Development of the Organic and Biochemistry Readiness Instrument: Assessing Student Preparedness for Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry

Abstract

The Organic and Biochemistry Readiness Instrument (OBRI) is a concept inventory to assess essential concepts covered in general chemistry with an emphasis on the topics most relevant to organic chemistry and biochemistry that students must transfer between disciplines. General chemistry is the first prerequisite course that introduces students to fundamental topics which, when mastered, can facilitate a student’s success and ability to integrate multidisciplinary material in chemistry courses. Course instructors of upper-level chemistry courses, such as in organic chemistry and biochemistry, must find a balance in distributing their time between reviewing prior concepts from earlier courses that students need to build upon and expanding students’ knowledge with new material most pertinent to their respective courses. This work details the development and validation of an instrument to assess student preparedness for organic chemistry and biochemistry, which occurred in three phases: validation (content validity, face validity, and response process validity), a field test, and data collection with the final version of OBRI in three different levels of General Chemistry. Results demonstrate concurrent validity through OBRI’s ability to differentiate between students completing the introductory, advanced, and intensive general chemistry course sequences. Additionally, reliability was assessed for the instrument, and significant correlations were observed between students’ scores on OBRI and their eventual grades in organic chemistry and biochemistry. The data informed general chemistry instructors on strengths as well as weaknesses in the curriculum with which they could make effective modifications to best prepare students as they proceed to subsequent, higher level chemistry courses. Overall, the instrument is an effective tool that provides an efficient way to measure student readiness for organic chemistry and biochemistry.