Evaluating an Intervention to Improve General Chemistry Students’ Perceptions of the Utility of Chemistry

Chemistry instruction should provide students a rationale for appreciating chemistry as a useful discipline, which is a particular challenge given the diverse student interests within introductory chemistry courses. In this study, we introduce and evaluate an interactive assignment, called an Informative Utility Value Intervention (IUVI), meant to improve students’ perceptions of the utility of chemistry. IUVI provides students with web-based articles describing how chemistry topics are relevant to the students’ chosen career interests. IUVI was administered to second-semester general chemistry students with a quasi-experimental study design in which one section from each instructor was given the intervention, and pre-intervention measures were used to account for potential differences between groups. The results indicate that students who received the intervention reported higher perceptions of the utility of chemistry at the end of the semester and higher scores on a common final exam than students who did not receive the intervention. Results from a structural equation model indicated the IUVI was associated with improved utility perceptions and final exam scores; however, these improvements were potentially independent of each other. Therefore, the theoretical explanation that improved perceptions of utility value resulted in improved academic performance could not be supported. Overall, IUVI offers an effective and highly portable intervention which can be adopted and adapted by instructors to promote students’ utility perceptions of chemistry.