEd X Data” is a web interface designed by the author that facilitates the navigation, filtering and graphical representation of chemical and physical data. It can assist students at identifying trends in structure-property relationships, they can create controlled experiments to test a relationship as well as investigating how different molecular factors may affect a single macroscopic property. In particular, since the site offers unstructured but dynamically searchable data, it is designed to have students learn control of variable strategies (CVS). This paper describes the implementation of a five-step sequence of activities related to structure-property relationships in a General Chemistry semester. ChemEd X Data is used for the open-ended or data-driven steps of this sequence. Student performance is analyzed with the objective of understanding which activities require a higher cognitive skill, as well as identify student previous performances that correlate with success in the activities and in the course in general.

Higher and Lower-Order Thinking Skills: The Case of Chemistry Revisited

“…In the education literature there have been several studies that were concerned with the use of various instructional methods for promoting HOTS in students: Barnett and Francis (2012); Bramwell-Lalor and Rainford (2014); Ealy (2016), Eklund andPrat-Resina (2014), Flynn (2014), Ghani et al (2017), Laverty et al (2016), Prat-Resina, 2020, Saido et al (2018), Tekkumru-Kisa et al (2018, Zoller and Pusking (2006). According to Tekkumru-Kisa et al (2018, p. 480, and references therein), "the instructional tasks selected by teachers and assigned to students in science classrooms play a critical role in shaping students' opportunities to learn science as emphasized in the Framework [for K-12 Science Education" (National Research Council [NRC], 2012)] … Different tasks will demand different kinds and levels of student thinking and engagement in the discipline".…”

An examination of student outcomes in studio chemistry

“…Chemistry students have particular difficulty linking the macroscopic phenomena observed in chemistry laboratory activities with the nanoscopic particulate nature of matter as well as the symbolic representations that chemists use to describe both, which has been shown to pose a signi ficant difficulty in learning chemistry for students (Johnstone, 1982;Gabel et al, 1987;Gabel, 1993Gabel, , 1998Keig and Rubba, 1993;Kozma and Russell, 1997;Wu et al, 2001;Chittleborough, 2014). In the studio classroom, the use of molecular modeling and simulation software including Models 360 and WebMO (Prat-Resina et al, 2016;The Concord Consortium, 2008) before, during, and after observing macroscopic phenomena is integrated directly into the hands-on activities. We believe this tight integration forces students to explain, on a nanoscopic level, the results from the macroscopic phenomena they observed in the laboratory using chemical symbolism.…”