As implementation of green chemistry into university-level courses increases, it is vital that educators have a tool to rapidly measure student knowledge of green chemistry principles. We report the development of the Assessment of Student Knowledge of Green Chemistry Principles (ASK-GCP) and evaluation of its sensitivity and effectiveness for measuring student knowledge of green chemistry. The 24-item true–false instrument was given to a total of 448 students to gather data on the reliability, validity, and sensitivity. The instrument proved to be sensitive for distinguishing known groups with various levels of green chemistry knowledge and instructional exposure. The instrument was able to detect gains in green chemistry knowledge in pre- and post- conditions. Psychometric analysis revealed that the item difficulty range matches the sample ability range. The findings verified that the ASK-GCP is an efficient and accurate instrument to measure student knowledge of green chemistry principles.

This study sought to explore the integration of green and sustainable chemistry into the organic chemistry curriculum through a national survey of organic chemistry instructors (n = 160) within the United States. It was found that faculty were most familiar with the green chemistry topics of reaction efficiency and catalysis and least familiar with the topics of efficiency metrics and life cycle impacts of chemicals. This unfamiliarity with efficiency metrics and life cycle impacts of chemicals was echoed in a low perceived importance for chemistry and related science students to know these concepts and subsequently the incorporation of green chemistry topics was amongst the lowest of the topics evaluated. Similarly, it was found that most faculty were unaware of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and planetary boundaries, and thus the integration of these topics into the curriculum was also low. To identify which factors affected the integration of green chemistry, the survey items were developed using the Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform model. Stepwise linear regression was used to identify which factors significantly affected its integration into the teaching curriculum and assessments. Overall, it was found that that teacher thinking factors held the greatest impact. In addition, departmental requirement or encouragement of green chemistry integration was found to significantly impact its incorporation for both the curriculum and assessments. These results suggest that there is a need both to provide training opportunities for faculty to become more familiar with these topics and their relevance to the organic curriculum and to work with people in leadership roles at the universities to encourage departmental integration.

One key limitation for assessing student knowledge of green chemistry is the lack of readily available assessments capable of eliciting reliable and valid data. Therefore, in this study we sought to evaluate the ability of a previously reported open-ended prompt [] to probe student conceptions about the greenness of chemical reactions. Responses to this prompt, which we titled the Green Chemistry Generic Comparison (GC)(2) prompt, were collected from students enrolled in organic chemistry I and II lecture and laboratory courses (N = 642) and from students enrolled in general chemistry II lecture courses (N = 272). This prompt was found to be sensitive for detecting gains in green chemistry knowledge in pre- and post- conditions. Furthermore, psychometric analysis revealed that, while addressing certain green chemistry principles was well within the students' ability range, other principles exceeded that range. These findings indicate that this prompt provides a rapid and effective method for both measuring student knowledge and eliciting student conceptions of the green chemistry principles.