A Rubric for Assessing Students’ Experimental Problem-Solving Ability

Abstract

The ability to couple problem solving both to the understanding of chemical concepts and to laboratory practices is an essential skill for undergraduate chemistry programs to foster in our students. Therefore, chemistry programs must offer opportunities to answer real problems that require use of problem-solving processes used by practicing chemists, including those of experimental design. Additionally, programs should assess the extent to which these skills are mastered by students and use the results to inform curricular development. This manuscript describes a rubric for experimental problem solving in chemistry that seeks to assess the extent to which students can both understand a chemical problem and design an instrument-based strategy to address it. The rubric effectively differentiates responses to practicum questions answered by students at different stages of the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. The data show that students improve in their ability to problem solve as they progress through the program. On average, students are able to provide a “correct” answer before they are able to articulate a complete understanding of the problem or to justify their choices. The rubric will be useful to others seeking to study or assess student problem-solving skills at both the course and curricular levels.

Analytical Chemistry Laboratory Qualitative Analysis Process Examination: Links Between Experimental Data and Calculations

“…Evaluation criteria were developed by the research to evaluate these data. While experiment, and chemistry when the evaluation is made according to these criteria (Shadle et. al., 2012).…”

Development and use of a rubric to assess undergraduates’ problem solutions in Physics

“…There are many case studies on the formative use of rubrics to improve student performance * Correspondency: ayselko@balikesir.edu.tr (Panadero & Jonsson, 2013). In these studies, it was reported that the students had 'increased transparency' (Jonsson, 2014;Reynolds-Keefer, 2010), higher 'self-confidence' (Andrade & Du, 2005;Andrade, Wang, Du & Akawi, 2009) and 'increased performances' (Auxtero & Callaman, 2021;Shadle, Brown, Towns & Warner, 2012) by informing them about what was expected in advance. Lee and Cherner (2015), Vercellotti and McCormick (2021) consider the explicit definition of evaluation criteria of rubrics and scoring levels as crucial.…”

Honest Expert Solutions Towards Cognitive Apprenticeship

“…score based on how well the student demonstrates their ability to follow the standard procedure. The rubric was developed by the instructor using a similar approach to Shadle, Brown, Towns, and Warner, and vetted by colleagues who regularly teach the same course 14 . Figure 1.…”