Over a decade has passed since faculty members' goals for the undergraduate chemistry instructional laboratory were first investigated on a large, national scale in the United States. This study revisits these goals, using data from a 2022 national survey of chemistry faculty members in the United States (n = 521) to investigate current…

A deep understanding of organic chemistry requires a learner to understand many concepts and have fluency with multiple skills. This understanding is particularly necessary for constructing and using mechanisms to explain chemical reactions. Electrophilicity and nucleophilicity are two fundamental concepts to learning and understanding reaction…

Classroom observation data using tools such as the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) are frequently collected in instructional settings for large-scale research studies and program assessment. While COPUS data may be provided to instructors, it is often provided with little or no guidance on how the data can be used to…

Practice examinations developed at the ACS Examinations Institute ask students to self-report mental effort when answering items. This self-reported mental effort together with performance can be represented in the form of a cognitive efficiency graph for each student giving information on the utilization of cognitive resources and content…

The American Chemical Society (ACS), Division of Chemical Education, Examinations Institute, has been developing content maps to describe comprehensively the undergraduate curriculum aligned to traditional subdisciplines. These content maps have been developed through the combined efforts of many faculty members who teach the targeted courses in…

ACS Examinations provide a lens through which to examine historical changes in topic coverage via analyses of course-specific examinations. This study is an extension of work completed previously by the ACS Exams Research Staff and collaborators in general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physical chemistry to explore content changes in the…

The ability to assess students' content knowledge and make meaningful comparisons of student performance is an important component of instruction. ACS exams have long served as tools for standardized assessment of students' chemistry knowledge. Because these exams are designed by committees of practitioners to cover a breadth of topics in the…

Two key topics of many second-year organic chemistry courses are substitution and elimination reactions. Predicting and explaining substitution and elimination reactions tends to be a challenging task for students, as documented in the research literature. Motivated by the many documented challenges experienced by students when learning these…

Missing data is a regular issue that researchers and practitioners must consider for treatment. Commonly, cases for which data is missing are excluded from inclusion in larger data sets. However, this is not the only option and could artificially alter the sample. Other options are available for imputing missing data. Expanding on work previously…

Pedagogies of engagement (i.e., Peer-Led Teaming Learning, Problem-Based Learning, and Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) are active learning approaches used in postsecondary chemistry courses. In this study, we use data from a national survey of postsecondary chemistry instructors in the United States to estimate use of three pedagogies in…

Affective factors such as the achievement emotions are considered critical for students' academic performance in STEM degree programmes and careers. In this study, a reciprocal causation model was tested between two affective factors: enjoyment and anxiety, and organic chemistry course performance. Each variable was measured three times in four…

The association between student motivation and learning, and changes in motivation across a course, were evaluated for students enrolled in one-semester foundation-level inorganic chemistry courses at multiple postsecondary institutions across the United States. The Academic Motivation Scale for Chemistry (AMS-Chemistry) and the Foundations of…

Affect is associated with success and persistence in STEM courses and degree programs. Measurement tools that produce valid and reliable data are essential to capturing the impact of evidenced-based instructional practices and reformed curricula on learning. We report the development of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire for use in…

The Lewis acid-base model is key to identifying and explaining the formation and breaking of bonds in a large number of reaction mechanisms taught in the sophomore-level year-long organic chemistry course. Understanding the model is, thus, essential to success in organic chemistry coursework. Concept-inventories exist to identify misunderstandings…

The American Chemical Society, Division of Chemical Education, Examinations Institute has been developing content maps for the undergraduate program based on subdiscipline specifications since 2008. The Anchoring Concepts Content Maps (or ACCM) have been published in four subdisciplines (general, organic, physical, and inorganic chemistry) with…