Development and psychometric analysis of an inventory of fundamental concepts for understanding organic reaction mechanisms

The fundamental concepts for organic reaction mechanisms inventory (FC-ORMI) is a multiple-choice instrument designed to assess students’ conception of fundamental concepts for understanding organic reaction mechanisms. The concepts were identified from open-ended interviews and a national survey of organic chemistry instructors reported in a previous study. This manuscript describes the development of the inventory items related to these identified concepts and the psychometric analysis of the instrument. In the developmental stage, open-ended questions were administered to first-semester organic chemistry students (N = 138), and open-ended interviews were conducted with students (N = 22) from the same pool to gain insight into their thought processes. The answers revealed alternate conceptions which were used to formulate distractors for the inventory. A pilot version and a beta version of the inventory were administered to 105 and 359 first-semester organic chemistry students, respectively. From these administrations, the 26-item alpha version was developed and administered to first-semester undergraduate organic chemistry students (N = 753). Psychometric analysis was conducted at the item and test level using Classical Test Theory and Rasch analysis. The results indicate that the items on the FC-ORMI function well to reveal students’ alternate conceptions. The instrument meets the acceptable standards of validity and reliability for concept inventories.

Exploring the Needs for the Development of Organic Reaction Teaching Model: Experts’ Collective Opinion

This article reported the findings of a study carried out to investigate the need for developing an organic reaction mechanism teaching model. Qualitative data was obtained through a semi-structured interview among five chemistry subject matter experts to explore their opinion on the issues centered on the teaching and learning of organic reaction mechanisms. The interviews were interpreted and analyzed using thematic analysis. Five themes comprising of many codes and quotations were identified. The analysis of the findings shows that organic reaction mechanisms are one of the most significant and central concepts in science. However, students are faced with challenges in learning the concepts. Thus, the need for an alternative model of teaching the concept of organic reaction mechanisms.

Investigating students understanding of organic reaction mechanisms from performing organic chemistry experiments

The use of laboratory work to improve students’ knowledge of theory is one that is disputed. Student reflections of what they learn during practical work repeatedly show that students rarely think about theory. There is a lack of data that objectively compares students’ knowledge of theory where they complete an associated experiment to when they do not in order to understand if practical work does effect students’ knowledge of scientific concepts. In this work we aimed to address this gap by investigating the effect of students’ knowledge of organic mechanisms where they both perform and associated experiment and where they did not. Our results showed that organic chemistry experiments had no effect on students’ knowledge of organic mechanisms. These results support the view that there is little evidence to support the use of laboratory work to aid understanding of theory.

Thinking like an electron: concepts pertinent to developing proficiency in organic reaction mechanisms

The difficulties students face with organic reaction mechanisms have been the subject of much research in chemical education however, no concept inventory has been reported in this area. The development of a concept inventory would be useful for the large-scale assessment of students’ understanding of concepts pertinent to developing proficiency in reaction mechanisms. The first step in the design of such an inventory is identifying the pertinent concepts. In phase 1 of this study, open-ended interviews were carried out with organic chemistry instructors (N = 11) in order to ascertain their opinions on pertinent concepts for developing proficiency in reaction mechanisms. Phase 2 of the study consisted of a national survey of organic chemistry instructors (N = 183) to explore the general consensus regarding the concepts identified in phase 1. The results yielded 10 concepts identified by experts to be pertinent to reaction mechanisms. The general consensus among organic chemistry instructors is that the topic of reaction mechanisms is important to the study of organic chemistry, but students have difficulty understanding the meaning of the curved-arrow notation. Future work will include the design and development of a concept inventory based on these pertinent concepts.

Utilizing Rasch analysis to establish the psychometric properties of a concept inventory on concepts important for developing proficiency in organic reaction mechanisms

Undergraduate organic chemistry has been found to be historically difficult for students and one area where students struggle is organic reaction mechanisms. The difficulties students face with reaction mechanisms has been a source of interest in chemical education research but most studies done have been purely qualitative. An assessment tool that could be used on a large-scale for instructors to gauge the difficulties their students face, would be useful. The aim of this pilot study is to use Rasch analysis to establish the validity and reliability of the concepts important for developing proficiency in organic reaction mechanisms inventory (RMCPI). The test, containing 25 items, was administered to first semester organic chemistry students (N = 44) at a mid-sized university. The data was analyzed using Rasch techniques to explore the dimensionality of the instrument, the difficulty of the items, the item fit, and the reliability. The results indicate that the instrument is unidimensional and most of the items fit well to the dichotomous Rasch model. The test was found to be difficult and this will be explored further by increasing the sample size, administering the test to students from other universities and increasing the number of items on the inventory.