What Counts in General Chemistry? An Exploratory Look at What Was Emphasized and Rewarded on General Chemistry Exams...

General chemistry courses are prerequisites for many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors. This reflects a, perhaps tacit, assumption that performance in introductory chemistry relates to one's suitability for a STEM career. Unfortunately, our field has little idea what is required to succeed in general chemistry courses across the United States. Therefore, we cannot evaluate if general chemistry grades are an appropriate proxy for one's potential in STEM. Here, we describe the intellectual work emphasized and rewarded on 235 exams administered in general chemistry courses at 57 colleges/universities across the USA. We parsed assessments into items, which might consist of multiple subparts, each with at least one embedded task. We focus on exams as they are ubiquitous in general chemistry courses and typically consequential for students' grades. First, we used the 3-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol to describe exam points allotted to items that prompt students to use core disciplinary ideas to make sense of phenomena (i.e., 3D Learning). Findings showed that prompting for 3D Learning on assessments was rare regardless of institution type, comprising less than 7% of exam points in our data set. Next, we developed and applied a protocol to describe tasks that did not have the potential to engage students in using core ideas in science practices (i.e., 0D tasks). This revealed that rote calculations were overemphasized comprising over 27% of all 0D tasks. Findings indicate that general chemistry courses gate access to STEM by student facility with rote calculations and drawing/labeling specialist pictures. We unpack why this is problematic and provide recommendations for building chemistry assessments that have the potential to be more meaningful and equitable.