CHEMmunicate: A Chemical Structure Drawing Game for Building Scientific Communication Skills and Enhancing Social Interactions among First Year Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Students’ overall experience of university life and their assessment outcomes are partly determined by their engagement with teaching activities, which is in turn influenced by their sense of social cohesion with their peers. In addition to providing pastoral support, in our role as Senior Tutors, we encourage the formation of a more cohesive learning community among chemistry students post-COVID. With the aim of building better connections both between us and the new student cohort and between the students themselves, we have introduced new Senior Tutor Check-In sessions, which are built around a new chemical drawing game: CHEMmunicate. Across the first semester, we held 8 sessions with ca. 12–16 new first year chemistry undergraduate students in which two teams competed to draw chemical structures using yes/no questions (total: 200 participants over two separate cohorts). In this paper, we outline the rules of the game and provide tips for session leaders seeking to implement it at other institutions. Moreover, through analysis of student feedback from questionnaires and a focus group, we demonstrate how CHEMmunicate and the Senior Tutor Check-In sessions can prove beneficial in building student cohesion and enhancing students’ learning of organic chemistry.