Resumen de Using iSpartan To Support a Student-Centered Activity on Alkane Conformations
Leyte L. Winfield, Kai McCormack, Tiana Shaw
Strategies employed in the organic chemistry course must have the shared benefit of promoting concept mastery and visual literacy. With this in mind, an iSpartan-enabled visualization and computational activity was developed to complement learning in the first-semester, introductory organic chemistry course. The activity provides students an opportunity to draw molecules, collect structure-based data, and engage in group discussions related to acyclic alkane conformations. Students do not receive a lecture or complete required reading on conformations. Instead, the activity along with group- and instructor-facilitated discussions serves as the method of content delivery for the topic. Pretest and post-test scores suggest improvements in each student’s ability to interpret Newman Projections and determine relative conformation energies and stabilities. A survey was administered to determine the degree to which each student valued the activity and the associated technology, the response to which suggests that the activity was instrumental in students’ ability to comprehend and apply concepts related to alkane conformation.
