Visualization of organic molecules: An analysis of students' visual-spatial ability at a large primarily undergraduate institution

Organic chemistry requires students to visualize two dimensional molecules in three dimensions. However, many students lack a strong foundation in three dimensional visualization.3 The goal of this project is to test the effectiveness of Jmol, a 3D molecular modeling program on students' performance on organic chemistry tasks that require a high degree of visual-spatial ability. We hypothesize that Jmol will be an effective tool to aid in the performance of visual-spatial problems on an organic chemistry assessment opposed to allowing students to perform ineffective mental rotations.;This study showed that students who were allowed to use Jmol outperformed their 2D counterparts on visual-spatial tasks in organic chemistry. The overall mean for the two dimensional participants was 10.45 whereas the mean for the three dimensional participants was 12.15 with standard deviations of 3.706 and 3.609 respectively. Using a One-Way Analysis of Variance to compare these means, provided an overall significant result (F = 4.409, p = 0.39). Previous literature has shown that when students interact with a 3D molecular modeling program to answer visual-spatial questions they outperform all groups. Using eye-tracker technology this study wanted to examine: What cognitive strategies participants of different visual-spatial ability use to answer organic chemistry problems when using 2D vs. 3D resources. The results show that Jmol was an effective tool for most participants in that they were able to develop a cognitive strategy.