MET-Organic: A Multilevel Card Game to Promote the Learning of Organic Chemistry Nomenclature

Educational games have consistently proved that they are valuable didactic instruments, which can contribute toteaching and learning in an enjoyable background. In organicchemistry courses, considerable effort has been made to encouragethe learning of nomenclature, an important topic, often perceivedas complex, boring, and unconnected to other subjects'knowledge.MET-organicis a two- to ten-player funny, engaging, easy-to-play, multilevel, and trilingual (English, French, and Spanish)game. The main objective of the game is to get rid of all the cardsone has in hand, but most importantly, to learn basic organicchemistry nomenclature and to distinguish 11 of the mainfunctional groups of this discipline in a relaxed, amusing, andappealing atmosphere. The game was tested by more than 60students from the Facultad de Qu????mica at Universidad Nacional Auto??noma de Me??xico (UNAM), with good results in terms ofplayability, content, usefulness, and engagement. Additionally, the students answered a brief quiz, before and after playing the game,revealing an impressive improvement in knowledge related to correct identification of common organic functional groups. Insummary, playingMET-organicmight aid students not only to reinforce basic chemistry concepts, but also to increase their general scientific knowledge

Automated summary

This study presents an educational game called MET-organic, which is used to teach nomenclature and functional group identification in organic chemistry courses. The results show that the game has a positive impact on student learning and engagement.