Analysis of the Academic Effects from Utilizing Analogies in General Chemistry Course Education
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Analysis of the Academic Effects from Utilizing Analogies in General Chemistry Course Education By Jason Timothy Smith A Thesis Presented to the Department of Chemistry At the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment to Obtain A Bachelors in Science of Chemical Science Smith 1 Analogies in academic education help teach various ideas and topics. However, the usage of analogies has not been widely applied within second-level general chemistry. This project analyzed the effects and success that analogies have when taught to general chemistry students on a discussion level group size scale. During the fall 2018 semester at the University of Florida, certain analogies were taught to fifty-four students to help convey certain chemical topics in General Chemistry I (CHM2045). The progress exam scores of these students were then compared to the scores of approximately a hundred students who took the same course in the fall semester of 2017. While the exams were not identical, the structure and types of questions were similar on both. This allowed for an adequate source of data to analyze effects that the analogies might have. Several statistical tests were used to analyze the exam scores. It was confirmed that there was a statistical significance in the analogy questions but a statistical insignificance for the non-analogy questions. INTRODUCTION Mental models help convey particular theories and ideas by utilizing certain mental images to improve understanding and have been applied in many cognitive settings. One mental model seen often in everyday life is analogy. Because of their simplicity and effectiveness, analogies have played a huge role in problem solving, decision making, argumentation, conceptualization, and communication to name a few.1 Analogies work by providing a link between two different domains of meaning. These two domains are the source and target. The source is the domain that is relatable to the audience while the target is the domain that the speaker wishes for the audience to understand. Analogies use a cognitive process that involves comparing one particular subject to another by transferring information or meaning between the two domains. The source domain helps convey meaning or Smith 2 idea to the target domain to enable understanding. One common form of this process comes in the forms of metaphors or similes.2 In grammar, metaphors and similes compare the subject at hand to something totally unrelated to convey meaning. For example, a man says, “Losing my girlfriend has turned my heart into a broken glass.” The man uses a metaphor to express his feelings. The man identifies his heart as a broken glass. The two domains, the source (broken glass) and the target (sadness from loss) are completely unrelated literally but mentally they help explain and define the speaker’s point. Analogical thinking has the potential to strengthen and facilitate the necessary higher order thinking required for advanced learning. Additionally, studying and creating analogies have helped students develop better understanding of vocabulary and concepts. Improved reasoning and critical thinking cause this. This is why analogies are often useful in difficult education courses like physics. The data from a multitude of studies have shown that analogies help students significantly better grasp certain concepts and knowledge presented in class. Dr. Rawatee Maharaj-Sharma of the University of the West Indies conducted a research study amongst physics professors in Trinidadian schools. His project analyzed the effectiveness of analogies and how often analogies were applied in lectures. Sharma constructed a questionnaire that he distributed to the physics teachers at the University of the West Indies. The questionnaire asked the teachers the extent of analogy usage, the success of analogy usage, and any suggestions for effective implementation of analogies within physics education. Sharma found overall that Trinidadian professors applied simple yet illustrative analogies in their physics classes to help convey difficult physic-related topics. He also discovered that more complex or extravagant analogies were more likely to cause confusion amongst students rather than help them.3 Smith 3 Analogies, as with any teaching technique, have potential negative results. Drs. Venville and Treagust claim that analogies are pieces of superfluous information when taught to students who have an already strong grasp of the concept. Another potential risk is that students utilize analogies mechanically instead of figuratively. They found that many students took the analogy at face value instead of using it alongside the actual information that the analogy was trying to convey. A third, and possibly critical, risk associated with analogies, is improper explanation of the analogies. Analogies have the potential of being extremely helpful, but only if applied properly. Poorly structured or complex analogies have a risk of confusing students because the nature of the relationship may not be immediately obvious. This why teachers must explicitly state the nature of the analogical relationship to their students when discussing an analogy. Improperly explained analogies have a high chance of causing misunderstanding and misconception that can hinder the students’ learning experience.4 Dr. Musa Dikemnli of the University of Necmettin Erbakan University discovered that poorly explained analogies could cause problems even within textbooks. Dikemnli conducted a research project in 2015 to see how effective analogies were in teaching biology to ninth-grade students. His research involved analyzing the structures and presentations of the analogies found in new biology textbooks used by ninth grades. During his research, the investigated textbooks had been read a minimum of three times. Afterwards, all analogies and related diagrams were recorded, documented, and scored. The analogies were scored based on several factors including: targeted audience level, analogical relationship, presentation format, and level of abstraction to name a few. The results showed that vaguely explained, extremely complex, or overly simplified analogies in the text were not as effective conveying biology when taught in classroom setting. Dikemnli found that these analogies often led to confusion and misunderstanding amongst the students. He proposed Smith 4 that the limitations of the analogies should be explicitly mentioned within the text. Furthermore, he stated that the analogies had to be detailed enough to give good analogical relationships. In conclusion, Dikemnli decided that analogies used in textbooks should be based on guides or manuals that are designed to help construct analogies.5 Despite their usefulness, analogies are not usually applied in teaching chemistry.6 Chemistry is considered an intermediate between quantitative science (physics) and qualitative science (biology).4 Because of its vastness and many concepts, it is difficult to construct analogies in this domain of science. While not heavily applied on a large academic scale, several chemical analogies have been developed by certain chemists over the years. These analogies usually target the qualitative side of chemistry and revolve around lower levels of chemistry such as general or introductory chemistry where microscopic and atomic differences are null. Professor Thomas McCulloguh of St. Edward’s University constructed certain chemical analogies to explain various gas laws and properties of light.7 His analogies used high velocity projectiles to explain light and the photoelectric effect. Additionally, he constructed an analogy that related Dalton’s Law to the Great Plains Native Americans. Despite the creation of these analogies, there has been no record of utilizing analogies in chemistry on a large scale to help teach and convey chemical topics on a post-secondary level. Therefore, there has been no evidence that the utilization of analogies within chemistry courses would either improve or impair chemistry education as a whole. PROCEDURE Over the course of an academic semester, various analogies were taught to seventy – four undergraduate chemistry majors. Of these students, a voluntary group of fifty – four students was created. All of the students in the volunteer group were taken from a general chemistry course that Smith 5 was designed specifically for chemistry majors. Since this class was the first of its kind at the University of Florida, it was impossible to compare the students’ scores to former students of the same class. As a supplement, the scores of these students’ exams were compared to the scores of undergraduate chemistry majors who took General Chemistry I the previous year. This control group consisted of one hundred former students who had taken general chemistry the year before and were declared chemistry majors at the given time. Over the course of a semester, the participant group was taught chemistry through using personally created analogies to convey major topics within General Chemistry I. Furthermore, these students were taught the analogies in a classroom environment to simulate the typical learning environment experienced by college undergraduates. As the semester progressed, four exams were presented to the experimental group. Each exam had fifteen questions and were relevant to the topics taught in the classroom. After each exam, the questions that were related to topics taught by analogies were identified and the number of students getting the answer right or wrong were