Behind the Scenes of Teaching Green: An Iterative Approach to Curriculum Design and Implementation in the General Chemistry Laboratory

Journal of Chemical Education · 2024 · 11 citations

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Chemistry

As the 21st century progresses, we are increasingly reminded of the importance of and need for green chemistry, which also leads to the corresponding need for green chemistry education. The UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry developed a green chemistry laboratory curriculum─the General Chemistry Green Curriculum (GC2)─recognizing general chemistry as a keystone course for introducing green chemistry to STEM professionals. This initiative focused both on what green chemistry content was taught and how that green chemistry content was delivered using the Knowledge Integration framework to design a curriculum that provided students with opportunities to integrate normative green chemistry concepts and practices into their existing knowledge schema. This initiative also used a utilization-focused evaluation framework to guide iterative improvements in the curriculum over three semesters. Ultimately, this process allowed us, in collaboration with instructors and students, to develop and refine over 50 new green chemistry postlab questions, 25 new green chemistry prelab questions, and 47 green chemistry in-lab prompts for the final version of GC2. We found that it is important to integrate green chemistry into both curriculum and pedagogy to signal to students that it is a valued practice. We also found that a successful curriculum implementation necessitates the buy-in from and support of the graduate teaching assistants since they do not always have prior knowledge of green chemistry. We hope that this study can provide a guide for institutions aiming to embed green chemistry into their courses or curricula─emphasizing stakeholder collaboration, continuous iteration, and a comprehensive pedagogical framework.

What's in a word? Student beliefs and understanding about green chemistry

Chemistry Education Research and Practice · 2023 · 17 citations

• Chemistry
• Mathematics education
• Psychology

For the past decade, the College of Chemistry at UC Berkeley has iteratively redesigned general chemistry laboratory courses to introduce students to green chemistry concepts, while simultaneously using green chemistry as a relevant context to learn chemistry. To investigate the effectiveness of this curriculum we developed approaches to investigate student understanding of green chemistry. We adapted a constructivist educational framework to iteratively design fixed and free response items appropriate for large enrollment courses that probe student knowledge of green chemistry concepts and practices. Two free response items were designed to probe students’ ability to define green chemistry and make green chemistry decisions in the context of a case study. A set of fixed response items were designed to probe particular aspects of green chemistry knowledge that were included in the course. Together, we used these items to characterize (1) changes in student understanding of green chemistry and (2) how prior “green” knowledge impacts student learning of new green chemistry principles in the general chemistry laboratory course. Analysis of student responses indicated that, on average, students demonstrated increased green chemistry understanding after completing this green chemistry aligned laboratory course. Students were able to integrate more normative green chemistry principles in their answers and began to indicate awareness of complex interconnected systems. Because the items focused on assessing student knowledge of green chemistry, rather than their self-assessment of knowledge, they provided valuable insight regarding students’ prior green chemistry knowledge that will be used to develop future versions of the curriculum.