| Misconceptions, or alternate conceptions, of scientific concepts present a problem in education. Misconceptions may be present in anyone's knowledge base and might go undetected their entire lives unless discovered and corrected. For the student of organic chemistry, misconceptions in their acid/base knowledge present a significant problem as many more complicated topics in organic chemistry rely on a solid foundation in acid/base chemistry. The depth of this misconception may be shallow enough that they can correctly answer a related question on an exam, but when challenged to explain a phenomena at a deeper level, their alternate conception is exposed. With this purpose in mind, this study was undertaken to develop a two-tiered, answer and answer reasoning, multiple-choice concept inventory. Concept inventories have been applied in a large number of topics and for an equally large number of audiences. However, an efficient, reliable, concept inventory built to find misconceptions in acid/base knowledge of organic chemistry students is still needed. Such a tool can be useful in assessing student understandings, evaluating what misconceptions need addressing in a course's curriculum, or determining the consequences of any pedagogical change in the curriculum, from different textbooks to a flipped-classroom approach. This study summarizes the development of such an instrument, from building on a preliminary instrument, defining the content with experts in the field, assessing the importance of concepts addressed in the instrument, and administration of the instrument to student volunteers in organic chemistry courses. Through this process, the level of importance assigned to different acid/base concepts were collected from content experts and used to craft an instrument that aligned with these values. It was discovered that misconceptions in acid/base chemistry topics in organic chemistry students are not uncommon, and are present to some degree in a majority of students. It was also found that instructors place a disproportionately high level of confidence in their students compared to their actual success. The result of this work is an early-stage instrument that can be used to find acid/base misconceptions in organic chemistry students. Though the scope of this study was small, it has already generated important results regarding what undergraduate organic chemistry students know at a deep level about acid/base concepts. |
