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Inquiry-Based Activities and Games That Engage Students in Learning Atomic Orbitals.

ABSTRACT: Atomic orbitals represent an essential construct used to develop chemical bonding models, upon which other more advanced chemistry topics are built. In this article, we share a series of active-learning activities and a gamified approach to develop students' representational competence about atomic orbitals and to engage students in learning the properties of atomic orbitals. These properties are essential for understanding an array of fundamental concepts such as penetration and shielding, relationships such as periodic trends, and models used to describe chemical bonding. The activities employ an inquiry-based approach to engage students in exploring the relationship between atomic orbitals' spatial properties and quantum numbers. The activities guide students to collect data to verify periodic trends and construct electronic configurations. The activities utilize Orbital Explorer Web site for visualization, comparison and analysis of atomic orbitals. The Orbital Explorer Web site is described in a related Technology Report. The activities and the game are suitable to be conducted in both in-person and remote-teaching settings.

SUBMITTER: Li X

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9139510 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Inquiry-Based Activities and Games That Engage Students in Learning Atomic Orbitals.

Li Xiao X Muñiz Marc M Chun Karlun K Tai Jonathan J Guerra Francesca F York Darrin M DM

Journal of chemical education 20220315 5

Atomic orbitals represent an essential construct used to develop chemical bonding models, upon which other more advanced chemistry topics are built. In this article, we share a series of active-learning activities and a gamified approach to develop students' representational competence about atomic orbitals and to engage students in learning the properties of atomic orbitals. These properties are essential for understanding an array of fundamental concepts such as penetration and shielding, rela ...[more]

PMID: 35645409

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Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to both clinical practice and the delivery of medical education. Educators and learners implemented novel techniques, including distance learning and web-based rounds, while trying to stay updated with the surge of information regarding COVID-19 epidemiology, pathogenesis, and treatment. Hence, we designed and implemented a technologically enhanced course called "COVID-19 Rounds" to educate students about the rapidly evolving pandemic.ObjectiveThe objectives of this study are to describe a technologically enhanced course called "COVID-19 Rounds" and evaluate the following: (1) student satisfaction and program usefulness in achieving preset objectives, (2) perceived improvement in literacy regarding the pandemic, and (3) the impact of student engagement by designing infographics and initiating COVID-19-related research projects.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study measuring the impact of the implementation of the web-based "COVID-19 Rounds" course. This program included web-based clinical experiences with physicians on actual rounds in COVID-19 wards in the hospital, weekly updates on evolving data and new research, and engagement in student-led projects. The study population included 47 fourth-year medical students at the Mohamed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, who attended the course. We designed and administered a 47-item survey to assess student satisfaction, program usefulness, impact on knowledge, and student engagement. Data were collected at the end of program delivery via Microsoft Forms.ResultsIn total, 38 (81%) out of 47 fourth-year medical students participated in this study. The final course evaluation revealed an overall high satisfaction rate, with a mean rating of 3.9 (SD 0.94) on the 5-point Likert scale. Most students were satisfied with the course format (27/38, 71%), organization (31/38, 82%), and the learning experience (28/38, 74%) that the course offered. The course was particularly appreciated for offering evidence-based talks about aspects of the pandemic (34/38, 90%), providing weekly updates regarding emerging evidence (32/38, 84%), and enhancing understanding of the challenges of the pandemic (34/38, 90%). Satisfaction with distance learning was moderate (23/37, 62%), and a minority of students would have preferred an in-person version of the course (10/37, 27%). Student engagement in the course was high. All students participated in small group presentations of infographics of pandemic-related topics. Perceived advantages included conciseness and visual appeal, and disadvantages included the lack of detail and the time-consuming nature of infographic design, especially for students with no prior design experience. After the course ended, 27 (57%) students began research projects. This resulted in 6 abstracts presented at local meetings and 8 scientific papers published or submitted for publication.ConclusionsThis inquiry-based adaptive approach to educating medical students about updates on COVID-19 via web-based learning was successful in achieving objectives and encouraging engagement in research. However, shortcomings of the course related to the lack of in-person teaching and clinical activities were also highlighted.

Project description:Self-generation of knowledge can activate deeper cognitive processing and improve long-term retention compared to the passive reception of information. It plays a distinctive role within the concept of inquiry-based learning, which is an activity-oriented, student-centered collaborative learning approach in which students become actively involved in knowledge construction by following an idealized hypothetico-deductive method. This approach allows students to not only acquire content knowledge, but also an understanding of investigative procedures/inquiry skills - in particular the control-of-variables strategy (CVS). From the perspective of cognitive load theory, generating answers and solutions during inquiry-based learning is inefficient as it imposes an intrinsic and extraneous load on learners. Previous research on self-generation of content knowledge in inquiry-based learning has demonstrated that (1) a high cognitive load impairs retention of the generated information, (2) feedback is a fundamental requirement for self-generation of complex content knowledge, (3) self-generation success is key to long-term retention, and (4) generating and rereading place different demands on learners. However, there is still no research on the self-generation of scientific reasoning skills (procedural knowledge) and no knowledge of interaction between the (long-term) retention of these skills with prior knowledge, feedback and self-generation success. That is why this experiment was conducted. The focus of this research is to analyze the distinctive role of self-generation of scientific reasoning skills within the concept of inquiry-based learning and to identify the influence of prior knowledge and self-generation success on short-term and long-term retention. For this purpose, an experiment involving 133 6th and 7th graders was conducted. An inquiry activity that included the self-generation of scientific reasoning skills was compared to an inquiry task that had students simply read information about the experimental design. We used both an immediate and a delayed test to examine which treatment better developed a deeper understanding of CVS and an ability to apply this knowledge to novel problems (transfer). Direct instruction was clearly superior to self-generation in facilitating students' acquisition of CVS immediately after the inquiry task. However, after a period of 1 week had elapsed, both treatment conditions turned out to be equally effective. A generation effect was only found among students with high self-generation success after a 1-week delay.

Dataset Information

Inquiry-Based Activities and Games That Engage Students in Learning Atomic Orbitals.

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Inquiry-Based Activities and Games That Engage Students in Learning Atomic Orbitals.

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