Students often have difficulty understanding abstract concepts in chemistry and a low spatial ability, especially in visualizing intermolecular interactions at the submicroscopic level. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the spatial ability of students by using a 3D virtual representation as they study the curriculum topic of molecular…

Research in organic chemistry education has revealed that students often rely on rote memorization when learning mechanisms. Not much is known about student productive resources for causal reasoning. To investigate incipient stages of student causal reasoning about single mechanistic steps of organic reactions, we developed a theoretical framework…

Collaboration is regarded as one of the core competences of the 21st century when it comes to complex problem solving. In response to high dropout rates among STEM students, we developed a digital-collaborative intervention on a difficult topic, MO theory, for first-year chemistry students. First, students work independently in a Digital Learning…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how mental rotation strategies affect the identification of chemical structural formulas. This study conducted event-related potentials (ERPs) experiments. In addition to the data collected in the ERPs, a Chemical Structure Conceptual Questionnaire and interviews were also admin-istered for data…

This work uses the concepts and tools of complexity theory to examine the effect of logical thinking and two cognitive styles, such as, the degree of field dependence/independence and the convergent/divergent thinking on students' understanding of the structure of matter. Students were categorized according to the model they adopted for the…

This study explored whether adding a haptic interface (that provides users with somatosensory information about virtual objects by force and tactile feedback) to a three-dimensional (3D) chemical model enhanced students' understanding of complex molecular interactions. Two modes of the model were compared in a between-groups pre- and posttest…

This study explores the mental images at the microscopic level of matter created by 22 preservice science teachers in Oman. Participants were encouraged during a guided imagery session to construct mental images for a scenario written about the explanation of the reaction of sodium in water. They were then asked to describe what they envisioned in…

The pencil-and-paper assignment "Represent water in its three states using a model" was given to pupils (n=227) from eighth to twelfth grades. The findings show that the dominant model used was the space filling type; movement of particles was indicated by a minority of pupils; size of the model changed when drawn in different states.…