Compounds and Molecules: Learning How to Distinguish Them through an Educational Game

Abstract

Educational games have demonstrated that they represent valuable pedagogical instruments, which can contribute to teaching and learning in a gratifying environment. In particular in chemistry courses, an important effort has been made to facilitate complex interrelated concepts in an easy, enjoyable, and sometimes competitive way. “Compounds and Molecules” is a two-player amusing, engaging, easy-to-play, multilevel and bilingual (Spanish and English) game. The main purpose of the game is to correctly guess the opponent player’s card, but most importantly, to properly distinguish the conceptual differences between molecules and compounds and to learn general physicochemical information, including aggregation state of matter, polarity, color, miscibility/solubility in water, the nature of chemical bonding (covalent or ionic), and finally the geometry or crystalline structure of 50 common chemicals. The game was also tested on 20 teachers, who teach introductory Chemistry courses and 18 students from the Facultad de Química at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), with positive results in terms of three main aspects: playability, content, and usefulness. Additionally, the students answered a brief quiz, before and after playing the game, revealing a slight improvement in knowledge related to correctly differentiating between chemical substances. In summary, playing this game may help students not only to reinforce basic chemistry concepts, but also to increase their general scientific knowledge.