The Digital Task Navigator as a Scaffold for Supporting Higher Education Students while Solving Tasks in Organic Chemistry

Abstract

Scaffolds can be seen as a suitable tool to support students’ learning chemistry. Digital task navigators, written scaffolds that support students in solving tasks in organic chemistry, were developed, used, and evaluated for this study. A paper task navigator was further developed into a digital task navigator, which included links to explanations of special terms that were unknown to the students. The students could use the links to find these explanations if they needed them. Four newly designed digital task navigators were evaluated using questionnaires. The students rated this newly developed digital scaffold quite highly. Students who used the links to the explanations felt that these were also helpful. The results of the students’ ratings can be used to design additional digital task navigators for other topics as well as to develop this scaffold further.