Over the past decade, green chemistry has been integrated into an increasing number of chemistry courses at a wide range of institutions. While green chemistry curricula are becoming more common, detailed assessments of student mastery of green chemistry and attitudinal outcomes from these programs are lacking, in part because of a lack of assessment tools. The College of Chemistry at the University of California – Berkeley has redesigned its general chemistry laboratory courses to introduce thousands of students each year to green chemistry concepts and applications. We have now shifted our focus towards developing an instrument to measure the outcomes from these courses. While our immediate research focuses on general chemistry we also aim for it to be more widely applicable. We have created a theoretical construct of green chemistry understanding that spans novice to expert practitioners and have correspondingly designed assessment items to cover this range. Our items test respondents’ abilities to define green chemistry, apply green chemistry concepts and metrics, and analyze situations using green chemistry principles. Preliminary results from this instrument, including tests for reliability and validity with several general and organic chemistry courses, will be presented.

Development of an assessment tool to measure student proficiency in green chemistry concepts and skills

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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