One important component of teaching at a community college is addressing the needs of students who seek to transfer to a four-year college, earn an associate degree, and/or upgrade skills to enter the workforce. Our General Chemistry labs have traditionally focused on students learning a set of skills that can be carried forward regardless of their future plans. However, the coronavirus pandemic challenged us to develop a series of online labs in which students could learn these skills without physically being in a chemistry lab. This presentation describes our efforts to develop labs based around simple household chemicals and a lab “kit” of equipment which can be purchased on Amazon for approximately $60. Using this “kit”, we have been able to teach over 40 lab skills online that were normally taught in a face-to-face General Chemistry lab. Results from a student learning experience survey indicate that significant progress has been made towards students learning these skills using our kit.

Experiments completed at home that teach core lab skills for student success

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.