Technology Report

Cite This: J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc

Game-Based Application for Helping Students Review Chemical

Nomenclature in a Fun Way
Mary Anne Sousa Lima,† Á lvaro Carvalho Monteiro,‡ Antonio Jose ́ Melo Leite Junior,‡
Izac Sidarta de Andrade Matos,‡ Francisco Serra Oliveira Alexandre,§ Davi Janô Nobre,†
Andre ́ Jalles Monteiro,† and Jose ́ Nunes da Silva Júnior*,†
†
Departamento de Química Orgânica e Inorgânica, Universidade Federal do Ceará, 60451-970 Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
‡
Instituto UFC Virtual, Universidade Federal do Ceará, 60440-554 Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
§
Instituto Federal de Educaçaõ , Ciência e Tecnologia do Ceará, 63870-000 Boa Viagem, Ceará, Brazil
*
S Supporting Information
Downloaded from pubs.acs.org by 95.181.182.187 on 02/27/19. For personal use only.

ABSTRACT: This work provides information about a free-of-charge,

trilingual (Portuguese, Spanish, and English), game-based application.
The game allows high-school and undergraduate students to review
chemical nomenclature in an engaging and fun way on their own by
answering random questions from a database with over 700 questions.
Student testing revealed that the game design, content, playability, and
usefulness was helpful as a complementary didactic tool to aid in tradi-
tional study. Assessment of student knowledge gains was performed.
The results revealed that students who used the game as a comple-
mentary tool had higher performance in tests compared with students
J. Chem. Educ.

who studied nomenclature by only conventional learning methods.

KEYWORDS: High School/Introductory Chemistry, First-Year Undergraduate/General, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry,
Humor/Puzzles/Games, Nomenclature/Units/Symbols

■ INTRODUCTION
Introductory chemistry courses typically introduce chemical
nomenclature early at both the university and secondary-school
levels. Students often perceive chemistry as a series of complex
rules applied using unfamiliar concepts, which when combined
with minimal coverage in class makes learning difficult.
Many students will overcome these learning barriers, but other
students fail and may abandon the study of chemistry forever.
Several works have reported supportive methods that can remove
some of the tedium found in the task of naming organic and
inorganic compounds and assist the students in their studies.1−13
Studies indicate that games enhance student motivation and
learning outcomes significantly and have positive effects on
problem-solving, achievement, interest, and engagement in task
learning.14−17 When learning activities are combined with the
use of games in the classroom, the combination has resulted in
higher motivation or better student performance.18,19
There is a growing movement to help students acquire
knowledge through interactive learning by using digital technology
to enhance the education process.20,21 The application presented
in this paper is an example of a game-based application that
may aid students in their studies of chemical nomenclature.
(https://goo.gl/YPWZgA) devices using the Unity Platform.22
It is a trilingual (Portuguese, English, and Spanish), free-of-
charge, dynamic, and easy-to-play game that allows students to
review chemical nomenclature. The game has been designed so
that students win the game with their knowledge and not as a
matter of luck.
To begin, the player selects a language on the first screen
(Figure 1) and then selects “Play”, “Leaderboard”, “Rules”, or
“Credits”.
When play is initiated, two screens sequentially appear to set
up the game parameters. The selected groups of compounds
(Figure 2, left) determine the subjects of the questions that
appear during the game, and selection of the game mode deter-
mines the difficulty of the game (Figure 2, right).
In the first three game modes, the player must correctly answer
15 multiple choice questions to win the game. When the player
responds correctly (Figure 3, left), a new question appears on the
screen. If an incorrect answer is selected, the game reveals the
correct answer by making it green, and the game ends (Figure 3,
right).
During the game, the player can use three types of “lifelines”:
(1) switch the question to another, (2) randomly eliminate

■ GAME
A game-based application named Chemical Nomenclature was
Received: July 8, 2018
Revised: February 14, 2019
developed for Android (https://goo.gl/5mH7NY) and IOS
© XXXX American Chemical Society and
Division of Chemical Education, Inc. A DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00540
J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education Technology Report

Figure 3. Question in beginner mode (left). Wrong response in

beginner mode (right).

two of the wrong answers, or (3) randomly eliminate one of the

wrong answers. On the basis of the game mode, the number of
available lifelines and the time to respond to the questions vary.
Once the 15th question is answered correctly, the player wins
and is transported to another screen where they can register
their name, institution, and country on a leaderboard (Figure 4,
left).

Figure 1. Main screen of the game.

Figure 4. Leaderboard screen (left). Final screen in training mode

(right).

In training mode, the player must respond sequentially to

Figure 2. Selecting groups of compounds (left) and selecting a game
mode (right).
B DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00540
30 multiple-choice questions without lifelines, time limitations,
or penalties. When the player responds to the last question,
the game reports the number of correctly answered questions
(Figure 4, right).
The game is continually being developed on the basis of user
feedback from both students and teachers. Future expansion
of the app will add comments to each question to tell students
why the answer indicated as correct is the correct one.
J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education

■
Technology Report

STUDENT OPINIONS
Undergraduate students (U) from our university (N = 53) and
12th-grade students (HS) from Governador Adauto Bezerra
High School (N = 48) tested and evaluated the application.
All opinions regarding the application were obtained using a
printed survey containing 12 statements. Responses are shown
in Figure 5 with a Likert-type scale23 for four areas of interest:
design, content, playability, and usefulness.
In general, the responses to the 12 statements showed high
levels of agreement (“agree” and “agree totally”) from those
surveyed. Therefore, we believe that the game is dynamic, fun,
and easy-to-play and has an attractive design able to capture

Figure 5. High school (HS, N = 48) and undergraduate (U, N = 53) students’ responses by survey statement.

C DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00540
J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education Technology Report

the attention of the player. The questions are clear and well- Statistical Analysis
elaborated and adequately cover the content seen in the class- A t test for paired samples was used to determine if there was
room. Moreover, the students agree that the game is an innovative statistical increase in the number of correct answers on the pre-
didactic tool that can help them review chemical nomenclature. and posttests for each group (Table 1).
On the basis of results from Fisher’s exact test, significant
statistical differences were found in students’ opinions only on
Table 1. Comparison of Student Performance Relative to
statements 1, 9, and 10. The game interface was considered
Use of the Application
more attractive by high-school students than by undergraduate
students (statement 1). This result was not unexpected because Students’ Average Scoresa
younger people spend a significant amount of leisure time each Group (N = 48) Pretest Posttest Average-Score Differences
week playing computer games.24 Games in this genre are more
EG1 10.2 ± 3.3 14.2 ± 3.8 4.0b
attractive than our game. EG2 8.8 ± 3.0 11.7 ± 3.7 2.9b
Regarding statements 9 and 10, although the high-school CG 7.9 ± 2.8 9.5 ± 4.9 1.6c
students consider the game dynamic and fun (statement 10) and a
easy-to-play (statement 9), their agreement with the statements The scores had a range of 0−25. bp = 0.0001. cp = 0.0169.
were lower than those of the undergraduate students. The evalu-
ators’ maturity may be influencing their opinions. On the basis There were statistically significant increases in the number of
of the high-school students’ comments, these students may have correct answers in all three groups, and these increases had
misunderstood the concept “easy-to-play” by instead thinking different magnitudes among the groups (p = 0.0339). The
“easy-to-win”. This is possible because they did have more difference was greatest between EG1 and CG (p = 0.0190),
difficulty winning the game compared with the undergraduate and there was no significant difference between EG2 and CG
students, probably because the game includes difficult questions (p = 0.1609) or between the EGs (p = 0.1492, Tables 2 and 3).
that are not normally taught to high-school students in Brazil.
Evaluation of the Instructional Role of the Game
Table 2. One-Way ANOVA on Learning between the
Experimental and Control Groups
The evaluation was given to 228 12th-grade students from
Governador Adauto Bezerra High School in Fortaleza, Brazil. Variation Sum of Squares dF MS F Value p Value
Three classes were randomly chosen as two experimental groups Between groups 82.45 2 41.22 3.532 0.0339
(EG) and one control group (CG), and the following hypothesis Error 933.77 80 11.67
was tested: There is a significant difference between student Total 1016.22 82   
learning of organic nomenclature supplemented with the appli-
cation as a complementary educational tool (EG) and traditional Table 3. Student’s t Test for Independent Samples for
student learning with lectures, textbooks, whiteboards, and Comparison of the Groups in Terms of Student-
slideshow presentations (CG). Performance Improvements
This was an experimental study conducted with controlled Groups Compared Average Difference Standard Deviation p Value
pre- and posttests with 20 multiple-choice questions each, EG1−CG 4.40 3.548 0.0190
which were designed to analyze the effect of the instructional EG2−CG 2.88 2.555 0.1609
role of the developed game on the learning of the nomen- EG1−EG2 1.63 3.835 0.1962
clature of organic compounds at the high-school level. The
effectiveness of the game for improving learning of inorganic- Given that EG1 had the best average for the pretest and that
compound nomenclature was not evaluated because this content CG had a lower average for the same test, we can conclude that
had not been taught by the pretest date. the application was more efficient among students who already
Pretest and Posttest had a better background.
Smartphones are powerful computing instruments that are
The pretest was administered to all three groups (one control carried in the pockets of a large number of students and are
group and two experimental groups) in the classroom before becoming increasingly popular. These devices have many valu-
any lectures about the nomenclature of organic compounds. able capabilities and tremendous potential for use in chemical
The aim of this test was to verify the students’ knowledge about education. Because of that, mobile technology is becoming
the topic. This survey asks students either to identify IUPAC increasingly prevalent in higher education, and software applica-
and trivial names from given structures or identify structures tions (apps) are emerging as a popular platform in many areas,
from given IUPAC and trivial names. including in the chemistry classroom.
The posttest was also administered to all three groups in the The game-based app presented in this paper covers the nomen-
classroom after all groups had five traditional lectures of 50 min clature of inorganic and organic compounds and has helped
each covering the nomenclature of organic compounds. However, students test their abilities and enhance and improve their learning
there was an important difference: the two experimental groups in an engaging and fun way. In future work, we will design new
had access to the application, whereas the control group did not apps with the same structure as that of the app presented but with
play the game at any time. The aim of this posttest was to verify if new concepts, such as organic reactions and structural theory.

■
there was a significant difference between students’ learning of
organic-compound nomenclature via utilization of the application ASSOCIATED CONTENT
as a complementary teaching tool and students’ learning by *
S Supporting Information
traditional lectures. The survey was similar to the pretest and
asked students to either identify IUPAC and trivial names from The Supporting Information is available on the ACS
given structures or identify structures from given names. The Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00540.
students had 50 min for each test. Game screens, survey, pretest, and posttest (PDF, DOCX)
D DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00540
J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education

■
Technology Report

AUTHOR INFORMATION (19) Liberatore, M. W. Improved Student Achievement Using

Personalized Online Homework. Chem. Eng. Educ. 2011, 45 (3),
Corresponding Author 184−190.
*E-mail: nunes.ufc@gmail.com. (20) Kim, H.; Chacko, P.; Zhao, J.; Montclare, J. K. Using
TouchScreen Technology, Apps, and Blogs to Engage and Sustain
ORCID
High School Students’ Interest in Chemistry Topics. J. Chem. Educ.
José Nunes da Silva Júnior: 0000-0002-6631-4382 2014, 91 (11), 1818−1822.
(21) Wijtmans, M.; van Rens, L.; van Muijlwijk-Koezen, J. E.
Notes
Activating Students’ Interest and Participation in Lectures and
The authors declare no competing financial interest. Practical Courses Using Their Electronic Devices. J. Chem. Educ.

■
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E DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00540
J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX