Online Course Development and the Effect on the On-campus Classroom

Online course development and the resulting effect on the classroom are important current topics for contemporary educators in diverse fields. The chapters in this book address these topics specifically for chemistry educators. The authors in this book address questions such as what pedagogical decisions are made in creating online courses and how do they differ from the pedagogical decisions made in on-campus teaching? Furthermore, where can overlap between the two be used effectively?

Answers to important questions like these help us better understand how to execute successful online courses. They can also help us better understand how to bring the fruits of online courses back to on-campus chemistry courses. Each chapter makes a unique and important contribution to this better understanding.

Pia M. Sorensen is Preceptor at Harvard University's Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She co-teaches the General Education course Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science and led its recent development to an online course on Edx. Sorensen's research interests range from science and engineering education--with an emphasis on online
education and creative ways of teaching science and engineering in a liberal arts setting--to chemical biology, the science of food, and the chemical and microbial processes of fermentation. Sorensen received a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and a PhD in Chemical Biology from Harvard University.