STRATEGIES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING ORGANIC CHEMISTRY SUPPORTED BY APPS

Teaching and learning Organic Chemistry require abstraction and articulation among the three dimensions involved in chemical knowledge: submicroscopic, representational and macroscopic dimensions. We believe that the adoption of mobile and wireless technologies, especially tablets and smartphones, may help approach these three dimensions of knowledge within the sphere of Organic Chemistry, help represent submicroscopic structures and the development of the capacity for abstraction, besides playing a major role in motivating the students for the processes of teaching and learning. In this context, our objective is to investigate the teaching and learning strategies for Organic Chemistry supported by Apps for smartphones and tablets which are being developed. For this purpose a review of scientific articles was performed using the "Scopus", "Web of Science" and "Scielo" and "ERIC" databases, covering the period from 2010 to 2017. Based on this survey, 28 articles were selected involving the field of Organic Chemistry and the use of mobile and wireless technologies. Among these, by documental analysis, 9 articles were identified that described teaching and learning strategies using Apps. The articles were classified into two categories as to the nature of the Apps: "General Apps" and "Chemistry Apps". Seven articles reported teaching and learning strategies that use "General Apps". We call "General Apps" those that were not created to teach Chemistry, but that have functionalities that may contribute to education. In the other two (02) articles, teaching and learning strategies were reported that use Chemistry Apps, especially, the submicroscopic dimension of Chemistry, by visualizing molecular structures, helping understand abstract aspects of Chemistry. The study showed the main teaching and learning strategies which are being developed within the sphere of Organic Chemistry with the support of the mobile and wireless technologies. Their common aspect is that they describe how the use of technologies can contribute to the production of knowledge and to improving the teaching and learning process in Organic Chemistry, especially in articulating the submicroscopic and representational dimensions with the phenomena observed in the macroscopic dimension, besides contributing to motivate the learning of this science.