Increasing the global reach of chemistry through online education requires an understanding of a diverse student population and challenges facing chemistry instruction at a distance. This population includes traditional and non-traditional students who must balance the demands of rigorous coursework with external obligations. Courses must be designed to include the obligatory curricular components, provide laboratory experiences, and offer necessary flexibility for distance learning worldwide. Self-contained laboratory kits with instrumentation can address the unique concerns of completing hands-on experiments and enable students to demonstrate laboratory proficiency in an online environment. Teaching faculty must understand that the differences between on-ground instruction and asynchronous online instruction can be leveraged and embrace these differences in the instruction they provide in an online environment. Experiences with this specific student population, course design requirements, and challenges facing online chemistry instruction will be discussed in support of expanding chemistry education.

Experiences with online chemistry education: Understanding the challenges

255th National Meeting (2018)

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