While detailed molecular visualization is ubiquitous within chemistry and biochemistry teaching and learning, preliminary evidence collected by the Principal Investigator suggests that many instructors assume students have extracted the appropriate visual information but do not assess the accuracy of that assumption. To enhance student learning in the increasingly important on-line delivery of instruction, and particularly with respect to three-dimensional aspects of complicated molecular structures, this project is scaffolding content for visualization of chemical and biochemical systems. Concepts that are important for understanding activity or reactions are set within progressive learning methods that explicitly address the visual components of the representation and the cognitive components of the chemistry content. Using design principles from scholarship in Human-Computer Interaction, tools are being designed to enhance student interaction with these visualizations that focus on large molecular systems. How the students interact with web-based materials is being captured and distilled in order to better understand the nature of student self-directed exploration within the scaffolded learning environment. The project is also developing enhanced visualization methods in testing and is incorporating them with electronically delivered tests from the Examinations Institute of the American Chemical Society (ACS-EI). Findings are providing insight into the nature of measurement of student learning as a function of cognitive environments and which thereby is defining the relationship between visualization and measured student learning in molecular systems of varying visual and content complexity. Utilizing the established user base of the ACS-EI is allowing for extensive feedback of test items among a diverse population of students.
