LAUSR

In a first-year university course, students experienced a new learning activity (“Clash of Chemists”) prompting them to create and share personal analogies explaining the difference between stoichiometric and nonstoichiometric reaction conditions, also known in the literature as “limiting reagent stoichiometry”. To support students’ commitment to this unusual assignment, the instructional design drew on a blog enriched with game mechanics (tournament, video rewards, and leaderboard), as found in popular mini-games. The paper reports on the activity’s outputs and on participants’ perceptions of its usability, usefulness, and generated satisfaction. Overall students’ reception of this mini-game was positive. A significant difference between players and nonplayers’ end-of-term exam results was highlighted.