Project Summary: Linking representations to the underlying chemical concepts plays a crucial role for understanding chemical structural formulas and proposing reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry. Conclusions must be drawn from the explicit, visually decodable representation, to the level of implicit properties and assigned concepts. Solving mechanistic problems thus represents an enormous challenge for students. They often show fragmented conceptual knowledge, focus on explicit surface features, and rely on rote-memorization when dealing with mechanistic problems. In order to support students in interpreting representations of chemical processes, we aimed at investing the effect of static and dynamic signaling techniques in tutorial videos on student learning gains.
All tutorial videos illustrated substitution reactions in case comparison formats. They are available here for teaching purposes in English, German and with different highlighting techniques.