Dr. Alexey Leontyev

Associate Professor

Chemistry and Biochemistry

North Dakota State University

Presents:

“Assessment of Students’ Knowledge and Curriculum Adoption of Green Chemistry”

Friday, April 24, at 12:20 PM

Abbott Hall Room 138

Bio: Dr. Alexey Leontyev is an Associate Professor at North Dakota State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Education from the University of Northern Colorado in 2015 and previously served as an Assistant Professor at Adams State University before joining NDSU in 2018. His chemistry education research develops and validates assessment tools to measure students’ green chemistry knowledge and sustainability-related affect, while also evaluating instructional innovations. He is a recipient of the 2023 ACS CEI Award for Incorporation of Sustainability into Chemistry Education and the 2025 NSF CAREER award.

Abstract: While instruction in green chemistry is becoming more common, it is not well represented in the textbooks, leaving instructors responsible for deciding what to include and how to include it. Therefore, to evaluate how green chemistry is currently incorporated into the organic chemistry curriculum and the factors affecting its implementation, a nationwide survey was administered. 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. To identify which factors affected the integration of green chemistry, the survey items were developed using the Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform model. Overall, it was found that teacher thinking factors held the most significant impact.

As the implementation of green chemistry into university-level courses increases, it is becoming increasingly important that educators have tools to measure student knowledge of green chemistry principles. We investigated two different approaches to capture changes in students’ learning – using selected-response and constructed-response questions. For the selected-response approach, we designed the Assessment of Student Knowledge of Green Chemistry Principles (ASK-GCP) instrument. However, one of the disadvantages of selected-response questions is their limited ability to provide insights into student misconceptions and reasoning. We utilized constructed-response case comparison prompts to address this problem and elicit their reasoning about green chemistry. In these prompts, two reaction alternatives were presented, and students were asked to identify which of the two reactions would be the “greener” option and explain their reasoning. Both approaches were investigated for psychometric qualities and sensitivity to distinguish known groups with various levels of exposure or pre-/post-conditions.