UK Partners With Coursera to Introduce Online Chemistry Course

The University of Kentucky (UK) is collaborating with Coursera, an educational technology company offering Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), for a free online course to help high school students prepare for college-level chemistry.

Allison Soult and Kim Woodrum, two chemistry lecturers, along with academic technology course designers will design and offer the course. The course will be open to students across the country during the spring term of 2013-2014.

"I think there's some potential to do a lot of good for a lot of students," Mark Meier, chairman of the UK Department of Chemistry said. "It allows you to reach out to a lot of students you cannot usually reach, who want to go to college and be in a better position to be successful in one of the courses that scare people."

Enrolled High school students will take the courses online with a combination of video lectures and interaction with faculty in discussion boards. UK officials are hopeful that the course will allow students to perform well on Advanced Placement Chemistry exams in high school or at the first-year college level chemistry courses.

"We think the coming decade will see a transformation in the way education is delivered, where teachers and online content come together to serve better students on campus and beyond," Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller said.

The MOOC content could also be incorporated in regular class offerings, encouraging more interaction and question and answer sessions with faculty."We want to engage students more actively rather than them spend their course time listening to the guy at the front of the room," Meier said.

The university has now joined nine other universities across the nation that use Coursera online classes. The nine other schools are the State University of New York, the University of Tennessee System, the University of Colorado system, the University of Houston system, the University of Nebraska, the University of New Mexico, the University System of Georgia and West Virginia University. Other MOOC providers include Udacity, and EdX.