There is tremendous nation-wide concern about the quality and effectiveness of STEM programs in higher education. Although much has been discovered by chemical education researchers in the past 20 years, it is difficult for large research universities to assess and innovate their programs due to numerous factors. To address these concerns, University of California Davis founded an organization dubbed the iAMSTEM Hub, which provides an institutional home for discipline based education researchers and developers on campus. In fall 2013, the UC Davis iAMSTEM Hub in collaboration with the Chemistry Department began a rigorous assessment of the general chemistry program which serves a population of over 3,000 students per quarter. Tools have been developed and implemented to determine a baseline of student learning gains and attitudes in our general chemistry courses. The tools we used include a pre/post concept exam, CLASS Chem (developed at CU Boulder), COPUS (developed at the University of British Columbia) time on task observations, and student instructor/course evaluations. The baseline data from the general chemistry courses will be used to assess strengths and weaknesses in the classroom and curriculum. Further, the data collected will provide a reference to help judge the effectiveness of future changes in the general chemistry courses. The tools and baseline data from the general chemistry classes will be presented along with data from an experimental pilot study.

Determining baseline student performance in general chemistry at a tier 1 university

248th National Meeting (2014)

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