We will report on a fully remote Instrumental Analysis course taught at Grinnell College during the 2020-2021 academic year of COVID upheaval.  In response to the pandemic, Grinnell shifted to fully remote learning and a 4 term (7.5 weeks each) academic calendar for the year.  Lyons and Sharpe revamped their semester long Instrumental Analysis course to the remote, shortened format.  Retained between the two formats was the content coverage (based on the 7<sup>th</sup> edition of the Skoog, Holler and Crouch <i>Principles of Instrumental Analysis</i> text), an inclusion of research literature, and a laboratory program that included most of the usual laboratory activities.  Students worked in pairs on the video-based laboratory activities and did the same lab each session instead of rotating through 6 different lab stations based on limited instrumentation in the typical course.  Lost in the remote course was any in-person work, hands-on instrument use, solution preparation by students, laboratory notebook work, and student developed laboratory projects.  Formal reports and data analysis worksheets based on the labs replaced the prior laboratory notebook work.  Enrollment was about one-third of typical with more seniors than juniors which may over-enroll the course the next time it is offered in a regular format in Fall, 2021.  Classes and lab sessions were delivered M-F each week over the Webex platform and all course materials were provided to students via Blackboard which was also the electronic submission conduit for all student work.  Students earned high scores on their assignments as these were all open-book; lab data analyses were highly coached and based on previously acquired ‘good’ data.  Retention was excellent as all the students who were enrolled in the course at the end of the first week completed the course with grades which fulfilled their major elective course requirements.

Pandemic response:  A fully remote instrumental analysis course at Grinnell College

ACS Fall 2021

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