Assessment

Assessment in the Chemistry Laboratory

Last Update: October 2, 2017

The laboratory experience is probably the most important experience that chemistry majors have at Truman.  The faculty feel that it is essential to the development of young chemists that they give prompt and constructive feedback to students on their efforts in the laboratory.  Every student is to receive informal feedback during the laboratory to correct problems in safety and technique and formal, written feedback through the laboratory notebook, a laboratory report or a laboratory quiz.

Every faculty member has his or her own way of grading, but there is enough commonality to create a set of criteria that we all look for in our students’ work.  These rubrics, for the Discussion of Conclusions section of a laboratory notebook or laboratory report and for the Laboratory Notebook, are being made available to you, the student, to help you understand how we assess these important components of the laboratory.  It is important that you understand that these are not strict, inflexible rules.  Rather, they are guidelines that the faculty follow when assessing your work, which they can modify to meet their needs in a specific course.

The chemistry faculty have prepared outcome statements for some of the courses in our curriculum (more are on the way).  You may view these by clicking on the links below.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has prepared guidelines for coverage in courses beyond the first-year.  We at Truman follow these recommendations closely, even though we have not completed detailed outcome statements for these courses.  The links below will take you to the ACS guidelines for each of the chemistry sub-disciplines (all documents are in PDF format).

If you are interested in learning more about assessment at Truman, click here.