ERIC Number: EJ1178684
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-May
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0021-9584
EISSN: N/A
MOL: Developing a European-Style Board Game to Teach Organic Chemistry
Journal of Chemical Education, v95 n5 p791-803 May 2018
Recently there has been a renewed interest in the development and use of pedagogical games, as they provide an interesting approach to the appropriation of knowledge in the context of active learning. However, most didactic games fail to completely implement a cycle of reflection and action, thereby fostering mostly lower-order thinking skills and memorization as opposed to critical thinking and problem solving skills. This limitation can be traced back to the ineffective carrot and stick approach to game design that is widely applied in the context of pedagogical games. In this article, we discuss the development of a pedagogical game in which the game elements were carefully chosen to seamlessly merge with the desired chemistry content and therefore create an engaging and fun learning experience. In particular, in order to allow complex concepts to naturally emerge from a simple set of rules, we followed the so-called European approach to game design. The resulting game, MOL (Mastering the Organic chemistry Laboratory), was tested with 77 students of ages between 19 and 21 enrolled in organic chemistry courses for chemical engineering majors and 26 students of ages between 17 and 18 enrolled in a 12th grade chemistry class. The results of these classroom implementations indicate that MOL clarifies several key concepts regarding organic reactions, particularly kinetic and thermodynamic aspects. Furthermore, they suggest that MOL can be effectively used to demonstrate how the aforementioned concepts interrelate in a real laboratory situation, therefore stimulating a sense of critical thinking.
Descriptors: Organic Chemistry, Educational Games, Teaching Methods, Active Learning, Curriculum Design, Curriculum Development, Undergraduate Students, High School Students, Kinetics, Questionnaires, Student Attitudes, Foreign Countries
Division of Chemical Education, Inc and ACS Publications Division of the American Chemical Society. 1155 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 800-227-5558; Tel: 202-872-4600; e-mail: eic@jce.acs.org; Web site: http://pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Brazil
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A