Strategies employed in the organic chemistry course must have the shared benefit of promoting concept mastery and visual literacy. With this in mind, an iSpartan-enabled visualization and computational activity was developed to complement learning in the first-semester, introductory organic chemistry course. The activity provides students an opportunity to draw molecules, collect structure-based data, and engage in group discussions related to acyclic alkane conformations. Students do not receive a lecture or complete required reading on conformations. Instead, the activity along with group- and instructor-facilitated discussions serves as the method of content delivery for the topic. Pretest and post-test scores suggest improvements in each student’s ability to interpret Newman Projections and determine relative conformation energies and stabilities. A survey was administered to determine the degree to which each student valued the activity and the associated technology, the response to which suggests th...
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