Open Learning Initiative

We offer three different short courses in chemistry:
1) A Stoichiometry bridge course that is situated in an authentic real-world problem.
2) A course on Chemical Equilibrium and Acid-Base Chemistry that implements a new approach that is proven to improve student performance.
3) Virtual chemistry lab course with over 35 lab assignments.

You can also choose:

• Virtual Lab
• Equilibrium and Acid/Base Chemistry
• Modern Chemistry 2 Video Survey Course

Course Description

The learning experience in the Stoichiometry and Chemical Equilibrium courses is constructed from the following types of components:

1. Videos that introduce the scenarios and chemical concepts, and provide worked examples of stoichiometry computations.
2. Scaffolded homework activities provide learners with hints and feedback on an as-needed basis, and fade this help appropriately such that learners remain challenged but not floundering.
3. Virtual laboratory activities that couple the mathematics of the course with authentic chemistry experiments, helping learners see how their calculations relate to chemistry practice. The Virtual Laboratory is a simulation-based learning environment for aqueous chemistry. It allows learners to select from hundreds of standard reagents and manipulate them in a manner that resembles that of a real lab.
4. End-of-module quizzes that help learners assess their knowledge.

The virtual lab course contains only the virtual lab components. The Open & Free Chemistry course does NOT include access to the end-of-module graded exams or to the course instructor. No credit is awarded for completing the Open & Free Chemistry course.

Stoichiometry course

This is a complete course in chemical stoichiometry, set in a scenario that shows how stoichiometry calculations are used in real world situations. This course has been designed to not only help you strengthen your skills with stoichiometry calculations, but also to see how those calculations are used to design and interpret laboratory experiments and to help solve real world problems. The topics covered range from dimensional analysis and the mole up through empirical formulas, limiting reagents, titrations, and reactions involving mixtures. This list of topics is similar to that in a high school chemistry course, although with a greater focus on reactions occurring in solution and on the use of the ideas to design and carry out experiments.

The course also uses a scenario, arsenic contamination of the Bangladesh's water supply, to motivate and organize the content. Traditional courses tend to follow a bottom-up approach to learning chemistry. This traditional approach teaches abstract concepts and tools before discussing their practical application, which results in students learning bits of unconnected knowledge that are rarely usable let alone memorable. In this stoichiometry course, scenarios are used both to motivate the material and to provide a framework in which students can organize their knowledge.

Chemical Equilibrium and Acid-base Chemistry course

Chemical equilibrium, and its application to acid-base chemistry and solubility, is widely viewed as one of the most challenging topics to learn in an introductory chemistry course. This course is the outcome of two years of research on what makes this topic difficult to learn and how we can improve instruction. Our research revealed two important ideas that are essential to understanding chemical equilibrium, but are either absent or downplayed in traditional instruction. The first is the central importance of the "progress of reaction" coordinate to reasoning about chemical equilibria. The second is the existence of a "majority-minority species strategy" that can be used to reason about the types of chemical reactions that occur most commonly in acid-base chemistry and other application areas. Our research shows that instruction centered around these ideas substantially improves student performance on challenging problems involving chemical equilibrium.

 

The unit on chemical equilibrium uses human respiration, in which hemoglobin picks up oxygen in the lungs and transports it to the muscles, as an organizing scenario. Chemical equilibrium reasoning has three main sets of conceptual tools, or toolkits, and the respiration scenario is examined three separate times, using each of these different toolkits. The course can be done in a linear fashion by following the modules in order. This will take you through the three versions of the respiration story in sequence, and then finish with some ideas that, while important, do not occur in the respiration stories. An alternative organization of the course contents is provided in the library module, which places the course content into a table organized around the three toolkits of equilibrium reasoning. If you are new to this topic, we recommend following the modules in order, using the library module to review the material. We also strongly recommend working through the virtual lab activities, since these allow you to use your knowledge to design, carry out and interpret experiments.

The unit on acid-base chemistry uses buffer chemistry as a topic around with to organize the central ideas of acid-base chemistry. The module begins by discussing the reactions of acid-base chemistry. This is followed by a discussion of how buffers work. Molecular diagrams are used throughout the unit to focus attention on a molecular-level understanding. The course ends with detailed practice on how to design a buffer solution with a desired buffer capacity. This unit is meant to supplement a course that covers other aspects of acid-base chemistry. We have chosen to focus on buffers both because this topic is among the most difficult in acid-base chemistry and because buffers provide a strong conceptual basis with which to understand acid-base chemistry more generally.

Virtual Laboratory course

The Virtual Laboratory is a simulation-based learning environment for aqueous chemistry. It allows learners to select from hundreds of standard reagents and manipulate them in a manner that resembles that of a real lab. This course begins with a tutorial on the use of the lab. It then provides 37 virtual lab activities, organized by the topics typically covered in an introductory chemistry course.

Chemistry II Video Course

This online course is based on the 2005 version of Modern Chemistry II (course number 09-106) taught at Carnegie Mellon University. The course contains a full semester of lectures interspersed with concept quizzes, practice problems and virtual lab activities. The course is broken up by topic into units and modules.