Faculty at institutions around the globe are being encouraged to develop online courses. While the goal of such development is noble, not all subjects lend themselves to quick development for the online classroom. This challenge is particularly valid in chemistry, where the large amount of content covered, and the detail with which it is covered, makes the task of globalizing the chemistry classroom daunting. Further adding to this difficulty is the fact that an online classroom isolates a student making it difficult to create a learning community. To combat these challenges, a mid-sized public university in the Southeastern US adopted the internationally-recognized peer-reviewed Quality Matters (QM) Program for assessment of their e-learning courses. The program seeks to streamline the learning process for students through thoughtful course design, and attempts to increase the interactions of the online learner with both the instructor and classmates in the course. This paper will discuss one instructor’s experiences with aligning an online preparatory chemistry course with the QM Rubric. The course in question was the department’s first venture into the e-learning universe and was designed by faculty that had taught the course in the past, both in the traditional lecture style and as a flipped-course. The approaches to content delivery (highly produced instructor-created videos), group work (the use of virtual office hours), and mastery (homework, online quizzes and exams) used in the online course will be presented. Pros and cons of each instructional approach – including how they align with the QM Rubric –will also be discussed. Lastly, the use of this course as a training tool following QM Assessment will be introduced.<br/>

Development and quality matters assessment of an online preparatory chemistry course

254th National Meeting (2017)

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