Research Interest(s):

My research focuses on Chemistry Education, particularly on developing assessment tools to measure students' knowledge and affective responses to green chemistry.

Green Chemistry Education: There's a rising public interest in environmental issues, and students are eager to learn about green chemistry and sustainability. Despite many curricula incorporating green chemistry, few efforts have been made to assess its impact on student learning. A major challenge in this field is the absence of assessments that can reliably and validly measure students' understanding of green chemistry. In my research group, we are dedicated to developing and evaluating tools that assess students' knowledge and affective characteristics—such as attitudes, sense of belonging, and motivation—pertaining to sustainability.

Evaluation of Instructional Innovations: We employ a variety of methodological approaches to evaluate innovative teaching methods. Here are two examples:

1. Alternative Grading Practices: These are increasingly adopted by undergraduate chemistry faculty across the United States. While there is literature on the implementation of such practices, detailed explorations of faculty motivations are scarce. We have conducted interviews and surveys with faculty who use alternative grading to understand their perceptions and the challenges they face in implementation.
2. Flipped Learning: This teaching approach, where traditional lecture and homework roles are reversed, has grown in popularity. In the flipped classroom, students review lecture materials on their own time and use classroom time to work on problems typically assigned as homework. While more studies are assessing the effectiveness of flipped classrooms, the results vary significantly, often due to small sample sizes. We applied a meta-analytical approach to synthesize findings from various studies on flipped instruction in chemistry courses, aiming to draw more robust conclusions.

Representative publications:

1. Grieger K., & Leontyev A. (2023), Development and implementation of a case study assessment using biobased 5-hydroxymethylfurfural to teach redox reactions in undergraduate organic courses, Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews, 16(1), 1-12.  
2. Grieger K., & Leontyev A. (2023), Teaching green chemistry though student-generated open educational resources, Journal of College Science Teaching, 52(4), 14-19. 
3. Grieger, K. D., Hill, B., & Leontyev, A. (2022). Exploring Curriculum Adoption of Green and Sustainable Chemistry in Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Courses: Results from a National Survey in the United States. Green Chemistry, 24(22), 8770-8782.
4. Grieger, K. D., Schiro, A., & Leontyev, A. (2022). Development of the Assessment of Student Knowledge of Green Chemistry Principles (ASK-GCP). Chemistry Education Research and Practice,23(3), 531-544.
5. Grieger, K., & Leontyev, A. (2021). Student-Generated Infographics for Learning Green Chemistry and Developing Professional Skills. Journal of Chemical Education, 98(9), 2881-2891.
6. Grieger, K., & Leontyev, A. (2020). Promoting Student Awareness of Green Chemistry Principles via Student-Generated Presentation Videos. Journal of Chemical Education, 97(9), 2657–2663.
7. Leontyev, A., Houseknecht, J., Maloney V., Muzyka , J., Rossi, B., Welder, C., Winfield, L. (2020). OrganicERs: Building a Community of Practice of Organic Chemistry Instructors through Workshops and Web-based Resources, Journal of Chemical Education, 97(1), 106-111.
8. Johnson, S., Meyers, M., Hyme, S., Leontyev, A. (2020). Green Chemistry Coverage in Organic Chemistry Textbooks, Journal of Chemical Education, 97(2), 383-389.

External Links:

Additional Information/Website
List of Publications