tandfonline.com – Pedagogical engineering to the teaching of the practical experiments of chemistry: Development of an application of three-dimensional digital modelling of crystalline structures

Abstract

Technological innovation in science provides complementary tools for exploring new teaching strategies within a pedagogical framework that promotes interaction between the teacher and the learner. This work is based on the implementation of a computer application modeling crystallographic material structures, in order to identify and study the different crystalline structures and their characteristics, based on the techniques of three-dimensional modeling covering the OpenGL library and the Euler rotation matrices, and developed by the C # programming language. The analysis and design of this study ranging from the study of the existing, the identification of the problematic, modeling and development, and finally the validation tests. Our research is aimed at second-year chemistry students at Ben M’sik Faculty of Science, Hassan II University of Casablanca, Morocco. We wish to conduct a comparative study between classical methods and after numerical simulation, in order to identify didactic factors influencing the cognitive engagement of learners. The results were good, 89.20% of students in the first group who worked on manipulations using the simulation application scored above 15/20, and 90.22% scored above 15.20./20 for the second group after completion of the manipulations according to the two modalities (traditional and computer). Teachers mentioned that the results have been favorable and support the recommended educational objectives for effective integration of this computer system, which seems to be effective for students who have tried to interact with the practical work to understand the phenomenon of crystallography by a virtual simulation on computer.