Resumen de Decorating with arrows:: toward the development of representational competence in organic chemistry
Nathaniel P. Grove, Melanie M. Cooper, Kelli M. Rush
Much effort has been expended in developing improved methods for presenting mechanistic thinking and the curved-arrow notation to organic chemistry students; however, most of these techniques are not research-based. The little research that has been conducted has mainly focused on understanding the meaning that students associate with the curved-arrows during a single moment in time. The current research uses OrganicPad, an innovative, tablet person computer-based structure drawing program, to document our efforts to understand how second-year-level organic chemistry students' mechanism use changes over their study of the subject. Our results reveal a dramatic evolution of mechanistic strategies during the academic year, including a large proportion of students who elect not to use the mechanistic convention in their work.
