Web-based discussion in teaching and learning organic chemistry: a scoping literature review on its current trends, cognitive, social, and teaching aspects

Web-based discussion tools have emerged as valuable platforms in teaching and learning chemistry. Despite the increasing use of web-based discussion tools, their effectiveness in enhancing cognitive, social, and teaching aspects of organic chemistry remains underexplored. Therefore, this review aims to address the gap by synthesizing relevant literature on these key dimensions. The study adopted a scoping review literature for comprehensively mapping, exploring, and clarifying the existing body of literature. PRISMA was used to extract 57 kinds of literature from electronic databases that are Scopus, ISI, Google Scholar, ERIC, Web of Science, academia, and digital citation. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze current trends and cognitive aspects while thematic analysis was used to analyze social and teaching aspects. The results revealed that web-based discussion tools are predominately used predominantly utilized at the university level (52%) compared to secondary schools (48%) and are more common in developed countries than in least developed ones. Moreover, the study revealed that web-based discussion tools have a positive impact on fostering students’ conceptual understanding and interaction through the proper guidance of teachers. However, some critical issues such as poor internet, quality of discussion, lack of hands-on experience, complexity of molecular structures, and lack of tactile learning were identified as challenges hindering the effective implementation of web-based discussion tools.