Online Homework and Student Success in Preparatory Chemistry

Adoption of the cyber learning system Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS) and subsequent inter-departmental coordination of assignments and deadlines led to increased student success in a preparatory, lecture-only chemistry course with large enrollment, CHEM 101. This article describes the process of our adoption and optimization of ALEKS in this course. As a result of our efforts, we were able to increase the pass rate for this course from 60.8% in the fall quarter 2009 to 73.9% in the fall quarter of 2012. The average GPA in CHEM 101 increased from 1.96 to 2.42. At the same time, students scores on the ACS 2009 Toledo Examination improved from an average of 27 (±6.0) in the pre-test to 34 (±6.8) in the post-test. This represents an improvement from the 25 to the 59 percentile compared to national data.