How to Recognize Success and Failure: Practical Assessment of an Evolving, First-Semester Laboratory Program Using Simple, Outcome-Based Tools.

This paper presents the use of simple, outcome-based assessment tools to design and evaluate the first semester of a new introductory laboratory program created to teach green analytical chemistry using environmental samples. This general chemistry laboratory program, like many introductory courses, has a wide array of stakeholders within and beyond the major. Among the stakeholders, there was low-level yet widespread apprehension that changes in the introductory level content would weaken student preparation. Because of this unease, it was important to prove to faculty and students alike that the new laboratory program could effectively help students reach the new laboratory learning goals without sacrificing technical content. A set of simple assessment tools, student precision and accuracy data from experiments during the semester, and a laboratory practical and a student survey from the end of the semester were used as both formative and summative program assessments. This article establishes the power of these simple, course-embedded tools to yield insights into program strengths and weaknesses and, ultimately, to demonstrate to all faculty and students the effectiveness of this first-semester program.