Fostering Systems Thinking Skills through Interactive Molecular Animations

Systems thinking is increasingly recognized as a core competency in chemistry education, yet traditional organic chemistry instruction emphasizes linear sequences over integrated reasoning about how components of a reactive system interact.  This work investigates how interactive molecular animations can support the development of systems thinking skills using the nucleophilic substitution (SN1) mechanism as a case. Animations were developed in Blender 3D with DFT-optimized geometries and embedded in an interactive HTML interface. The study adopts an exploratory qualitative case-study design, with ten undergraduate students from Organic Chemistry I at the University of Ottawa interacting with the materials in 90-minute sessions followed by semi-structured interviews. Preliminary findings indicate that the animations supported two systems thinking dimensions: recognition of components and of their interactions. Notably helped students appreciate the role of the solvent in the reactive context, an aspect often overlooked in textbook representations.