CHEMBOND3D e-Module Effectiveness in Enhancing Students’ Knowledge of Chemical Bonding Concept and Visual-spatial Skills

Abstract

Today’s educational challenges necessitate the creative use of digital technology to adapt an effective pedagogical approach in chemistry teaching. While various visualization tools have been developed to improve visual-spatial skills, previous studies on digital technology interventions provide limited findings and show moderate effects on students’ learning. Moreover, students still have misconceptions even after using three-dimensional models physically or virtually while learning chemical bonding. Therefore, this study investigates the effectiveness of the CHEMBOND3D e-module that integrates the web-based visualization tool, Molview, on the chemical bonding concept knowledge and visual-spatial skills between treatment groups and control groups. A pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group with a quasi-experimental quantitative design is used in the research. Pilot studies were conducted to verify the validity and reliability of the CHEMBOND3D Chemical Bonding Knowledge Test and Revised Purdue Visualization Test of Rotations. A total of 112 pre-university students from 10 schools in Sabah were selected based on the sampling method. The findings showed significant improvement in the chemical bonding concept knowledge and visual-spatial skills for treatment group students using CHEMBOND3D e-module compared to control group students using conventional methods. This provides new evidence of the potential of web-based application in learning microscopic chemistry concept in chemical bonding. These findings can facilitate further studies of other digital visualization tools such as virtual reality and augmented reality in support of learning complex chemistry concepts in reaction mechanisms and chemical equilibrium.