We are very interested in helping you set up online chemistry courses if that is your plan. The number of students will likely be small at first, but for certain the courses will become very popular. You may want to offer online courses fall, spring, and summer to give students maximum flexibility in their schedules.
The most important point that we'd like to make is that if we participate, we'll be 100% committed to helping your students succeed with quality courses that meet their needs.
As far as the mechanics of how things might work initially, we suggest you (or whoever is designated) be listed as the instructor for the courses with our team, the College Gateway (TCG), providing materials and expertise. The simplest way to develope your program would probably be for you to primarily be an observer for the first semester or two as TCG handles the majority of daily operations. You could take over responsibilities as rapidly as you wish, with us providing support, etc. as you request.
Our TCG team is primarily a pool of chemistry faculty and adjuncts who have a great deal of experience in teaching health and life science chemistry. We also employ two computer experts to help with programing and solving cmputer-related student difficulties.
You, of course, as the instructor would have authority over all aspects of your courses. We'd ask for your help in setting up the initial exam schedule, lab experiment due dates, and grading criteria. You would also meet individual students who needed to see a "live" person, and you would submit final grades to the appropriate office of your university.
Students would need to purchase the text, laboratory manual, and a tutor CD for the course. Our TCG group would provide the students with a lab CD used to do lab activities and access to a server containing a submission program for lab reports, a powerpoint presentation of lecture notes, practice exams, an electronic test submission program with instant feedback, and an electronic gradebook.
TCG will generate and grade chapter quizzes, generate and grade four exams, grade lab reports, maintain an electronic gradebook for students, determine suggested final grades, send weekly e-mails to the class with lecture and lab comments, handle phoned-in lab questions from students, and answer e-mail questions from students.
We would prefer to run most of the course on our own server with a single page on WebCT (or Blackboard) welcoming the students and linking them to our server. Our testing software is more sophisticated than WebCT's and can handle the graphics associated with orgainic structures. The other reason has to do with the custom lab reporting and grading software we use.
From our experience at WSU, there is one very important request we make. We'd like the online courses to be paced the same as your regular semesters. This allows the course to contain chapter quiz and laboratory report deadlines with penalties for late submissions. This helps students keep up-to-date and leads to a high successfull-completion rate in the course.
TCG fees are a negotiated percentage of the income (tuition and fees) generated by the online students who take the courses. Of the percentage, a portion is associated with managing the lab part of the courses and a percentage is associated the lecture-exam activities.
We believe that our experience makes it possible for TCG to provide everything you and your students need to have a successful online chemistry experience the very first semester.